[Vung Tau, 10/25/22] Life is so laid back and pleasant in Vung Tau, Vietnam’s 10th largest city. Unlike in Saigon or Hanoi, there are no traffic jams here, and most sidewalks are uncluttered enough for ambling. Though rarely hired, pedicabs still roll.
Lihn, that "naked transgender show" had it all. "One-eye" freemasonic symbols during the performance? Check. Reference to the Ukraine/Zelensky? Check. "Woman with a penis"? Check. And probably much more, I only saw a couple photographs. Ever since the Olympics, the Brits excel at this type of deranged propaganda.
At least in Vietnam, you're spared this kind of decadent thing. Watching a woman nagging his poor husband as they work is more fun.
You got your visa! Did I miss that essay? Anyway, glad for this one. I'm reading your very enjoyable Postcards from the End of America. Great read. Blessings, P
I compare Jordan Gray's life with Julia Grant's. Julia was the subject of the BBC documentary "A Change of Sex" in the late 1970s showing the period of her life when she transitioned from being George Roberts into Julia. Adam Curtis worked this narrative into his own recent documentary "Can't Get You Out of My Head," particularly as it relates to how pursuing one's own individual identity against overwhelming social inertia requires a kind of determination or inner resistance but all too often leads to abandonment, isolation, and pain before it completely changes the landscape afterwards. Curtis does a cunning job in showing how "Madame Mao" Jiang Qing's own self-expression as a woman refusing to submit to what men said she could be compares to Julia's —among many other stories of personal struggles caught up in social and technological tectonic changes.
The scene that stands out is Julia sitting in the office of the NHS psychiatrist assigned to her case. How he talks to her might remind many people of what it was to sit and listen to their own doctors and health care professionals dictating what medications, what therapies, and what protocols must be followed during the Pandemic, or else. A feminist much earlier might even say that we know Julia's a woman now, because this is how men talk to them.
Forty years makes a huge difference, but some things still remain the same. Gray wants to flaunt on stage what others want to retain inside their own homes, with someone who loves them, away from the Know-Betters, where the pain and trauma find healing in daily sharing. And I don't mean the dick, I mean the confusion, the joy, the doubts, the will to find one's self.
Grant later on became controversial for not being as publicly and unflinchingly enthusiastic about transitioning, because all of this regarding who and what we are in public and in private isn't something we're going to fit neatly into a category we're all going to embrace, even if for the sake of conversation. Someone will balk at referring to Julia as a She, expressing the same self-assured incredulity as the young boys in the scene just before the one I link to in the YouTube video. Someone will balk at referring to Julia's assigned-at-birth/dead name, just as they've scrubbed such from Julia's Wikipedia page and forbid anyone from doing, ever. When Julia says later in the documentary that her own friends won't really even ask her how she's doing and why she lives so alone, you can understand that loneliness if you're already acquainted with what it is to be alone, separate, marginalized by the mainstream and the freaks both. A comedian on stage who indulges in public nudity craves such attentive frottage, since to scroll past the display on the mobile we'll have to touch the monolith's surface.
So it's also interesting to see here in this postcard the complexity and variability and individuality of what it does mean to be woman. A man doesn't want the responsibility of having an opinion on women when the microphone is in front of his face, so he passes it off onto another man. A husband just wants to work hard and turn a sustainable profit while his wife harasses another entrepreneur struggling to do the same. Seen by millions, the White Queen has died, now lies underneath, but the Black Woman King stands front and center, even as no one watches.
Yo Linh, happy to have found you again! What happened to your regular postings on Unz? Whatever, love your literary "sort of Lenny Bruce style" of "social irreverence". This 76 y/o “red county rural” drafted ‘Nam VFW w/ a ’15, 12ga assault pump and 9mm, “locked and loaded”, was just recently blessed with a '75 Vietnamese boat refugee moving in next door with his wife and young son! Wow, talk about "full circle". And such a mellow, considerate man he seems to be! Long story w/ me that surely would even "blow your mind". Have a very special place in my heart for [most] Vietnamese of whom you are a very good example!
Dear Linh, i deeply appreciate the time you have taken to answer my question. I have just read many of those articles but not yet all. Went on and read a review of Prof Lynn's book about the superior intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews which i had some idea of. I wish i had had your essay about blacks to hand several years ago when i had my first major split with my children when i cautioned them about jumping too emotionally to conclusions about George Floyd's death. I instantly became a racist (i take yr point that we are all racists) and was given a stern rebuke with no right of rebuttal. I have of course moved on in their minds to the ultimate latest heresies: I am unvaccinated and also failed to endorse Ukraine as hero state. Hohum. Anyway, it has been a very stimulating evening here under the eaves reading the recommended articles and listening to the rain. I apologize for not looking more deeply into yr earlier writing before commenting publicly. Best wishes for your visa problems. Isha
Dear Linh, I believe it was you who pointed me in the direction of Chris Hedges' column on substack for which I thank you. Today I have been troubled as I frequently am by your reference to Jew-this and jew-that, considering that no one refers to Joe Biden as notoriously corrupt Roman Catholic or for that matter, any of the Mafioso over the years who are also notorious and evil Roman Catholics. I get your point about the many people of Jewish background who have a suspiciously large part in nefarious activities these days, but there are such a lot of Jews who do not as well. This led me the new article by Chris Hedges I just read this evening about one of the other Jews. https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/death-of-an-oracle?r=owd66&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Hi Linh, I'm pleased to be your newest subcriber. Happy to hear you are back in the city where the waves never stop. We'll get together to kvetch about the world soon!
Dear Linh, It is all getting too hard to comprehend but the 'elite aerosol division' cracked me up and made it all worthwhile. Cheap thrills. Two night ago, my little town 7 kms away, a haven of normality and friendly smiles, had a very heavy rainstorm (after months of heavy rainstorms) and a flash flood erupted and washed through the tiny shopping area. Climate change? or just climate. Many new homes have been built on blocks of 1/2 or 1 acre so that there is no longer any soil to absorb the rain. The heavy falls pour off and hasten to the lowest point which is a tiny creed which previously directed the water into a culvert under the main street and then off to join the river and eventually the sea. I have not driven the seven kilometres to review the damage but know the local coffee shop became part of the creek for a while and is closed indefinitely. I wonder how the industrious Chinese couple who bought the fruit shop in order to qualify for Australian citizenship are doing. Things were already not so good for them as they did not fit in well to the clientele who frequented the natural food/organic vegetable shop they bought. For awhile they called me their best customer as I have a fatal tendency to want to help the strangers in strange lands, having been one. They are interesting people. Anyway, I hope someone wakes up and decides nuclear war is not an entirely sensible development but don't have a lot of hope as so many other things are proceeding apace which are not only not sensible but utterly insane. So I sincerely hope we can limp on to another postcard next week and the week after that. I have a lot of raw chick peas I bought before our first lockdown and am not looking forward to trying to live on them at any time in the future.
The old line from white women that men like Asian women because they are meek and docile can only be honestly believed if you don't know Asian women and haven't seen them with their husband.
The eastern Asian women I have known can be very tough with their husband (sometimes too tough in my opinion). The difference between them and white women is that they are also more likely to do things to please their husband and help the family without always making sure that they are getting a better deal first.
Eastern Asian culture is interesting in that in some ways people are less confrontational and in other ways far blunter and more honest than in the West.
It’s telling that the US has not only deployed one of its “most elite aerosol divisions” to within striking distance of Odessa, but has gone to the trouble of embedding a “journalist.” These days, advertising the inclusion of this person is in itself a message from the Empire as much as the division itself is.
How about a not implausible scenario fueled by delusion? Ukraine, technically not at war (as it is, after all, only a “Special Military Operation”), “invites” the US to bring its division to Odessa for a visit. The belief, no doubt, is that it will serve as a “trip wire” to convey our earnest intent to enforce some kind of “red line” like the similar folks stationed in South Korea. Laughably, Russia just won’t care when the time comes.
You put your finger on a real truism when you wrote that “everything that’s ordinary is not just beautiful, but sacred.” Surveying the landscape these days, “ordinary” looks both increasingly desirable and increasingly rare.
Lihn, that "naked transgender show" had it all. "One-eye" freemasonic symbols during the performance? Check. Reference to the Ukraine/Zelensky? Check. "Woman with a penis"? Check. And probably much more, I only saw a couple photographs. Ever since the Olympics, the Brits excel at this type of deranged propaganda.
At least in Vietnam, you're spared this kind of decadent thing. Watching a woman nagging his poor husband as they work is more fun.
You got your visa! Did I miss that essay? Anyway, glad for this one. I'm reading your very enjoyable Postcards from the End of America. Great read. Blessings, P
I compare Jordan Gray's life with Julia Grant's. Julia was the subject of the BBC documentary "A Change of Sex" in the late 1970s showing the period of her life when she transitioned from being George Roberts into Julia. Adam Curtis worked this narrative into his own recent documentary "Can't Get You Out of My Head," particularly as it relates to how pursuing one's own individual identity against overwhelming social inertia requires a kind of determination or inner resistance but all too often leads to abandonment, isolation, and pain before it completely changes the landscape afterwards. Curtis does a cunning job in showing how "Madame Mao" Jiang Qing's own self-expression as a woman refusing to submit to what men said she could be compares to Julia's —among many other stories of personal struggles caught up in social and technological tectonic changes.
The scene that stands out is Julia sitting in the office of the NHS psychiatrist assigned to her case. How he talks to her might remind many people of what it was to sit and listen to their own doctors and health care professionals dictating what medications, what therapies, and what protocols must be followed during the Pandemic, or else. A feminist much earlier might even say that we know Julia's a woman now, because this is how men talk to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GssNMov5MGM&t=1373s
Forty years makes a huge difference, but some things still remain the same. Gray wants to flaunt on stage what others want to retain inside their own homes, with someone who loves them, away from the Know-Betters, where the pain and trauma find healing in daily sharing. And I don't mean the dick, I mean the confusion, the joy, the doubts, the will to find one's self.
Grant later on became controversial for not being as publicly and unflinchingly enthusiastic about transitioning, because all of this regarding who and what we are in public and in private isn't something we're going to fit neatly into a category we're all going to embrace, even if for the sake of conversation. Someone will balk at referring to Julia as a She, expressing the same self-assured incredulity as the young boys in the scene just before the one I link to in the YouTube video. Someone will balk at referring to Julia's assigned-at-birth/dead name, just as they've scrubbed such from Julia's Wikipedia page and forbid anyone from doing, ever. When Julia says later in the documentary that her own friends won't really even ask her how she's doing and why she lives so alone, you can understand that loneliness if you're already acquainted with what it is to be alone, separate, marginalized by the mainstream and the freaks both. A comedian on stage who indulges in public nudity craves such attentive frottage, since to scroll past the display on the mobile we'll have to touch the monolith's surface.
So it's also interesting to see here in this postcard the complexity and variability and individuality of what it does mean to be woman. A man doesn't want the responsibility of having an opinion on women when the microphone is in front of his face, so he passes it off onto another man. A husband just wants to work hard and turn a sustainable profit while his wife harasses another entrepreneur struggling to do the same. Seen by millions, the White Queen has died, now lies underneath, but the Black Woman King stands front and center, even as no one watches.
Yo Linh, happy to have found you again! What happened to your regular postings on Unz? Whatever, love your literary "sort of Lenny Bruce style" of "social irreverence". This 76 y/o “red county rural” drafted ‘Nam VFW w/ a ’15, 12ga assault pump and 9mm, “locked and loaded”, was just recently blessed with a '75 Vietnamese boat refugee moving in next door with his wife and young son! Wow, talk about "full circle". And such a mellow, considerate man he seems to be! Long story w/ me that surely would even "blow your mind". Have a very special place in my heart for [most] Vietnamese of whom you are a very good example!
Dear Linh, i deeply appreciate the time you have taken to answer my question. I have just read many of those articles but not yet all. Went on and read a review of Prof Lynn's book about the superior intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews which i had some idea of. I wish i had had your essay about blacks to hand several years ago when i had my first major split with my children when i cautioned them about jumping too emotionally to conclusions about George Floyd's death. I instantly became a racist (i take yr point that we are all racists) and was given a stern rebuke with no right of rebuttal. I have of course moved on in their minds to the ultimate latest heresies: I am unvaccinated and also failed to endorse Ukraine as hero state. Hohum. Anyway, it has been a very stimulating evening here under the eaves reading the recommended articles and listening to the rain. I apologize for not looking more deeply into yr earlier writing before commenting publicly. Best wishes for your visa problems. Isha
Dear Linh, I believe it was you who pointed me in the direction of Chris Hedges' column on substack for which I thank you. Today I have been troubled as I frequently am by your reference to Jew-this and jew-that, considering that no one refers to Joe Biden as notoriously corrupt Roman Catholic or for that matter, any of the Mafioso over the years who are also notorious and evil Roman Catholics. I get your point about the many people of Jewish background who have a suspiciously large part in nefarious activities these days, but there are such a lot of Jews who do not as well. This led me the new article by Chris Hedges I just read this evening about one of the other Jews. https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/death-of-an-oracle?r=owd66&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Hi Linh, I'm pleased to be your newest subcriber. Happy to hear you are back in the city where the waves never stop. We'll get together to kvetch about the world soon!
Linh
Kyrie Irving is in hot water with the NBA for promoting the book "Hebrews to Negroes".
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is still digesting his matzo ball soup before deciding what to do next.
Stay Tuned.
Bill
Dear Linh, It is all getting too hard to comprehend but the 'elite aerosol division' cracked me up and made it all worthwhile. Cheap thrills. Two night ago, my little town 7 kms away, a haven of normality and friendly smiles, had a very heavy rainstorm (after months of heavy rainstorms) and a flash flood erupted and washed through the tiny shopping area. Climate change? or just climate. Many new homes have been built on blocks of 1/2 or 1 acre so that there is no longer any soil to absorb the rain. The heavy falls pour off and hasten to the lowest point which is a tiny creed which previously directed the water into a culvert under the main street and then off to join the river and eventually the sea. I have not driven the seven kilometres to review the damage but know the local coffee shop became part of the creek for a while and is closed indefinitely. I wonder how the industrious Chinese couple who bought the fruit shop in order to qualify for Australian citizenship are doing. Things were already not so good for them as they did not fit in well to the clientele who frequented the natural food/organic vegetable shop they bought. For awhile they called me their best customer as I have a fatal tendency to want to help the strangers in strange lands, having been one. They are interesting people. Anyway, I hope someone wakes up and decides nuclear war is not an entirely sensible development but don't have a lot of hope as so many other things are proceeding apace which are not only not sensible but utterly insane. So I sincerely hope we can limp on to another postcard next week and the week after that. I have a lot of raw chick peas I bought before our first lockdown and am not looking forward to trying to live on them at any time in the future.
The old line from white women that men like Asian women because they are meek and docile can only be honestly believed if you don't know Asian women and haven't seen them with their husband.
The eastern Asian women I have known can be very tough with their husband (sometimes too tough in my opinion). The difference between them and white women is that they are also more likely to do things to please their husband and help the family without always making sure that they are getting a better deal first.
Eastern Asian culture is interesting in that in some ways people are less confrontational and in other ways far blunter and more honest than in the West.
It’s telling that the US has not only deployed one of its “most elite aerosol divisions” to within striking distance of Odessa, but has gone to the trouble of embedding a “journalist.” These days, advertising the inclusion of this person is in itself a message from the Empire as much as the division itself is.
How about a not implausible scenario fueled by delusion? Ukraine, technically not at war (as it is, after all, only a “Special Military Operation”), “invites” the US to bring its division to Odessa for a visit. The belief, no doubt, is that it will serve as a “trip wire” to convey our earnest intent to enforce some kind of “red line” like the similar folks stationed in South Korea. Laughably, Russia just won’t care when the time comes.
You put your finger on a real truism when you wrote that “everything that’s ordinary is not just beautiful, but sacred.” Surveying the landscape these days, “ordinary” looks both increasingly desirable and increasingly rare.