A common curse of empire is
that your language, culture and, eventually, even land will become
progressively less your own. Mere decades after their occupations of Vietnam, both France and the US have
become more diminished and diluted than the nation they momentarily subjugated.
Visiting Vietnam in 1953,
Norman Lewis quoted a despairing French soldier, Captain Doustin, “It is the
feeling I get at this moment that we are at grips with something ant-like
rather than human. These unemotional people driven on by some blind instinct. I
feel that my intelligence and my endurance are not enough. Take, for instance,
those fellows they send up to dig holes close to the wire, before an attack.
You’d expect them to show some human reaction when our supporting guns start
dropping shells among them, but they don’t. They go on digging until they’re
killed, and then some other kind of specialist fellows come crawling up and
drag the bits and pieces away. Sometime later that night you know the
shock-troops are going to come up and get into those holes and then you’re for
it. Losses simply don’t bother them. All they’re concerned about is not leaving
anything behind. They actually tie a piece of cord to every machine gun, so
that as soon as the chap who is using it gets knocked out it can be hauled back
to safety.”
Vietnamese have often been
compared to ants or other insects, and sometimes they also see themselves as
such, but entirely positively, for the ant is much more powerful than its size
would suggest, and working together, can move a much larger animal’s carcass.
Every Vietnamese child has seen ants transport a dead gecko.
Captain Doustin’s foes are the
Viet Minh. Though dominated by Communists, their appeal was primarily
nationalistic, for the Vietnamese are anything but globalist or
internationalist, which is essentially a Western delusion, as exemplified by
Christianity, Communism and Neo-Liberalism. Orientals don’t try to save or
convert strangers, and they certainly don’t think any system would constitute
an ideal world. That’s a Western insanity or con, deployed to mask plunder and
tyranny.
Like most ethnic groups,
Vietnamese are only rooted and loyal to their family, language, heritage and
native land, roughly in that order. Deeply provincial, they’re only willing to
fight to the death to defend what they’ve always known and been, and not for
any ideology.
Though the French confidently
predicted they would be here for at least a thousand years, not many actually
cared to settle in this sultry and deeply alien environment, and the Moroccans
and Senegalese they brought were merely transients, not that they left very
favorable impressions or would be missed.
Lewis, “A huge effort was being
made [by the French] to strengthen the defences on this side of the small town,
and engaged on this were several hundred Vietnamese civilian suspects, kept
hard at it by a number of gigantic Senegalese soldiers who rushed among them
screaming abuse and lashing out with their switches.”
In a year, the French,
Moroccans and Senegalese would all be killed or kicked out, and most
importantly, through a century of colonialism, Vietnam did not suffer any
permanent demographic distortion or damage, but quite the reverse, actually,
for many Vietnamese were moved into Laos and Cambodia, though many would be
slaughtered or chased from Cambodia in the 70’s.
When French rule seemed most
enduring in 1924, a leading Vietnamese intellectual, Phạm
Quỳnh, declared, “Truyen Kieu [a 19th century epic poem] remains, our language
remains. Our language remains, our nation remains,” so a nation is defined as
people who speak the same language and cherish a common culture, as symbolized
by their most famous poem, so where does that leave Americans and their
nationhood?
Having met quite a few
non-natives who tried to speak Vietnamese, I can only count maybe three, two
Americans and a German, who have done so convincingly. By contrast, English is
fluently spoken by people all over, especially in Iceland, Holland, Germany and
Singapore, etc., so its near global status has actually weakened Americans’
sense of identity and nationhood. In language, so many aliens are sort of
American. American culture is also too promiscuously disseminated, so it’s
nothing special, really, just a soft drink constantly guzzled and pissed out by
everybody and his near-blind, senile grandma. For you to meet in Budapest, say,
some guy who speaks excellent English and understands tons of American cultural
references is not the same as, for me, to run into a Vietnamese on Rakoczi
Avenue.
English is also allowing America’s greatest rival, China, to benefit from
America’s vast body of knowledge and its educational system, for thousands of
Chinese are enrolled in American universities, studying the hard sciences.
Terrified by these bright and committed students, Americans flee into
departments of woke, woe me and fuck-you-whities studies, where they can more
comfortably rub elbows with tight-jeaned posers, affirmative action idiots and
jocks.
In Philly, I had a Hong Kong-born friend, George, who told me Chinese
have set up American schools that enroll thousands of Chinese, so they can get
a student visa to come to the US, so it’s a win-win situation, for every
Chinese involved.
In Ann Arbor, I met another Hong Kong native. She sold houses to
Chinese, so they could enroll their kids in local high schools for free.
Working his ass off, a local tax payer can subsidize the education of a
privileged son of a Chinese millionaire, so what’s not to like, if you’re
Chinese?
A Chinese can own as many
American houses as he wants, even if he’s not a resident. By contrast, an
American can only buy a single home in China, after he’s been in the country
for a year. Preempting a legal takeover, many nations don’t allow foreigners to
own properties, period, and that’s why the late Joe Bageant, for example, had
to ghost purchase his Belizean cottage. Thanks to favorable local laws, Chinese
now own huge chunks of the San Francisco Bay Area, Vancouver, Toronto, Sidney
and Melbourne, etc. Aukland was on this list, until legislators decided last
year to block foreign property purchases, but hey, isn’t this, like, xenophobic
and, uh, racist? Like muskrats, prairie dog or ants, men have always defended and
protected land for their kind only, however that’s defined, so if you reject
New Zealand for New Zealanders, then you yourself are doomed, unless you’re
Chinese!
Speaking of xenophobia and
racism, there’s an ethno, apartheid state that’s the world’s greatest sponsor
of terrorism since its violent founding, but don’t you dare kvetch about this
most sacred of nations, for six gazillion of them were once fulminated to death
by you all, if not actively then passively, but soon as you sniff for
the evidence,
you’ll find that it’s as gaseous as
Elie Wiesel, Ann Frank or Jerzy Kosinski.
A common curse of empire is
that your language, culture and, eventually, even land will become
progressively less your own. Mere decades after their occupations of Vietnam,
both France and the US have become more diminished and diluted than the nation
they momentarily subjugated. As for Communism, its cultural and psychic
violence have been all but neutralized, so that Vietnamese can more or less
just be themselves, in all their glories and absurdities. Vietnamese have more
control over their self-definition than Frenchmen or Americans.
The USA is doubly cursed, moreover, for even at its peak as an empire, it
was also a colony, of Israel, so that American soldiers haven’t just been sent
all over to kill and die for the American empire, which should not be confused
with the American nation, but also for Israel. Duped into so many conflicts
that did not benefit the American nation, many Americans have been sapped of
the will to fight any war, even one that would save them.
In 1966, Robert Ardrey argued
that we share a territorial imperative with many other animals, and that’s why
we “stake out property, chase off trespassers, defend our countries,” but this
animalistic continuum has been disavowed by many Americans. To them, nation has
become an outdated concept, nationalism is fascistic, borders are reactionary
and since no man is illegal, there are no trespassers, just undocumented
workers, a result of an unfortunate clerical gaff, perhaps, to be shortly
rectified. This line of thinking makes no sense to Hungarians, Poles, Czechs,
Mexicans, Turks, Syrians, Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians,
Palestinians and, well, all but the most progressive Western nations, so who do
you think are best equipped to defend their soil and survive, those who embrace
nationalism vs. those who shun the very concept of nationhood?
Though culture began as a mere a fig leaf over funky nature, it’s now
striving to displace it, especially in the most advanced and progressive
nations. An au courant man, therefore, may not just pretend he doesn’t look,
smell or function like one, but claim he’s no man at all, as in, “I’m a woman,”
“I’m a cyborg” or “I’m just an emoticon.” Since unreal men can’t defend
anything, America is finished.
Linh Dinh’s latest book is Postcards from the End of
America. He maintains a regularly updated photo blog.