[Cóc Cóc Coffee in Vung Tau on 3/7/24] Again, I’m at Cóc Cóc Coffee, a five minute walk from my room at DC Homestay. Getting here, I passed dancing women at Triangle Park, then the only homeless man in the neighborhood. Perhaps 70-years-old, he sleeps on three stacked foam mattresses. He was brushing his teeth with bottled water. People must bring him food. His area is always clean.
It took me a long time to realize how special small town America was. Of all the places I've lived, my favorite was a small town. They were walkable and bike-able. They had a personality and identity of their own. 15 min cities will no doubt be cookie cutter corporate mini mart communities. I guess I'll always get to keep the memories of what once was.
Heck, I remember when flying coach was an adventure and fun as opposed to the root canal it is today. How America didn't boycott airports after the implementation of TSA is beyond me. Just a bunch of sheep. Knowing that, I was still shocked 200 million got the toxic injection. And Trump is still touting how he got it rushed to production as if he did something good.
I'm going to contemplate this while sitting on the porch listening to birds and sipping coffee.
You and I, Mr. Dinh, may be the last two Americans that have read the writings of Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs. And I haven't read much of Ms. Jacobs but what I did read impressed me.
We have a park here in Bridgeport (in fact there are several; Bridgeport is know as the Park City), Seaside Park that I believe was designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted, the man who designed Central Park in Manhattan. There is a metal plaque in the Park indicating it was designed in 1865. The only mistake the planners made -- and it was a big one -- was to build roads through the Park so cars could access it. Although, presumably, when the Park was constructed the roads were limited to horses and buggys.
"Black crime." As if no other such crime exist. Further, you disembody it from its historical roots, its fertilizer, its centuries deep soil--slavery, racism, Jim Crowism, bigotry, disenfranchisement, sanctioned murder, etc.--and give a pass to what has made it so--centuries of Western/Anglo-Saxon destruction, serial genocides, enslavement, torture, annihilation (see Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Asia, Africa writ whole, the Americas (North and South) writ whole, etc.), and centuries-long, economic oblivion (see unemployment rate 50% or greater for Black youth).
Do you think that one would exist without the other. And what 'crime' does the most damage? Black crime wherein its own and those who are approximate are the predominantly ravaged (see System)? Or imperial crime that simultaneously engages low/high intensity warfare--disempowering and murdering and denying opportunity to the 'lessor' (read Black and White poor and Native, etc) nationally and worldwide, whilst also eviscerating the middle classes, nationally and worldwide, regardless of skin color (see exporting jobs), dumbing down via 'education' the entire population, regardless of skin color (all the better to control), restricting rights and privileges and sending the poor disenfranchised, regardless of skin color, off to die for the MIC, the banks, and their overlords.
I am old enough to remember when most of it began. When mysterious men introduced drugs into the neighborhoods of 'color' (see parallel of Alcohol to Native Americans) from distant shores via governmental airplanes (see intelligence and military), for free at first and then how decades later the ravages, the crimes, the burnout, the drug wars, the lost lives, the murdered champions, etc. all together destroyed the future (see urban blight, plight, destruction, crime, etc.). Look to the catalyst, follow the money, and there you will find the answer and not the propaganda, not the scapegoat.
You are a smart man, Linh, but you're stuck, when you refer to "Black Crime", in a socio-biologically false paradigm. It is a paradigm financed, built, and maintained by the selfsame folks who began the destruction/annihilation of the world nearly five centuries ago, with the blessing of the church mind you, and who subsequently coined the concept of 'race', with themselves on top, of course. And then they, the most 'civilized', the most 'advanced', the most 'cultured', the most 'human' went about, literally, destroying the world. What you see, regardless of where you look today, across the wide world, is the aftermath of that five hundred year reign and the ongoing destruction, whether it be in disintegrating neighborhoods, towns, cities, states, nations or the destruction of the truth via censorship, cancelling, propaganda, lies, and a complete rewriting of history.
Bereft of opportunity, education, access, hope, seen as lessor for centuries(!), as "human animals", what should their lot be? Is understanding, empathy, awareness, wisdom truly extinct? There are excuses and there are truths. To focus on "Black Crime" to the extent and degree of all other crimes and the greatest crimes of all is, indeed, small.
Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Joyce, Carole Oates (where did that last come
from? ) You are on form. thank you x10.
g.
I can't agree depressing, these concentrated haiku are like confected bullets of apercu. Perhaps not smooth reading like the london music radio station....
I was struck by the last "suggestion," Linh. Nuclear war perhaps, and then we all return to "normal." Not exactly what you said but we all know that the "basics" are lurking under our artificially constructed lives here in the West. Just a good reminder about our human essence, truly dust to dust.
It took me a long time to realize how special small town America was. Of all the places I've lived, my favorite was a small town. They were walkable and bike-able. They had a personality and identity of their own. 15 min cities will no doubt be cookie cutter corporate mini mart communities. I guess I'll always get to keep the memories of what once was.
Heck, I remember when flying coach was an adventure and fun as opposed to the root canal it is today. How America didn't boycott airports after the implementation of TSA is beyond me. Just a bunch of sheep. Knowing that, I was still shocked 200 million got the toxic injection. And Trump is still touting how he got it rushed to production as if he did something good.
I'm going to contemplate this while sitting on the porch listening to birds and sipping coffee.
You and I, Mr. Dinh, may be the last two Americans that have read the writings of Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs. And I haven't read much of Ms. Jacobs but what I did read impressed me.
We have a park here in Bridgeport (in fact there are several; Bridgeport is know as the Park City), Seaside Park that I believe was designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted, the man who designed Central Park in Manhattan. There is a metal plaque in the Park indicating it was designed in 1865. The only mistake the planners made -- and it was a big one -- was to build roads through the Park so cars could access it. Although, presumably, when the Park was constructed the roads were limited to horses and buggys.
another good one Linh
Dear Linh,
"Black crime." As if no other such crime exist. Further, you disembody it from its historical roots, its fertilizer, its centuries deep soil--slavery, racism, Jim Crowism, bigotry, disenfranchisement, sanctioned murder, etc.--and give a pass to what has made it so--centuries of Western/Anglo-Saxon destruction, serial genocides, enslavement, torture, annihilation (see Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Asia, Africa writ whole, the Americas (North and South) writ whole, etc.), and centuries-long, economic oblivion (see unemployment rate 50% or greater for Black youth).
Do you think that one would exist without the other. And what 'crime' does the most damage? Black crime wherein its own and those who are approximate are the predominantly ravaged (see System)? Or imperial crime that simultaneously engages low/high intensity warfare--disempowering and murdering and denying opportunity to the 'lessor' (read Black and White poor and Native, etc) nationally and worldwide, whilst also eviscerating the middle classes, nationally and worldwide, regardless of skin color (see exporting jobs), dumbing down via 'education' the entire population, regardless of skin color (all the better to control), restricting rights and privileges and sending the poor disenfranchised, regardless of skin color, off to die for the MIC, the banks, and their overlords.
I am old enough to remember when most of it began. When mysterious men introduced drugs into the neighborhoods of 'color' (see parallel of Alcohol to Native Americans) from distant shores via governmental airplanes (see intelligence and military), for free at first and then how decades later the ravages, the crimes, the burnout, the drug wars, the lost lives, the murdered champions, etc. all together destroyed the future (see urban blight, plight, destruction, crime, etc.). Look to the catalyst, follow the money, and there you will find the answer and not the propaganda, not the scapegoat.
You are a smart man, Linh, but you're stuck, when you refer to "Black Crime", in a socio-biologically false paradigm. It is a paradigm financed, built, and maintained by the selfsame folks who began the destruction/annihilation of the world nearly five centuries ago, with the blessing of the church mind you, and who subsequently coined the concept of 'race', with themselves on top, of course. And then they, the most 'civilized', the most 'advanced', the most 'cultured', the most 'human' went about, literally, destroying the world. What you see, regardless of where you look today, across the wide world, is the aftermath of that five hundred year reign and the ongoing destruction, whether it be in disintegrating neighborhoods, towns, cities, states, nations or the destruction of the truth via censorship, cancelling, propaganda, lies, and a complete rewriting of history.
Bereft of opportunity, education, access, hope, seen as lessor for centuries(!), as "human animals", what should their lot be? Is understanding, empathy, awareness, wisdom truly extinct? There are excuses and there are truths. To focus on "Black Crime" to the extent and degree of all other crimes and the greatest crimes of all is, indeed, small.
Sincerely,
K.E.
Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Joyce, Carole Oates (where did that last come
from? ) You are on form. thank you x10.
g.
I can't agree depressing, these concentrated haiku are like confected bullets of apercu. Perhaps not smooth reading like the london music radio station....
I was struck by the last "suggestion," Linh. Nuclear war perhaps, and then we all return to "normal." Not exactly what you said but we all know that the "basics" are lurking under our artificially constructed lives here in the West. Just a good reminder about our human essence, truly dust to dust.
Beautiful. Masterly.
g.
Very depressing reading mate. Any more hopeful predictions?