[$1.74 on 10/30/24 in Vung Tau]
As you well know, everyone is exceptional. Where excellence is unquantifiable, each man’s superiority shines. Though a 400-pounder can’t claim to run a mile under four minutes, no one can challenge his perspicacity on Gaza, Arabs, Trump or Iran, etc. Though his vehement takes are condensed and corrupted from what he has just skimmed at Common Dreams, CounterPunch or Miles Mathis, they contain essential or unique truths. Just be thankful his fat fists can’t punch through your cracked screen. In person, Sacred Cowpie or Gigolo Joe may turn out to be some gorgeous teen, a Carmelite nun or even your wife, but that’s another story.
Each highschool is filled with backwoods celebrities. In lettered jackets, runners, hurlers, throwers, receivers, catchers, leapers and batters strut. Artistic dorks design yearbooks. Future shysters or politicians fill their bedrooms with debating contest trophies. Cheerleaders dream of movie, singing or modeling careers. Studs and babes are constantly swooned over. Poets are published in literary magazines even their mothers won’t read. Of course, there are kids who must eat lunch alone, as if they stink. Maybe they do. Some are even bullied into suicide, but society can only benefit from the elimination of its weakest and ugliest. There are so many stars left.
In college, this ecology continues, but not everyone aspires to be wrecked by banksters so they can be injected with Marxism, Wokism and Jewjabs. Joining the military gives you a community, but you’ll be brainwashed and broken in. Having a deadend job means being among other disgruntled cogs constantly turned over. Just like that, most people go from teenaged somebodies to adult zeroes.
It has gotten worse. When neighborhood pubs were common, John Doe could display his smarts, humor and character to friendly witnesses who remembered. They didn’t just understand but mirrored his struggles. He wasn’t invisible, like so many today. A church, café or diner served the same functions, if it’s intimate and enduring. There’s no community if people can’t observe each other over time.
Every town or city neighborhood should have its hometown heroes in every field. Johnstown, PA or Philly’s Kensington should have its own poets, fiction writers and painters whose work reflect their home and neighbors. Most American towns no longer have a daily newspaper, so nothing local is recorded to make residents feel grounded. Trivial lives aren’t just black. They matter.
“Remember when Tim Malloy hit that trash can with a bottle of Rolling Rock from fifty yards?”
“Sure do! Tim was trying to put it in, though.”
“That’s what we all do, night and day. It’s still impressive.”
“It’s almost as funny as Franco humping his lawnmower!”
“Was it a Savage?”
“No, Yazoo.”
“Rest in peace, Franco. You shouldn’t have left it on.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ best hitter and pitcher are Japanese, with the second speaking almost no English. Constantly surfing between Timbuktu, Lviv, Walla Walla, Langley and Vung Tau, etc., no one is home.
Still needing to be distinctive, masked pests and fools swarm the internet. Even when their faces are shown, most use fake names and have no real history. Johnny Somali is just some smug and fugly irritant. Gigolo Joe used to badger my readers with one dubious idea lifted from Miles Mathis. As circle jerks, online forums don’t empower but allow the impotent to vent their frustration, anger and idiocy, as their real communities are destroyed. Of course, paid trolls and disinformation agents join in. How many are “readers” of Unz Review?
Since totalitarian governments are adept at infiltrating political parties, dissident movements, gangs, churches and universities, it’s nothing for them to steer or disrupt internet forums. It’s hardly worth it. Let the pseudonymous chatter on.
On 10/29/24, Common Dreams published Sarah Van Gelder’s “A Note to My Fellow Progressives Hesitant to Vote for an Imperfect Kamala Harris.” It begins:
Before Barack Obama ran for president, I remember thinking there would never be a black president in my lifetime. And I remember feeling overwhelmed, even tearful, when I watched on television as the new First Family walked on the stage at Grant Park in Chicago.
Isn’t racism judging someone by his skin color? Oblivious to this, Gelder then asked progressives to “step forward in our democracy and elect a black woman as president.” Though reducing anyone to his or her genitals is pure sexism, Gelder can’t help but stress Kamala Harris’ hue and hole, and I don’t mean cranial. Some reader responses:
raydelcamino
Anybody questioning a women being POTUS is displaying myopic misogyny. Other democracies around the world including India, Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Italy, and several smaller European nations have elected women for their highest offices. The US is the outlier.
Skippystone
“Imperfect”, is an understatement! Kamala says she will be a president for all Americans. Aren’t Palestinian-Americans Americans? Preventing a Palestinian-American from endorsing her at the Democratic Convention solved that question. Genocide is unbridled racism, and racism isn’t exactly inclusive. The duopoly offers no good choices.
speechless
“And I remember feeling overwhelmed, even tearful, when I watched on television as the new First Family walked on the stage at Grant Park in Chicago.”
Sarah—were you also overwhelmed and tearful in another way when you saw Obama continue the forever wars and destroy the country of Libya? Somehow, I doubt you were.
SuspiraDeProfundis
She speaks of the need to feel for “belonging” to something. I guess belonging to the “I support genocide club” is a thing.
Maybe Ms Van Gelder and her friends can get TSHIRTS made up saying “I belong to the Harris genocide Club.” it should make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside and bring forth those tears of Joy Ms harris is spreading around.
Though three of the four quoted are quite sharp, nothing is solved, and I’ve achieved nothing politically by citing them. As a tiny snapshot of this time, it’s worth something, though, so I’ll keep noticing.
My dozens of articles at Common Dreams between 2010 and 2012 generated thousands of comments, many quite good, but they were simply deleted by that limited hangout. US dissidencedom is a joke.
Since Vietnamese can’t pretend to elect their leaders, there’s no charade! Sadly, there’s nothing here like this:
“Pop superstar Beyoncé will appear with Vice President Kamala Harris at her event in Houston on Friday evening, according to three sources familiar with the plans,” NBC News reported. “Beyoncé is also expected to perform […].”
Neither toothy lovely sang “Cowboy Carter.” Kamala should have quieted the boos with a minute-long twerk, or until her ass fell off. Encased, it would be perfect for the Museum of American History, or the Air and Space Museum had it flown across the stadium. That would have shut up Candace Owens. “I black enough for you? Let see you do it, bitch!”
Since Americans are reduced to voting for bait-and-switch artists, they have as much of a democracy as Vietnamese. Viets, though, aren’t conned into funding Jewish genocides or dying for Jews. Beyond moronic, it’s suicidal. American politicians, academics and journalists are bought or blackmailed by Jews. Screwing or raping the underaged on camera means you’ve made it. Yanked dissidents are too terrified of Jews to say “Jews.” Brainwashed and cowed, they barely dare to mutter, “Zionists.” The Jewjerked blame serial Jewish crimes on Capitalism or Fascism. History has never seen a cowardice so sustained, abject and widespread. To speak up as SuspiraDeProfundis or speechless means you’ve lost.
At the café on General Uprising, I rarely talk. My main task here is to overhear these goofballs. They talk about the weather. Those not relocated from the countryside still have relatives there, so they’re still connected to rural life. Climatic shifts hurt crops, so prices of basics have risen. There’s way too much rain this month.
As for crime news, the café’s owner, Liên, always relays each with a hearty chuckle. “This guy asked a 63-year-old woman for a glass of water, then banged her!”
Liên does express moral outrage, “In the past, if a guy falls off his motorbike, people will rush over to see if he’s OK, help him get up. Now, they pull out their cellphones to record him twitching on the ground!” Chuckle, chuckle.
Customer, “These two girls got into a fight. They tore at each other’s clothing. No one jumped in to break it up. Instead, all these guys, three or four, just stood there with their cellphones!”
Funniest are Liên’s comments on the USA.
“There’s this diamond mine. Exhausted, it’s turned into a park, with admission fees. Once in, any diamond you find is yours!”
“America does what it says. China doesn’t do what it says. Vietnam says one thing, does something else!”
According to Liên, Vietnam is so bad, it’s behind Cambodia even, and he’s been there. Most uncharacteristically, I jumped in.
“How many times have you been there, brother?”
“Twice, but more than ten years ago.”
“Where were you?”
“Phnom Penh.” Altogether, Liên was less than three weeks.
“I agree it’s easier to buy a car there. It’s not taxed as high. Most Cambodians are still on motorbikes, however, and they’re poorer than us.”
Without saying so, Liên clearly disagreed, even after I had shown him photos of Kracheh and Akreiy Ksatr. I didn’t have time to pull up images of Stung Treng, Preaek Prasab, Kolab, Loiet or Phnom Krom. Touristy Siem Reap and failed resort Sihanoukville are too atypical. It wouldn’t have mattered. Liên had seen a few Lexuses in Phnom Penh.
Though I told Liên I had spent half a year in Cambodia, he asked me no questions, just as he’s never asked me anything about the USA. Speaking up, I hadn’t just challenged his authority but disrupted the well established ecology of this café on General Uprising. Here, Pale Face is the political expert, Tank Top the streetwise survivor and Liên the news saavy commentator on just about everything. As a Vietnamese-American with a northern accent who disappears periodically, I’ll always be an outsider. Even after 11 months, Liên’s wife has never looked me in the eyes or said anything to me, so I’ve returned the favor. It’s enough that I have my own table, front and center right inside the door.
Liên two weeks ago, “Florida has so many natural disasters, hardly anyone lives there!”
Maybe the guy’s a prophet. This café has been a revelation. Even to Liên’s wife, I’m grateful. To everyone except me, she cackles louder than Kamala Harris. After 5:30AM, she flits around, as if campaigning. Since America desperately needs a female president of color, you must vote for her. Don’t just settle for any ho with a hole. That’s rap, whigger, not sexism. I’m blacker than Kamala. You haven’t seen me twerk.
[$1.18 on 10/29/24 in Vung Tau]
[$1.06 on 10/23/24 in Vung Tau]
[$21.51 in Vung Tau on 3/7/24]
[$5.63 in Vung Tau on 10/14/24]
Hi everyone,
With Biden, Harris and Johnny Somali, the US is going out in style!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcrutIRg5ag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQhE6CnswVc
Somali should come to Vietnam for his next beating! Bystanders and cops will take care of this asshole. He'll also get special attention in Vietnamese prison!
Linh
Unz Review has indeed become almost a total wasteland. If Ron Unz himself didn't need a place to post his own book-length stuff, I think it would have died a natural death long ago. I still have the Unz RSS feed in my feed reader, but long ago relegated it to a subfolder for feeds I normally don't have time for. Over the last few months, when I've done my weekly purge of unread items, I've noticed that 85-90% of the feeds now are from Andrew Anglin, and that scarcely anything he writes is worth reading. For example, in 52 unread items I'm showing this week, only 12 were posted by others.
Linh, I wouldn't want to challenge your view on the condition of general humanity in any country you've been to. Unlike most travel bloggers, you report it "dirty side up", which is a much more honest and representative telling.