Free from the Bombastically Hiveminded
[Phnom Penh, 11/19/23]
It’s 5:18AM, and I’m in a café noisy with a dozen men. The wooden furniture is overly thick, and there are large, heavy sculptures of fish, deer, rams and horses on most tables. A goldfish with a bulbous forehead wears glasses. Too expensive, these beasts also clutter up space, so make no business sense, but they’re wonderful as proofs of the owner’s individuality, if not eccentricity. Such quirks are still common outside the conformist West.
There, one disapproved opinion can ruin one’s life. In that realm of the thoroughly cowed, independent thinking, dive bars and garage bands have all but disappeared. Each word must be sanctioned from a distant center, so Jews don’t lie, swindle or commit genocides, and race is just a social construct, according to those most obsessed with race. Race baiting nonstop, they aren’t the worst racists, however, but God’s chosen, so shut up and obey!
Here, the conversations are in Khmer, and the owner looks Cambodian. On TV, there’s a tattooed white woman with a crew cut stroking some toothy horse. At least one animal is happy. Though in a prime location, a black coffee is only 50 cents.
If still in Philly, I’d have to wait hours to find any place to half mix with my kind. In silence, I’d sit in front of some pricey drink. Among tense faces, laughter would be extremely rare, unlike here.
What is the value of just witnessing your species performing simple acts? Degas drew women washing or grooming, Rembrandt sketched one urinating, Bonnard spent hours staring at his wife in a bathtub. Snaking through a Phnom Penh alley, I may encounter someone sleeping, combing her hair, slapping a person, peeling an orange, playing badminton or laughing. Even if someone is not smiling at you, isn’t her bright face an immeasurable consolation? Seeing happy children playing rejuvenates the soul and restores hope.
Denied access to others, one can’t speak one’s mind, albeit much self-censored, so there’s nothing left to do but adopt widespread modes of rebellion, such as sporting many tattoos, looking cool or tough and, occasionally, marching down the street for an hour or two with some cute, homemade sign. One can also vote for Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders!
Interviewed by Dana Basch on CNN, Sanders condemns Israel’s ongoing massacre of innocents in Gaza, but only after declaring Hamas to be “an awful terrorist organization” that has “slaughtered 1,400 people in cold blood,” so “Israel has a right to defend itself.” He also fails to challenge Basch’s contention that the lack of food and water in Gaza is because Hamas is hoarding them, as “most people in the West, certainly the U.S., believe.” How can any journalist base her argument on what most people believe?! Like Sanders, Basch is a lying Jew, so they ignore the fact that most people who died on 10/7/23 were murdered by Jewish airstrikes, tank rounds or caught in cross fires. Hamas definitely did not murder 1,400 people in cold blood, and Israel, as an invading, occupying power, can’t define its serial human right abuses and genocide as “defending itself.”
Since no group is ultimately indigenous to anywhere, all historical land claims are dubious. That’s why nations fight wars. A third of Vietnam once belonged to the Khmers, but from 1835 to 1841, Vietnam occupied all of Cambodia, and the Khmers didn’t create their vast empire by being nice guys. As they weakened, the Thais also bit off a nice chunk, with even more targeted. When France ruled Indochina, Thai planes bombed Battambang, Sisophon and even Phnom Penh. Though shrunken, present day Cambodia encompasses non Khmer tribes. Of course, it’s complicated. Here for the cheap sex, some farangs have fancied themselves experts in Southeast Asian history, sociology, psychology and maybe even languages, and why not? They’re masters of everything except their homelands.
Since we’re not just the inheritors but custodians of so many unfolding disasters, is there anything to be cheerful about? Of course, and I’m doing my part by sketching, just for you, dear, the most boring scenes, for there’s much beauty and comfort in the most banal.
At Klang Boy Bak Kut Teh, I overheard a conversation between two non-native English speakers.
Woman, “Why are you staring me like that? Are you a stalker? Ha, ha!”
Man laughed.
Woman, “What you call people who fight fire?”
“Firemen?”
“Yes, how come you’re dressed like a fireman? Ha, ha!”
Although it was only about noon, she sounded rather drunk. He was probably an Indonesian tourist.
Woman, “You know, ah, old people? Their diapers are expensive!”
When you’re young or oblivious enough, everything is hilarious, and if you’re as beautiful as she was, you could say pretty much anything, even when you’re not drunk.
Since this is my fifth visit to Phnom Penh, I’ve witnessed it grow. Wandering around this week, I stumbled upon Exchange Square, an upscale shopping mall. Its slogan is “Eat, shop, repeat!” There’s Maison Kayser Paris, Shiva Shakti, Bread Talk, Little Sheep Hot Pot and Häagen-Dazs, etc., and at Sushi Tei, a sashimi combo will set you back at least $26, half a week’s wage here. In a country where at least half the women walk around in pyjamas, I saw no such sleepwear at Exchange Square.
On the second floor, there’s an American cultural center, as operated by the US Embassy. It had a mural showing the US Capitol, Washington Monument, Statue of Liberty, Space Needle, Space Shuttle and part of an astronaut. America’s prowess in space is a key part of its aura. No one else has bounced around on a moonscape stage!
Even more amusing was a Hard Rock Cafe sign advertising live music by the Art Chemistry Band, with its seven members looking super cool. Since American posturing is bad enough, we don’t need its parody. Online, there are videos of them playing The Knack’s “My Sharona,” Meat Loaf’s “I Will Do Anything For Love” and Pink’s “Just Like a Pill.” You can’t sing with conviction what you don’t feel or, perhaps, even understand.
“I can’t stay on your morphine,” she snarls, “cause it’s making me itch! I said I tried to call the nurse again, but she’s being a little bitch!’
Enough already! Please just die and leave us alone!
[Phnom Penh, 11/20/23]
[Phnom Penh, 11/19/23]
[Phnom Penh, 11/16/23]
[Phnom Penh, 11/20/23]
Thanks, Linh, for all the useful context on Hamas. The thing that utterly floors me is that Israel can keep getting away with the same sham set-ups time after time. I am talking about the 9-11 demolitions which they did very efficiently, with the passive assistance of the US who took all of their response personnel off on vacations (or exercises, as they said), allowing the "art students " to do their dirty work. Thus, again, the Israeli military was nowhere to be found for hours after "Hamas" shot up the music festival and the Kibbutz, only to appear in their bombers to complete the dirty work of killing their own people. People here in the US (and perhaps in Israel too) are so darn stupid as to fall for these fraudulent enterprises -- that is perhaps the most depressing aspect of the whole thing. There have always been very evil people afoot in this world, but populations that are so gullible in this "glorious information age" --- that is the real kicker that convinces me that it is all so so hopeless.
In my Navy days back in the late 70s I saw a number of non-English-speaking (I assume) performers in various Western Pacific ports singing their renditions of American pop music. Many of them do verge on parody, but I’ve heard a few that were very good. One of the best was at a Japanese resort hotel in Guam. (The US military dominates the island, but it was little known that there were five resort hotels on Guam’s western beach, located far away from all that, catering to Japanese tourists. Guam was the poor Japanese salaryman’s Hawaii back then.)
Me and a couple of buddies decided to check out one of these hotels, and found ourselves in the hotel disco, packed with Japanese vacationers; I think we might have been the only English speakers in the room—even our server had very limited English skills. The band, all Japanese guys, was playing an assortment of stuff from all over, including many American hits. My vivid memory is their perfectly accent-free rendition of Climax Blues Band, “Couldn’t Get It Right”, a US hit in the mid-70s. The only thing that was off was that they were nearly a full octave higher than the real thing. It was funny, but still very good.
Even before your piece today, I’ve shared your thought about historical land claims. As you say, no one is ultimately indigenous to anywhere. On the other hand, there is such a thing as theft, imperialism, empire-building, etc. So the big question is: where do you draw the line? When does it move from “theft” to “squatter’s rights?”
I have more or less concluded that any such stuff that happened to people still living can probably be considered “theft.”. Once a few generations have passed, it begins to move into the realm of “squatter’s rights.” But cultures vary around the world, and some have amazingly long memories. In the Balkans, each of maybe half a dozen ethnic groups believes that it is entitled to a restoration of boundaries that existed when its culture was at its greatest extent, back as long as 1000 years! Obviously someone will be coming home empty-handed from that party.
Another thing to consider is whether, after the passage of time, a particular “wrong” can logically be “righted.” Perhaps there is still time to try to make the Palestinians whole again. The Irish, perhaps not. The Native American, almost definitely not. Thinking of the latter, consider that even if we gave back all the land formerly under their sway, there aren’t many around that are waiting to go back to a pre-industrial hunter-gatherer lifestyle. So we’re talking essentially about throwing money at them to right what is seen as a historical injustice?