No, not into Marilyn Monroe, but a Vietnamese writer. When I published regularly in both languages about 15 years ago, I finally concluded it was way too schizophrenic, if not suicidal. Never again, I thought as I reverted to English only.
Now, I’m doing it again, but it’s understandable, for I’m in Vietnam and swimming in the Vietnamese language. Any day now, I have a +200-page book of Vietnamese prose coming out, but these pieces are old. I’m working on a book of recent writing about Vietnam. So far, there are chapters about Saigon, Vung Tau, Nghe An, Dien Bien Phu and Lao Cai. Although all these pieces have been published in English, they’ll be much more resonant in Vietnamese, to a Vietnamese audience.
Did I say “resonant”? I’ve missed my calling as a Jewish comedian. With fewer than 100 paid subscribers on SubStack, I can hardly resonate less! In English, that is.
In Albania, I discovered Musine Kokalari. Though educated in Italy and fluent in Italian, Kokalari returned to Albania to become a pioneering writer in her own language. Further, her political activism, that is, her love for Albania, landed her in prison and ruined her life. Even now, there are fewer than 10 million Albanians worldwide, with many outside Albania no longer fluent in their language. Despite all that, Kokalari chose to write for her tiny audience, for she was at home in Albania.
1998 saw the appearance of the first anthology of Vietnamese-American writing, Watermark. With two stories and three poems, I had the most pages. There were so few of us. To my surprise, a new edition will be published. Asked to provide an updated bio, I wrote:
Born in Saigon in 1963, Linh Dinh lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but has returned to Vietnam. He’s the author of six collections of poems, two of stories, a novel about Vietnam, Love Like Hate, and a book of nonfiction, Postcards from the End of America. Dinh has edited two anthologies of new writing from Vietnam. His political and travel writing is on SubStack. His latest books are in Vietnamese, Thơ nước trong and Tích ngàn thu sau bữa cơm ma, both published in Saigon in private editions to evade censorship. He’s canceled in the US.
So there you have it, I can publish books in Vietnam. I have an audience here.
This morning, I read about Sri Lankans escaping their economic disaster by planes or even boats, illegally.
When I mentioned these newest boat people to my egg sandwich man, he recounted seeing all these corpses washed up in Vung Tau around 1981. There were so many corpses, people didn’t dare to wade into the ocean. Fishermen snagged corpses with their nets. Hearing about a shipwreck, relatives from Saigon would descend on Vung Tau, hoping to recover corpses of loved ones. People howled and screamed on the beach.
There are many stories to be told here, stories even Vietnamese don’t know about. I will tell them, primarily, if not exclusively, in Vietnamese. I don’t have time to do everything. I’m getting old.
Last week, the painter/poet Trịnh Cung came to Vung Tau, so a handful of us hung out with the old man. He treated us to a seafood lunch by the ocean. We had a great time needling Trịnh Cung.
Though he has devoted most of his energy to oil painting, Trịnh Cung is best known for a short poem put to music by the legendary Trịnh Công Sơn. As destitute Saigon artists, they were best friends. Though this poem/song is used by Vietnamese-French director Trần Anh Hùng in his À la verticale de l'été, Trịnh Cung was never asked for permission nor paid. It’s not cool at all.
“France today is no longer the France of Apollinaire!” Trịnh Cung thundered over a mess of crab shell. Of course, he’s right, and the US is no longer a sane or civilized country.
After several years in Orange County, Trịnh Cung is moving back to Saigon. He had no social life in the US. Even Vietnamese-Americans had no time for him. A solitary confinement nation, the US isolates everyone. Though much relieved and grateful for any half night stand, Americans can’t wait to get the fuck away from whom they just fucked. It’s the same with their foreign policies.
It’s fitting they have a degenerate creep as president, and one with a worldclass monster for a son, but what do you expect from a regime of mass murderers, unctious liars and pedophiles? Don’t forget to register to vote, so you can jerk that lever, then go home and jerk off.
Each time I suggested a solution, I was shouted down by angry whites, because it’s their ballgame, they screamed, so fine. It’s 11-1 in the bottom of the ninth, so last chance, y’all. The three whiffers coming up have averages of .133, .028 and .044. Don’t let me ruin your rally!
This week, I discovered the half Vietnamese rapper, Tyga. Have a listen, or, rather, look:
Vietnam didn’t produce him, so please keep this transcendent, all-American, Jew pumped talent! He’s all yours!
OK, now I go back to my Vietnamese manuscript. I’ll keep posting in English until I no longer feel like it, and when I’m gone, just know I’ve relocated to a much saner and much more grounded address. Though much ravaged by Communism, that is, by Jewish thinking, Vietnam is still Vietnam.
Don’t you wish you could say the same about your imploding shack?
"Brother, it is our ballgame. Those of us who've lived here for generations have nowhere to go. VN will take back a dissolute Viet Kieu after 43 years, and if you're happy there, then may God bless you. Many Americans don't even know where they came from. A reasonable definition of an American may well be someone with no other homeland.
"So we will stand and fight here.
"Please don't be too angry with those who rejected the counsel of a tourist, even a long-term and well-meaning one."
Typical. Those who can only dish out cheap digs anonymously and without paying any price for his "resistance" won't fight anyone.
Linh, I think you are wise to draw yourself closer to Vietnam. We are tribal, even those of us who don't really have a tribe.
It is good to be part of a culture where you can feel at home. As much as I have enjoyed traveling, belonging somewhere is healthier for most people.
I am jealous. I have lived out of the US for more than a decade. I will never be considered (fill in the blank) only American. Unfortunately I hate the empire, don't feel kinship with the vast majority of Americans and didn't particularly like living there. I always felt like an outsider.
Language is the toughest barrier. Even if you're in an English speaking country, there are accents and local usages to weed out outsiders. Here in Vietnam, you're immediately placed as soon as you open your mouth, and that's among Vietnamese!
I find it grimly humorous to run into expats who know next to nothing about their adopted home. Of course, many immigrants to the US stay in ethnic enclaves and/or mental bubbles. That said, many people do try very hard to assimilate, such as Jimmy McGee here in Vung Tau with his Vietnamese lessons.
Linh, all the Italians who were successful in France had to stop speaking Italian even in their families.... I am thinking of the great actor Lino Ventura. However, I am talking about his French cousins! In Germany, Italians can barely speak standard German, yet some have made careers. We Italians are complementary to the Germans, while the Latin cousins are our competitors, envious. We are everywhere in the world, though: I am sorry that in the U.S. they are often big sons of bitches.... You did well to come home, but I am sure it is like finding someone who has not been important for many years. You were born a Catholic and you would have been a great priest among the last French-speaking Catholics in Saigon.
I have a close Italian friend, Niccolo, who's been working in Japan for 19 years. He wants to return to Tuscany, but can't, for there are no good jobs there for him. His sister works in Germany. To get away from Japan's intense work culture, Niccolo was looking into moving to Vietnam, but that was before Covid.
Hi, Linh. In Italy, you could have converted to Catholicism and been a missionary in Southeast Asia. I became a communist because I hated the American bombing in Vietnam.... Now, in Italy, those who were communists are for Ukraine! Communists loved their ideas, not the peoples. Catholics, waiting for the impostor "Francis" to pass to eternal life, are almost all silent...but better times will come.
Hello Linh, I read all that you write, rarely does anyone present the truth of the sullied world that we've inherited as poingnantly and honestly as you do. I will have to buy your book "Postcards" if it's still available?
I wish you all the best and also wish that my roots weren't so firmly planted in the prison that the West has become; our "leaders" are a remorseless gaggle of abject cretins beyond parody it seems.
Postcards should be available from Amazon or directly from the publisher, Seven Stories Press.
"remorseless gaggle of abject cretins beyond parody" describes them perfectly. There's a YouTube clip of Trudeau and Albanese together in Spain, and it's a farce performed with the straightest faces.
"Though much relieved and grateful for any half night stand, Americans can’t wait to get the fuck away from whom they just fucked. It’s the same with their foreign policies."
Poignantly scathing. About time you turned your back on Babylon brother. I believe what I'm feeling is envy. To have roots to return to. How I wish.
Thank you, Linh, for the sane, sober, and objective if exasperated observations.
I was 8 in '68 (so I've got you beat by a couple of years) and I can remember the madness of the RFK and MLK assassinations (essentially a STOLEN ELECTION COUP, just as the JFK assassination was a coup) and subsequent Martin Luther King riots. We had moved to CA (the future Silicone Valley) from D.C. at the time, and I just couldn't understand how such a great city, Washington D.C. that we had visited in buses from suburbs as school children, with it's gleaming white capitol, beautiful buildings and monuments under bright blue skies, and recent history of winning WWII now had ghastly columns of smoke pouring out from ugly B&W news photos. I had a crush on my Black 2nd grade teacher... and one of the white kids handed me a homemade picture gallery of Blacks being beaten bloody (and/or killed? it's been a long time) clipped from news magazines of those riots and civil rights protests that turned my stomach. Oh - and the U.S. war against Vietnam was really heating up, and, as something of a "war nerd"/military brat I knew even then, at age 7, that the Vietnamese posed NO enemy threat to America on the scale of Germany or Japan in WWII.
So from '68 to '72 (and the Nixon impeachment that helped close out the Vietnam war) were some pretty tough, grim years that got a lot of Americans killed in that "FAKE NEWS" war designed to pump millions in to "defense" contractor contracts and BILLION$ in to their financial overlord masters (today's Blackrock, Vanguard, and all the usual GS, JPM, Lehman, IMF, WB criminal lizard ppl slush funds).
It's not THAT bad here in America....yet... but, yes, the absolute DEGRADATION and DEGENERATION of American culture and in-your-face stolen elections means the Red Terror purges, death camp gulags, and mass "depopulation" food seizure (sabotage) famines can only right around the corner.
Oh, wait... the "covid vaccine" economic sabotage lockdowns... and the medical mass murder hospital protocols, and the deadly jew jabs, HAVE ALREADY KILLED a million Americans...
they're just more silent and hidden than the draftees who died fighting in Vietnam.
Hi Linh, from one of your subscribers, who learned of you when you wrote on TUR. I know that many miss you there. But I understand your reasons for leaving. Too many stupid racist commenters have infested that site.
I fail to understand why thousands of people, not just from Mexico and Central America, continue to overrun our southern border, flocking to this neocon-infested war-loving dying country, which is now pushing the planet to thermonuclear war. If nuclear war is somehow averted, I predict, after a few years of loneliness, depression, and alienation they will realize their mistake and return to their native lands, as you have done Linh. Just yesterday a psychotic alienated 22-year-old man entered the roof of a building and fired randomly at strangers during a 4th of July parade, killing 6 and wounding many others. And several cops fired 60 bullets into a fleeing unarmed black man. Such is life in the dis-United States.
I know. They're sold all this bullshit about what the place is like. It's a shithole. Australia ceased being a desirable refugee destination in the nineties. If they wanted to stop or slow down refugee flow, they simply put up billboards and ads with honest statements like:
"Australia is a fascist shithole, the people are morons and the best you can hope for is to work your arse off for enough to pay the rent and have a bed to sleep in."
"Australia is a land of flaccid penguins, drunken twits and unfeminine females"
"Australia hates you and you'll hate it"
"Move to Australia if you're willing to endure a bonehead society, expensive energy and accommodation, and don't mind being treated like a kid by a government nobody likes."
"Australia is a great place if you're a human mushroom. You'll probably hate it, but not as much as most Aussies do, so there's that."
I was born here and am aiming to somehow accumulate enough to get out and start a new life in Africa. I'll settle for a small shop repairing gadgets, or working no more than ten hours a day, 5 days a week, for accommodation and food. Probably have to smuggle myself out on a freighter as it is, because of this jabby jabby garbage.
Thanks, Linh. And we ain't seen nothing yet. Just wait until winter when the stupid US- lapdog Euro-weenies start freezing and can't afford to buy food due to hyper-inflation. Not to mention starvation in Africa.
Wow.... if you can't understand why people would flee South & Central America, then you haven't visited those places! Or just watch "Active Self Protection" channel on youTube about armed robberies, muggings, assaults from security camera videos from around the world - about half of his videos come from Brazil, and another 20%+ from Mexico and the rest of South/Central America. Being stuck in a Favella - barely working class, more like subsistence ghetto slums in Brazil- is sheer hell, your life isn't worth $5. As one of my American friends said of the violence and crime in the favellas, "for most young guys there, THERE IS NO plane ticket out of the favellas." EVERYWHERE I went in South America and Africa, people begged, implored me (and any Americans who would talk to them) if there was a way I could get them to America. I remember our Toyota land cruiser speeding the miles between one game preserve and another in Africa on these dry and dusty dirt roads... the Masai boys would run after us knowing we would stop a mile or two ahead, they would arrive after we stopped and happily take anything from our lunch boxes we didn't want - an apple, a sandwich, chips, whatever. And the Masai have TONS more dignity than so many ppl in Africa. At one of the luxury resorts we stayed at, we took a hike into the countryside, and saw African women walking a mile or more with a huge fired clay jug on their heads, they would walk down the ravine to get water from a stream polluted by hippo and other animal dung, then walk up and out and all the way back home carrying all that heavy water!
Americans - even poor ones - have no conception of how materially wealthy they are, compared to the dispossessed in South America, Africa, Asia or even their own forefathers; for example the dirt poor farmers who first settled the eastern and southern forests in America, or the pioneers who struggled across the west with nothing more than they could carry in their Conestoga wagons... or on their backs. In most of South America a decent car is a luxury... in America, ANYBODY young and savvy and hard working can arrive from wherever and get some kind of job and, with scrimping and saving, get decent car within a few months, and pay it off within a year or two.
If I were Vietnamese I'd do the same thing. Pleasant people, and more or less (the less being Cholon Chinese) one people. Vung Tau is a pleasant place. Look forward to hearing from you periodically.
Up in the hills, there are all these tribes, so Vietnam is rather diverse under the surface. Homogeneity is pushed here, though, and at least some of the tribal people aren't too thrilled about it. Into the 80's, there was still fighting in the hills.
Cannot point to anything. Nothing negative, just that they were different. Like overseas Chinese throughout Asia (and elsewhere) they were very prominent in business. Exciting jealousy, just like in Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and elsewhere.
Linh, your life trajectory seems to be definitely on the rise, yet I sense an undertone of disappointment (and/or anger?) in your narrative. That feeling is not at all hard for me to understand, but I hope you can complete the "transition" to the point that you are able to let go of it and maximize the good that I'm sure you'll find in your new setting.
I can't say you were wrong in casting off your lines from this continent. We are probably doomed. Just the other day I read of two polls. The first was a poll asking respondents if they thought the US was heading in the right or the wrong direction, and 80% of Democrats (!) said "wrong". But a different poll on "Joe Biden" approval ratings show that 85% of Democrats approve of the job he's doing. This sounds schizophrenic. Although I personally agree with Tom Luongo that the people in the crowd currently "governing" our executive branch are vandals deliberately taking down our system, I think our slide into the abyss in one way or another has been a long time in the making, regardless.
Here's hoping you don't give up on your English-only fans too soon!
Polls are bullshit. Polls are slanted at best and utterly invented more likely. Their purpose is to manipulate opinion, not to measure it. They don't give a fuck what we actually think about them.
I totally agree that most public polls are BS, and the scenario I described probably proves it. (How believable can that possibly be?) But that is not because pollsters don't care what we think--many times, they DO care. The BS is on our part for thinking that this interest in our thoughts is driven purely by a desire to give us what we want.
The only polls done with the intention of accurately reflecting public sentiment, and where they DO care what we think, are those that are privately commissioned and not usually shared with the public (e.g., private polling for political campaigns, so they can know what the candidate needs to SAY but not necessarily to DO). The BS polls are those whose results are released publicly, which are generally intended either to drive public opinion rather than assess it, or as a lead-in to ask for donations.
The political polls are crap too. I got roped into a group which was supposedly to discuss what the community wanted, only to realise it was being run for a political party to organise their platform for coming election. The problem with it was that we didn't get to discuss what we wanted to, we were given the usual five subjects and basically just polling us to see which order they stood for us. Education, Employment etc. The usual boilerplate they employ in political campaigns, but ignoring more important, to the community, issues. Infuriated, I got up and left. Made quite a scene too.
that "rapper" represents what jew owned america has become...a cesspool of degenerate morons...thought you would enjoy this song by bluegrass musician Billy Strings singing about the fall of america...oh and good luck....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7K0x0UusE
I tried to buy one of your books on Amazon but no go. Can I buy one from you? That way, when and if you stop writing in English, I can still read your words. Love and light from the jewjabbed multitudes of commiefornia.
My Postcards book should be available on Amazon, but if not, I have no idea what's going on. I have none of my English language books. They're all in boxes at a friend's house in New Jersey. Though not fully woke, this friend, Ian, is no longer communicating with me. Plus, Ian likely got jabbed at least twice, so who knows how he's doing.
Keep your page up Linh? I'll be missing your writing and at least would like to buy your books when I can afford it. It's been on my to do list for over a year now, right after "pay off bills and rent"
So long as I can find you. I might even end up in Vietnam some time, I've been in Cambodia quite a bit and have friends there. Just never got over the border yet to Vietnam.
I've been reading the excellent Jew-wise blog "BLUE MOON OF SHANGHAI" by Larry Romanoff.
I was once surprised when I came across evidence of an extensive electric tram system in Portland, long disused and plowed under the pavement. The following article is about the murder of electric transportation by Rockefeller, GM and Firestone.
"Suburbs are an invention created and existing only in the US and Canada, designed entirely to keep workplaces, shopping and residences not only physically segregated but sufficiently scattered that even good public transport becomes ineffective or useless, thereby forcing hundreds of millions of people to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on private transportation solely for the benefit of the car makers and oil companies. This American-style city planning, the creation of suburbs, was one of the meanest anti-social schemes ever devised by American capitalism" https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/the-american-love-affair-with-the-automobile-the-unspoken-history-of-the-electric-car-december-09-2019/
Another is about China's high speed rail marvel, built up from nothing to the biggest and most advanced in the world since the beginning of the 21st century, and the neglect of America's dilapidated infrastructure.
"Chinese engineers have said it is well within the limits of today’s technology to build a high-speed rail line between China and North America, the line passing through Siberia, with a tunnel under the 55-mile Bering strait separating Russia from Alaska, then down the West Coast of Canada and the US. It would then be possible to take a fast train from San Diego to Paris and London. However, politics will make such a development impossible" https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2022/05/en-larry-romanoff-chinas-high-speed.html
It's easy to look down on Americans and our dysfunctional culture, but the deck has always been stacked against us. We're a crushed and demoralized people by design.
Yep. I'm happy that you found back your roots, Mr. Linh. But what about those who do not have a country to return to? What can one say to an Italian, a French or an American who sees his former country transformed into a multicultural COVID-LGBTQ prison with no jobs and no food? I wish I knew any solution. Perhaps moving to the countryside and seceding, I see few options besides that.
P. S. Georgia Guide Stones bombed (and suddenly demolished to remove all evidence), BJ resigning and former Japan Prime Minister shot. What's going on all of a sudden?
A dissident writer whom I won't name emailed me yesterday to say that he's looking to get out of the States with his foreign born wife. I replied that he better hurry because there is no effective resistance left in the country. It's just Satanic bullshit all the time now.
Like me, this man lost all professional standing in the US because of his views, but he's also frequently mocked by those who've risked nothing.
I started out on Common Dream and CounterPunch, before moving on to Unz, but all those sites are useless. As a commenter so graciously puts it, I'm just a "dissolute" "tourist" who should just bug out. He'll stay and fight, he declares anonymously, probably by voting.
On 6/12/16, I got tons of shit for writing:
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
"A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politic."
Further enraging the voting machine jerkers, I doubled down on 9/24/16:
"Mind-fucked, most Americans can’t even see that an American president’s only task is to disguise the deep state’s intentions. Chosen by the deep state to explain away its crimes, our president’s pronouncements are nearly always contradicted by the deep state’s actions. While the president talks of peace, democracy, racial harmony, prosperity for Main Street and going after banksters, etc., the deep state wages endless war, stages meaningless elections, stokes racial hatred, bankrupts nearly all Americans and enables massive Wall Street crimes, etc.
"Only the infantile will imagine the president as any kind of savior or, even more hilariously, anti-establishment. Since the deep state won’t even tolerate a renegade reporter at, say, the San Jose Mercury News, how can you expect a deep state’s enemy to land in the White House?! It cannot happen.
"A presidential candidate will promise to fix all that’s wrong with our government, and this stance, this appearance, is actually very useful for the deep state, for it gives Americans hope. Promising everything, Obama delivered nothing. So who do you think is being primed by the deep state to be our next false savior?"
With only a tiny audience, what does it matter what I think?
Joe Bageant got the hell out. Fred Reed is in Mexico. Max Igan got out of Australia. Whitney Webb is in Chile. I can go on...
P.S. I did suggest seceding, but that too was shouted down by enraged whites. The country will break up. It's a question of how, and which fragment you want to belong to, and if you can get there.
Dear Linh, You are a lifeline for me of a life where one could travel, wander, observe. I decided to subscribe to substack so you could have 101 subscribers and get a nice meal once in awhile? I am rooted like a tree here, as Richie Havens put it long ago, with a sick husband and an ongoing fear of bringing Covid home to him and killing him, founded or not in fact, as I am responsible for refusing the vaccines. One great advantage of Australia is that the doctors are not allowed to hector to you about getting a vaccine although everyone else does! I will appreciate whatever scraps you throw to your English speaking audience. I first started appreciating your writing when I found pieces you had written from South Africa, my home quite a while ago when apartheid was in full swing when I was 21 and married to a Jew I had met in Vancouver. I still have great affection for the warm, humorous, gracious people I met in Cape Town, mostly Jewish and not at all Bourlas and Soros look a likes. But the facts are undeniable, some of the worst people around these days are of Jewish backgrounds. I still laugh when people tell me seriously that Zelensky cannot be surrounded by because he is of Jewish ancestry. Does that also prevent his corruption I wonder? Anyway keep on truckin', your writing is second to none and I wish I could understand Vietnamese as I love a particular delicacy of expression I in their arts and crafts and music.
This publisher is comprised of lovers of literature who pool their money to print very handsome books. Their leader believes a separate canon of Vietnamese literature needs to be established. He wants to print all of my writing, period, so erased in the US, I'm reborn in Vietnam. Once my new book of Viet prose is out, I'll post the cover here.
You'll have to come to Vung Tau to get your copy! It's past time you head back this way. Vietnamese publishing has come a long way, man. No more fading letters on brown, brittle paper.
Hi everyone,
An anonymous comment at my blog:
"Brother, it is our ballgame. Those of us who've lived here for generations have nowhere to go. VN will take back a dissolute Viet Kieu after 43 years, and if you're happy there, then may God bless you. Many Americans don't even know where they came from. A reasonable definition of an American may well be someone with no other homeland.
"So we will stand and fight here.
"Please don't be too angry with those who rejected the counsel of a tourist, even a long-term and well-meaning one."
Typical. Those who can only dish out cheap digs anonymously and without paying any price for his "resistance" won't fight anyone.
Linh
Linh, I think you are wise to draw yourself closer to Vietnam. We are tribal, even those of us who don't really have a tribe.
It is good to be part of a culture where you can feel at home. As much as I have enjoyed traveling, belonging somewhere is healthier for most people.
I am jealous. I have lived out of the US for more than a decade. I will never be considered (fill in the blank) only American. Unfortunately I hate the empire, don't feel kinship with the vast majority of Americans and didn't particularly like living there. I always felt like an outsider.
Oh well, there are worst things in life.
Hi Al,
Language is the toughest barrier. Even if you're in an English speaking country, there are accents and local usages to weed out outsiders. Here in Vietnam, you're immediately placed as soon as you open your mouth, and that's among Vietnamese!
I find it grimly humorous to run into expats who know next to nothing about their adopted home. Of course, many immigrants to the US stay in ethnic enclaves and/or mental bubbles. That said, many people do try very hard to assimilate, such as Jimmy McGee here in Vung Tau with his Vietnamese lessons.
Linh
Linh, all the Italians who were successful in France had to stop speaking Italian even in their families.... I am thinking of the great actor Lino Ventura. However, I am talking about his French cousins! In Germany, Italians can barely speak standard German, yet some have made careers. We Italians are complementary to the Germans, while the Latin cousins are our competitors, envious. We are everywhere in the world, though: I am sorry that in the U.S. they are often big sons of bitches.... You did well to come home, but I am sure it is like finding someone who has not been important for many years. You were born a Catholic and you would have been a great priest among the last French-speaking Catholics in Saigon.
Hi Andrea,
I have a close Italian friend, Niccolo, who's been working in Japan for 19 years. He wants to return to Tuscany, but can't, for there are no good jobs there for him. His sister works in Germany. To get away from Japan's intense work culture, Niccolo was looking into moving to Vietnam, but that was before Covid.
Linh
Hi, Linh. In Italy, you could have converted to Catholicism and been a missionary in Southeast Asia. I became a communist because I hated the American bombing in Vietnam.... Now, in Italy, those who were communists are for Ukraine! Communists loved their ideas, not the peoples. Catholics, waiting for the impostor "Francis" to pass to eternal life, are almost all silent...but better times will come.
Hi Andrea,
I was born Catholic. Horrible news out of Italy, what with the Po drying up and much farm land ruined.
I'm among those who believe our rulers have been messing with us with climate engineering. They did it in Vietnam half a century ago.
Linh
Hello Linh, I read all that you write, rarely does anyone present the truth of the sullied world that we've inherited as poingnantly and honestly as you do. I will have to buy your book "Postcards" if it's still available?
I wish you all the best and also wish that my roots weren't so firmly planted in the prison that the West has become; our "leaders" are a remorseless gaggle of abject cretins beyond parody it seems.
Take care.
Richard.
Hi Richard,
Postcards should be available from Amazon or directly from the publisher, Seven Stories Press.
"remorseless gaggle of abject cretins beyond parody" describes them perfectly. There's a YouTube clip of Trudeau and Albanese together in Spain, and it's a farce performed with the straightest faces.
Linh
"Though much relieved and grateful for any half night stand, Americans can’t wait to get the fuck away from whom they just fucked. It’s the same with their foreign policies."
Poignantly scathing. About time you turned your back on Babylon brother. I believe what I'm feeling is envy. To have roots to return to. How I wish.
Thank you, Linh, for the sane, sober, and objective if exasperated observations.
I was 8 in '68 (so I've got you beat by a couple of years) and I can remember the madness of the RFK and MLK assassinations (essentially a STOLEN ELECTION COUP, just as the JFK assassination was a coup) and subsequent Martin Luther King riots. We had moved to CA (the future Silicone Valley) from D.C. at the time, and I just couldn't understand how such a great city, Washington D.C. that we had visited in buses from suburbs as school children, with it's gleaming white capitol, beautiful buildings and monuments under bright blue skies, and recent history of winning WWII now had ghastly columns of smoke pouring out from ugly B&W news photos. I had a crush on my Black 2nd grade teacher... and one of the white kids handed me a homemade picture gallery of Blacks being beaten bloody (and/or killed? it's been a long time) clipped from news magazines of those riots and civil rights protests that turned my stomach. Oh - and the U.S. war against Vietnam was really heating up, and, as something of a "war nerd"/military brat I knew even then, at age 7, that the Vietnamese posed NO enemy threat to America on the scale of Germany or Japan in WWII.
So from '68 to '72 (and the Nixon impeachment that helped close out the Vietnam war) were some pretty tough, grim years that got a lot of Americans killed in that "FAKE NEWS" war designed to pump millions in to "defense" contractor contracts and BILLION$ in to their financial overlord masters (today's Blackrock, Vanguard, and all the usual GS, JPM, Lehman, IMF, WB criminal lizard ppl slush funds).
It's not THAT bad here in America....yet... but, yes, the absolute DEGRADATION and DEGENERATION of American culture and in-your-face stolen elections means the Red Terror purges, death camp gulags, and mass "depopulation" food seizure (sabotage) famines can only right around the corner.
Oh, wait... the "covid vaccine" economic sabotage lockdowns... and the medical mass murder hospital protocols, and the deadly jew jabs, HAVE ALREADY KILLED a million Americans...
they're just more silent and hidden than the draftees who died fighting in Vietnam.
So I guess it IS already as bad as '68...
Hi Linh, from one of your subscribers, who learned of you when you wrote on TUR. I know that many miss you there. But I understand your reasons for leaving. Too many stupid racist commenters have infested that site.
I fail to understand why thousands of people, not just from Mexico and Central America, continue to overrun our southern border, flocking to this neocon-infested war-loving dying country, which is now pushing the planet to thermonuclear war. If nuclear war is somehow averted, I predict, after a few years of loneliness, depression, and alienation they will realize their mistake and return to their native lands, as you have done Linh. Just yesterday a psychotic alienated 22-year-old man entered the roof of a building and fired randomly at strangers during a 4th of July parade, killing 6 and wounding many others. And several cops fired 60 bullets into a fleeing unarmed black man. Such is life in the dis-United States.
Hi Outsider,
Check out this video of Sri Lankan boat people. Some thought they could reach Australia!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL9atvo77MM&feature=emb_logo
Linh
Why the fuck would they want to come here?
I know. They're sold all this bullshit about what the place is like. It's a shithole. Australia ceased being a desirable refugee destination in the nineties. If they wanted to stop or slow down refugee flow, they simply put up billboards and ads with honest statements like:
"Australia is a fascist shithole, the people are morons and the best you can hope for is to work your arse off for enough to pay the rent and have a bed to sleep in."
"Australia is a land of flaccid penguins, drunken twits and unfeminine females"
"Australia hates you and you'll hate it"
"Move to Australia if you're willing to endure a bonehead society, expensive energy and accommodation, and don't mind being treated like a kid by a government nobody likes."
"Australia is a great place if you're a human mushroom. You'll probably hate it, but not as much as most Aussies do, so there's that."
I was born here and am aiming to somehow accumulate enough to get out and start a new life in Africa. I'll settle for a small shop repairing gadgets, or working no more than ten hours a day, 5 days a week, for accommodation and food. Probably have to smuggle myself out on a freighter as it is, because of this jabby jabby garbage.
Thanks, Linh. And we ain't seen nothing yet. Just wait until winter when the stupid US- lapdog Euro-weenies start freezing and can't afford to buy food due to hyper-inflation. Not to mention starvation in Africa.
Wow.... if you can't understand why people would flee South & Central America, then you haven't visited those places! Or just watch "Active Self Protection" channel on youTube about armed robberies, muggings, assaults from security camera videos from around the world - about half of his videos come from Brazil, and another 20%+ from Mexico and the rest of South/Central America. Being stuck in a Favella - barely working class, more like subsistence ghetto slums in Brazil- is sheer hell, your life isn't worth $5. As one of my American friends said of the violence and crime in the favellas, "for most young guys there, THERE IS NO plane ticket out of the favellas." EVERYWHERE I went in South America and Africa, people begged, implored me (and any Americans who would talk to them) if there was a way I could get them to America. I remember our Toyota land cruiser speeding the miles between one game preserve and another in Africa on these dry and dusty dirt roads... the Masai boys would run after us knowing we would stop a mile or two ahead, they would arrive after we stopped and happily take anything from our lunch boxes we didn't want - an apple, a sandwich, chips, whatever. And the Masai have TONS more dignity than so many ppl in Africa. At one of the luxury resorts we stayed at, we took a hike into the countryside, and saw African women walking a mile or more with a huge fired clay jug on their heads, they would walk down the ravine to get water from a stream polluted by hippo and other animal dung, then walk up and out and all the way back home carrying all that heavy water!
Americans - even poor ones - have no conception of how materially wealthy they are, compared to the dispossessed in South America, Africa, Asia or even their own forefathers; for example the dirt poor farmers who first settled the eastern and southern forests in America, or the pioneers who struggled across the west with nothing more than they could carry in their Conestoga wagons... or on their backs. In most of South America a decent car is a luxury... in America, ANYBODY young and savvy and hard working can arrive from wherever and get some kind of job and, with scrimping and saving, get decent car within a few months, and pay it off within a year or two.
If I were Vietnamese I'd do the same thing. Pleasant people, and more or less (the less being Cholon Chinese) one people. Vung Tau is a pleasant place. Look forward to hearing from you periodically.
Hi Graham,
Up in the hills, there are all these tribes, so Vietnam is rather diverse under the surface. Homogeneity is pushed here, though, and at least some of the tribal people aren't too thrilled about it. Into the 80's, there was still fighting in the hills.
Linh
Cannot point to anything. Nothing negative, just that they were different. Like overseas Chinese throughout Asia (and elsewhere) they were very prominent in business. Exciting jealousy, just like in Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and elsewhere.
Hi Benedict Tiberius Cato,
From a Chinese City (about Cho Lon) by Gontran de Poncins is the best book about Vietnam by a Westerner:
https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-City-Heart-Peacetime-Vietnam/dp/1879434008
Linh
Linh, your life trajectory seems to be definitely on the rise, yet I sense an undertone of disappointment (and/or anger?) in your narrative. That feeling is not at all hard for me to understand, but I hope you can complete the "transition" to the point that you are able to let go of it and maximize the good that I'm sure you'll find in your new setting.
I can't say you were wrong in casting off your lines from this continent. We are probably doomed. Just the other day I read of two polls. The first was a poll asking respondents if they thought the US was heading in the right or the wrong direction, and 80% of Democrats (!) said "wrong". But a different poll on "Joe Biden" approval ratings show that 85% of Democrats approve of the job he's doing. This sounds schizophrenic. Although I personally agree with Tom Luongo that the people in the crowd currently "governing" our executive branch are vandals deliberately taking down our system, I think our slide into the abyss in one way or another has been a long time in the making, regardless.
Here's hoping you don't give up on your English-only fans too soon!
Polls are bullshit. Polls are slanted at best and utterly invented more likely. Their purpose is to manipulate opinion, not to measure it. They don't give a fuck what we actually think about them.
I totally agree that most public polls are BS, and the scenario I described probably proves it. (How believable can that possibly be?) But that is not because pollsters don't care what we think--many times, they DO care. The BS is on our part for thinking that this interest in our thoughts is driven purely by a desire to give us what we want.
The only polls done with the intention of accurately reflecting public sentiment, and where they DO care what we think, are those that are privately commissioned and not usually shared with the public (e.g., private polling for political campaigns, so they can know what the candidate needs to SAY but not necessarily to DO). The BS polls are those whose results are released publicly, which are generally intended either to drive public opinion rather than assess it, or as a lead-in to ask for donations.
The political polls are crap too. I got roped into a group which was supposedly to discuss what the community wanted, only to realise it was being run for a political party to organise their platform for coming election. The problem with it was that we didn't get to discuss what we wanted to, we were given the usual five subjects and basically just polling us to see which order they stood for us. Education, Employment etc. The usual boilerplate they employ in political campaigns, but ignoring more important, to the community, issues. Infuriated, I got up and left. Made quite a scene too.
that "rapper" represents what jew owned america has become...a cesspool of degenerate morons...thought you would enjoy this song by bluegrass musician Billy Strings singing about the fall of america...oh and good luck....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7K0x0UusE
I tried to buy one of your books on Amazon but no go. Can I buy one from you? That way, when and if you stop writing in English, I can still read your words. Love and light from the jewjabbed multitudes of commiefornia.
Hi Peggy,
My Postcards book should be available on Amazon, but if not, I have no idea what's going on. I have none of my English language books. They're all in boxes at a friend's house in New Jersey. Though not fully woke, this friend, Ian, is no longer communicating with me. Plus, Ian likely got jabbed at least twice, so who knows how he's doing.
Linh
Keep your page up Linh? I'll be missing your writing and at least would like to buy your books when I can afford it. It's been on my to do list for over a year now, right after "pay off bills and rent"
Hi Rabbitnexus,
I'll slow down a bit, but I'll keep posting, until I stop...
Linh
So long as I can find you. I might even end up in Vietnam some time, I've been in Cambodia quite a bit and have friends there. Just never got over the border yet to Vietnam.
I've been reading the excellent Jew-wise blog "BLUE MOON OF SHANGHAI" by Larry Romanoff.
I was once surprised when I came across evidence of an extensive electric tram system in Portland, long disused and plowed under the pavement. The following article is about the murder of electric transportation by Rockefeller, GM and Firestone.
"Suburbs are an invention created and existing only in the US and Canada, designed entirely to keep workplaces, shopping and residences not only physically segregated but sufficiently scattered that even good public transport becomes ineffective or useless, thereby forcing hundreds of millions of people to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on private transportation solely for the benefit of the car makers and oil companies. This American-style city planning, the creation of suburbs, was one of the meanest anti-social schemes ever devised by American capitalism" https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/the-american-love-affair-with-the-automobile-the-unspoken-history-of-the-electric-car-december-09-2019/
Another is about China's high speed rail marvel, built up from nothing to the biggest and most advanced in the world since the beginning of the 21st century, and the neglect of America's dilapidated infrastructure.
"Chinese engineers have said it is well within the limits of today’s technology to build a high-speed rail line between China and North America, the line passing through Siberia, with a tunnel under the 55-mile Bering strait separating Russia from Alaska, then down the West Coast of Canada and the US. It would then be possible to take a fast train from San Diego to Paris and London. However, politics will make such a development impossible" https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2022/05/en-larry-romanoff-chinas-high-speed.html
It's easy to look down on Americans and our dysfunctional culture, but the deck has always been stacked against us. We're a crushed and demoralized people by design.
"Vietnam is still Vietnam."
Yep. I'm happy that you found back your roots, Mr. Linh. But what about those who do not have a country to return to? What can one say to an Italian, a French or an American who sees his former country transformed into a multicultural COVID-LGBTQ prison with no jobs and no food? I wish I knew any solution. Perhaps moving to the countryside and seceding, I see few options besides that.
P. S. Georgia Guide Stones bombed (and suddenly demolished to remove all evidence), BJ resigning and former Japan Prime Minister shot. What's going on all of a sudden?
Hi Tom,
A dissident writer whom I won't name emailed me yesterday to say that he's looking to get out of the States with his foreign born wife. I replied that he better hurry because there is no effective resistance left in the country. It's just Satanic bullshit all the time now.
Like me, this man lost all professional standing in the US because of his views, but he's also frequently mocked by those who've risked nothing.
I started out on Common Dream and CounterPunch, before moving on to Unz, but all those sites are useless. As a commenter so graciously puts it, I'm just a "dissolute" "tourist" who should just bug out. He'll stay and fight, he declares anonymously, probably by voting.
On 6/12/16, I got tons of shit for writing:
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
"A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politic."
Further enraging the voting machine jerkers, I doubled down on 9/24/16:
"Mind-fucked, most Americans can’t even see that an American president’s only task is to disguise the deep state’s intentions. Chosen by the deep state to explain away its crimes, our president’s pronouncements are nearly always contradicted by the deep state’s actions. While the president talks of peace, democracy, racial harmony, prosperity for Main Street and going after banksters, etc., the deep state wages endless war, stages meaningless elections, stokes racial hatred, bankrupts nearly all Americans and enables massive Wall Street crimes, etc.
"Only the infantile will imagine the president as any kind of savior or, even more hilariously, anti-establishment. Since the deep state won’t even tolerate a renegade reporter at, say, the San Jose Mercury News, how can you expect a deep state’s enemy to land in the White House?! It cannot happen.
"A presidential candidate will promise to fix all that’s wrong with our government, and this stance, this appearance, is actually very useful for the deep state, for it gives Americans hope. Promising everything, Obama delivered nothing. So who do you think is being primed by the deep state to be our next false savior?"
With only a tiny audience, what does it matter what I think?
Joe Bageant got the hell out. Fred Reed is in Mexico. Max Igan got out of Australia. Whitney Webb is in Chile. I can go on...
Linh
P.S. I did suggest seceding, but that too was shouted down by enraged whites. The country will break up. It's a question of how, and which fragment you want to belong to, and if you can get there.
oh and if you need some humor...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bItcoUb5xsw
Dear Linh, You are a lifeline for me of a life where one could travel, wander, observe. I decided to subscribe to substack so you could have 101 subscribers and get a nice meal once in awhile? I am rooted like a tree here, as Richie Havens put it long ago, with a sick husband and an ongoing fear of bringing Covid home to him and killing him, founded or not in fact, as I am responsible for refusing the vaccines. One great advantage of Australia is that the doctors are not allowed to hector to you about getting a vaccine although everyone else does! I will appreciate whatever scraps you throw to your English speaking audience. I first started appreciating your writing when I found pieces you had written from South Africa, my home quite a while ago when apartheid was in full swing when I was 21 and married to a Jew I had met in Vancouver. I still have great affection for the warm, humorous, gracious people I met in Cape Town, mostly Jewish and not at all Bourlas and Soros look a likes. But the facts are undeniable, some of the worst people around these days are of Jewish backgrounds. I still laugh when people tell me seriously that Zelensky cannot be surrounded by because he is of Jewish ancestry. Does that also prevent his corruption I wonder? Anyway keep on truckin', your writing is second to none and I wish I could understand Vietnamese as I love a particular delicacy of expression I in their arts and crafts and music.
Great news.
Please let us know publisher, title, when it comes out.
Hi Dan,
This publisher is comprised of lovers of literature who pool their money to print very handsome books. Their leader believes a separate canon of Vietnamese literature needs to be established. He wants to print all of my writing, period, so erased in the US, I'm reborn in Vietnam. Once my new book of Viet prose is out, I'll post the cover here.
Linh
Awesome in so many ways. Please let me know if I can support.
Hi Dan,
You'll have to come to Vung Tau to get your copy! It's past time you head back this way. Vietnamese publishing has come a long way, man. No more fading letters on brown, brittle paper.
Linh
Hi Benedict Tiberius Cato,
Let me ask around about this orphanage. I know nothing about it.
Linh