{"id":191793,"date":"2019-07-19T08:30:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T08:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=191793"},"modified":"2019-07-23T06:24:23","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T06:24:23","slug":"end-of-the-world-vs-center-of-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=191793","title":{"rendered":"End of the World vs. Center of the Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh \u2013 The Unz Review July 18, 2019<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of the towns in \u0110\u1eafk L\u1eafk I have never heard of until I\u2019m in them. A few days ago, I was in Yang Reh, which has just 4,100 people, and founded only in 2002. Coming in, I spotted a tiny, dark woman<\/a><\/span> of unclear ethnicity, pushing a junk bicycle that had assorted bags dangling from its handlebar. She wore two hats, a black boonie over a tan newsboy, with the outer advertising FUBENZON, stenciled twice, across the band. It\u2019s an ingested medicine for intestinal worms. Her ancient slide sandals boasted Nike swooshes.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>The center of town was a three-way intersection that had an only slightly dirty restaurant, serving rice noodles, and rice with choices<\/span><\/a> of fish, shrimp, pork, chicken, fried eggs, pickled eggplants, water spinach or bamboo shoots, everything made just like my mom would, if only she could cook. There were two caf\u00e9s, with the fancier one flaunting two garish murals evoking Europe<\/span><\/a>. Sitting in scorching and dusty Yang Reh, one can contemplate these chill, lakefront villas<\/a><\/span>, with their elegant, romantic balconies, while a handsome boat waits in the placid water, for you and your languid yet eager lover. Green or purple leafed trees jostle exotic cypresses on distant hills. Seagulls bank and squawk.<\/h5>\n
Sweating, I entered the caf\u00e9 to find it completely empty, save for a girl of about four<\/a><\/span>, sleeping next to a stuffed Doraemon cat. The red and sand-colored straw mat they lay on had \u201cGia \u0110\u00ecnh H\u1ea1nh Ph\u00fac\u201d [\u201cHappy Family\u201d] printed on it in a cursive script. A naked, blonde doll, smaller than a sparrow, had her eyes wide open, but no legs and only one arm.<\/h5>\n
On a mauve wall were blooming violets, butterflies and weird purple dandelions, with this in English, \u201cI miss you<\/a><\/span> \/ I miss you because \/ I never miss you.\u201d<\/h5>\n
On a pink wall, cartoon women in traditional dress danced with a fan or wide flat hat, or played the pipa, with this in English, \u201cIn spring trees the subtle fresh green \/ budding from the branches of the tree<\/a><\/span>.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Even at the end of the universe, which Yang Reh clearly is, one feels compelled to look towards the imperial center, with its glamorous cities, people and cool<\/a> <\/span>sounding language. \u201cOh my God,\u201d \u201coh wow,\u201d \u201clet\u2019s go,\u201d \u201chot boy,\u201d \u201chot girl\u201d and \u201csexy,\u201d etc., have crept into daily Vietnamese conversations, but this is happening everywhere else too.<\/h5>\n
As a child in Saigon, I would hear some of my father\u2019s friends insert the French moi and toi into their conversation, which I found ridiculous. A man would say, \u201cWhy don\u2019t toi come by moi house tomorrow?\u201d Now, I hear the English me and you intruding into Vietnamese sentences, as in, \u201cMe don\u2019t like what you\u2019re doing to me.\u201d<\/h5>\n
In Ea Kly, I saw a teenage girl with this on her jacket, \u201cMY MAMA DON\u2019T LIKE YOU,\u201d then I walk by a bag of chicken feed by the side of the road, \u201cVIET HOPE.\u201d Not one in twenty here even knows the English \u201chope.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>A 14-year-old boy, Bo, was mesmerized by a YouTube video of 365daband, a music combo of pretty boys whose every dance move mimics some American singer. Hearing obvious influences of Lady Gaga, I asked Bo if he knew who she was. He said no. Since Bo\u2019s 38-year-old mom<\/a><\/span> was nearby, I asked her the same question, and she had no idea who Mother Monster was either.<\/h5>\n
Probing further, I asked Bo to name five Americans, from any field, so he told me about a school field trip to a museum in Buon Ma Thuot<\/a><\/span>, the nearest city to Ea Kly, \u201cI saw an American, so I said to him, \u201cHello! How are you? What is your name?\u201d He told me his name was Tim.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t ask if you have ever met an American! I want you to name me any five Americans, like famous people, from any field.\u201d<\/h5>\n
It took Bo a good minute, before he could pronounce, with some difficulty, \u201cAlan Walker.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWho?!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cAlan Walker. He\u2019s a singer.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>Bo had on a white T-shirt with black lettering, \u201cAMERICAN COLLEGE CHAMPION \/ Best Football Player<\/span><\/a>,\u201d so I asked him, \u201cThere\u2019s English on your shirt. Do you know what it means?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cSo why did you choose this shirt?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t choose it. My aunt bought it for me. I don\u2019t normally buy my own clothes.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Bo\u2019s parents work at our plastic recycling plant. His dad doesn\u2019t say much unless he\u2019s drunk. A 500 ml bottle of homemade rice wine can be had here for 86 cents. Normally, Bo stays with his grandma in Buon Ma Thuot. Though Bo has been to Saigon three times, he doesn\u2019t care for it. He\u2019s never flown, and can\u2019t imagine himself living outside \u0110\u1eafk L\u1eafk, much less overseas.<\/h5>\n
Obedient, Bo does whatever his parents ask of him, be it running errands, doing housework or even helping out in the plastic recycling factory. It disciplines and toughens him up, teaches him a few basic skills, they reason. Better that than having the boy bury himself in video games.<\/h5>\n
Orientals reach puberty after blacks, browns and whites, and in this Confucian culture, obedience to one\u2019s elders is still stressed, and education, too, so Vietnamese teens tend to be nerdier than many others. In my former neighborhood in South Philadelphia, the small local library was filled almost exclusively by Orientals after school.<\/h5>\n
In a mixed society, each race has to compete against every other at everything, so an Oriental who would have been a bully in Asia may have to conclude that he\u2019s not such a badass after all, and a glasses wearing black kid who would have been, say, a renowned chemistry professor at the University of Liberia may decide that it\u2019s probably best he works on his left handed layup and crossover dribble.<\/h5>\n
A worshipper of Slick Watts, I still mourn my aborted NBA career. Daily, I seethe that God never enabled me to do a Shawn Kemp type dunk, repeatedly, at will, over the entire universe. Take that, bitch!<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhere do you think you\u2019ll be at age 25, Bo?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cIn my grandma\u2019s house!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI notice you like to watch YouTube videos, and they show, you know, lots of foreign places? What do you think of these places?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cUh, these foreign countries are more modern than Vietnam. They\u2019re richer than us. There\u2019s this city in India where the police drive around in these awesome cars. Lamborghini!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhich city is that?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cDubai.\u201d Then, \u201cForeigners aren\u2019t just rich. They can also be poor, or homeless. There are countries even poorer than us! Vietnam is not rich, and not poor. We\u2019re in the middle.\u201d<\/h5>\n
With poor, working class parents, Bo has been exposed to almost no books. He\u2019s read a few Doraemon comics and an illustrated and much condensed version of Victor Hugo\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables, \u201cIt\u2019s about this guy who steals a loaf of bread. He punches through the window and hurts his hand. He then sleeps in a church and tries to steal some silver candle holders, but when the cops come, the priest lies and says he\u2019s given these things to the man\u2026\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhere does all this take place?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cGermany.\u201d<\/h5>\n
When I was Bo\u2019s age, I lived in Salem, Oregon, and there was a neighborhood girl, Cynthia, with braces, who told me she had only been to one other state, Washington, which she didn\u2019t know was North, South, West or East of Oregon, \u201cMy father always does the driving when we go anywhere.\u201d<\/h5>\n
In my Cheyenne Postcard, I describe a cheerful, hard drinking lady who told me her daughter was a soldier stationed in North Korea.<\/h5>\n
In Saigon, a cross-eyed man in his 30\u2019s asked me if Canada was near Australia?<\/h5>\n
Most people don\u2019t know where China or Brazil is on a map, much less Argentina or Malaysia, for they just don\u2019t feel the information is relevant to their lives. Each day, they have their hands and mind full just getting through their wrenching labor.<\/h5>\n
Bo\u2019s mom, \u201cWhen I have a nightmare, I usually just cry in the dream, but last night, I was still crying when I got up. I dreamt that I had lost my cellphone, so I had to buy another one, on credit, but that, too, was immediately stolen, so I was sobbing and sobbing! Waking up, I was relieved to see my phone still next to me.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re probably feeling too much stress, from working.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re right. It\u2019s been a rough couple of days.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Bo\u2019s mom sometimes says sorry in English to her often cranky husband. Like many people here, she\u2019s becoming addicted to the cellphone. She\u2019d take photos of flowers or herself, to post on FaceBook. The bulk of her time, though, is spent working, and she does everything quite cheerfully.<\/h5>\n
On Philadelphia\u2019s South Street many moons ago, I was in the Booktrader, browsing. Like diners and blue-collar strip bars, used bookstores are dying out in America. An obese employee was shelving books nearby, and as she huffed and gasped, she also mumbled, \u201cWork, work.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Besides weddings, funerals and family visits, Bo\u2019s mom has only had one vacation in her life, and that was a two-day group affair paid for by the hotel where she worked, worked. Many years later, she still speaks fondly of this respite in Nha Trang, 3 1\/2 hours from here. Although it\u2019s renowned for its beaches, she never got to enter the ocean.<\/h5>\n
The chief romance of remotest places is that you\u2019re less harassed or hemmed in by civilization, with its overcrowding, maddening noise, manipulative media and endless rules, but then a goatherd on the Khyber Pass can suddenly be zapped by an empire\u2019s silent and invisible drone, and Vietnamese certainly remember that much of the war from half a century ago was fought in places exactly like Ea Kly and Yang Reh.<\/h5>\n
The Portuguese conquered Malacca in 1511, then came the Dutch, English, French, Spanish and Americans into the rest of Asia. The Russians, too, have stamped their influence here. The white man\u2019s 500-year effort to remake the entire world in his image has been mostly successful, for here I am, sitting in Ea Kly, in blue jeans, black T-shirt, typing on a laptop, while cars, trucks and buses rumble by, everything invented by the white man, though some are now made better in Asia, as with my Fujifilm x100F, a marvelous camera that Mieko Kawakami gave to me in Tokyo, a Westernized city that\u2019s far more modern than most Western ones.<\/h5>\n
A superior, dominant culture is the one with the better weapons, but this is the result of having better technology, organization and thinking. To counter such a threat, you don\u2019t just match the other guy\u2019s artillery, but his entire arsenal of techniques, which is what Japan did in the 19th century. China wasn\u2019t quite with it, and that\u2019s why it eventually got its sluggish, smug and decadent ass kicked by Japan.<\/h5>\n
The West\u2019s unprecedented rise, hegemony and seduction are winding down, not with a bang, but a gayish whimper. With its unmatched objectivity, the West mastered all the sciences to rule over the entire world and nature, but now, it has descended into a pathological, extremist subjectivity, so that facts no longer matter, only wishes, caprices and delusions.<\/h5>\n
Although emblematic, showcase Western cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are becoming literal shitholes, the dog, cat and squirrel eating peasants in a dumbassed place like Ea Kly haven\u2019t gotten the news, but then they haven\u2019t even heard of Neil Armstrong, the first mammal to wear a full diaper for days on end without flinching, or Michael Jackson, the first racially unclassifiable man to walk on the moon while cornholing a series of screaming boys, or Caitlyn Jenner, the first female to win the men\u2019s decathlon at the Olympics. All they know is that America must be the greatest country on earth, because it has been that way all their lives, and because Washington, Madison Avenue and Hollywood keep insisting on it. This doesn\u2019t mean they all want to move into that shining house on the hill, however.<\/h5>\n
Not long ago, I overheard some old guy at an Ea Kly caf\u00e9, \u201cIf I can go to America, I\u2019ll visit the White House, take a photo. That\u2019s enough. If I can go to France, I\u2019ll visit the Vatican, take a photo. That\u2019s also enough. The Vatican is the world\u2019s biggest. The White House is also biggest. As for their food, Vietnam already has everything. Of course, they\u2019re richer than us, so their streets are wider than us. That\u2019s all. I\u2019ll go to the Vatican and White House, take two photos, then go home.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Spoken like a true hick, of the type that has endured throughout history. Unless he\u2019s bombed, starved or mentally raped by some insufferably alien ideology, most people are perfectly happy to stay where they already belong.<\/h5>\n
This morning, a reader emails me, \u201cYou write eloquently, and poetically, about the demise and mostly likely destruction of America. What are you proposing that we do to revive America?\u201d<\/h5>\n
Since the country is methodically misruled by a hostile, openly criminal and shamelessly traitorous elite, Americans must emphatically disown it, and the first step is to boycott all elections as staged by said elite. On voting days, Americans shouldn\u2019t stay home but organize massive protests to declare to history and the rest of the world, \u201cThese criminals don\u2019t represent us.\u201d Delegitimized, America\u2019s ruling cabal will weaken.<\/h5>\n
Since all mainstream media serve only to brainwash and stultify, Americans must wean themselves from their toxic influences and, ultimately, destroy them.<\/h5>\n
On the battlefield of ideas, Americans must not be cowed by bombastic nonsense, as screamed from above, but use their common sense and innate intelligence to dismantle such patent absurdities.<\/h5>\n
To begin the counterattack, Americans must regain their own minds and become reacquainted with each other. There is no unity of resistance if you shun those closest to you.<\/h5>\n
Every place is its own center of the universe, so defend or rebuild it. Local democracy must overrule distant diktats. There is no solution forthcoming over the enemy occupied airwave. America can be reclaimed, one town at a time.<\/h5>\n
Up to now, Americans haven\u2019t resisted because they understood, if only half consciously, that they have benefited greatly from America\u2019s empire status, but their house slave days are almost done. Already, crumbs seldom tumble from the masta\u2019s table, so wise up, niggas, before it\u2019s too late.<\/h5>\n
Up to now, you have watched with indifference or excitement the little people everywhere being blown up in your name. Soon enough, it will be your turn.<\/h5>\n
Linh Dinh\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> latest book is <\/em>Postcards from the End of America<\/span><\/em><\/a>. He maintains a regularly updated photo blog<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until now, Americans have watched with indifference or excitement the little people everywhere being blown up in their name. Soon enough, it will be American’s turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191793"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191826,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191793\/revisions\/191826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}