Two copulating flies have just landed on my laptop. I leave them alone. Though immobile, they\u2019ve been going at it for nine minutes now. Most men can\u2019t last that long, at anything. Maybe they\u2019re dead. Is this the ideal way of exiting this perplexing realm? Maybe it\u2019s an illustration of hell. At eleven minutes, they\u2019re still frozen. Maybe they\u2019re embarrassed at having been watched all this time by some fly pervert.<\/p>\n
Getting up before 3AM, I watched some YouTube videos to see what\u2019s happening beyond my tranquil city. No one shouts or gets publicly angry here. Teenage boys don\u2019t try to prove they\u2019re homicidal gangstas. Unharried men shoot billiards. Everyone\u2019s facial muscles relax.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\n[Pakse, 8\/31\/23]<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a 9\/1\/23 video by Victor Davis Hanson, \u201cThe De-Civilization of America.\u201d Showing scenes of rampant homelessness, flash robs, cars being broken into and a poop map, Hanson explains that businesses and residents are fleeing this once gorgeous city, because it\u2019s no longer safe to live or do business in. With cops demonized, violence glamorized, laws eviscerated and meritocracy mocked, San Francisco and other Democratic strongholds are becoming Detroit, Hanson concludes.<\/p>\n
Just going to your office downtown, you may step on human excrement or a drug needle, \u201cIs that what you want? Everybody says no, I don\u2019t need that, not with 13.3 income tax rate in California. What\u2019s very funny about these people is they created all this, and they made a desert, as I said, and they called it civilization, and now they don\u2019t want to live in it [\u2026] They\u2019ve created a Frankensteinian monster that\u2019s devouring them.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have a brother in Cupertino and a half sister in San Francisco. My freshman year in high school, I spent in San Jose. I bought my first jeans with my own cash at the Gap in Eastridge Mall. Sweating over woks, I made so-so Chinese-American grub in my father\u2019s kitchens in Redwood City and Santa Clara. I gave poetry readings in SF, Berkeley<\/a> and San Jose, and I was a writer-in-residence at UC Berkeley. Too zonked out to trudge further, I curled up on someone\u2019s porch swing in El Cerrito. At Candlestick, I witnessed Hideo Nomo\u2019s first MLB game. I roamed through Oakland<\/a>\u2019s worst neighborhoods, hung out in Fremont<\/a> and took a ferry to Sausalito.<\/p>\n [San Francisco, 5\/9\/13]<\/p>\n Having observed the Bay Area over decades, I was no stranger to its seedier and sadder aspects, but what I\u2019m seeing now from afar exceeds anything I encountered, and that\u2019s true, too, of Philadelphia, a city I knew well.<\/p>\n With its nodding or knocked out zombies, Philly\u2019s Kensington has become internationally famous, so YouTubers have been rushing there to document the horrors. Just two blocks from each other, Allegheny Station and McPherson Square are always shown. Having walked by each a hundred times, I always saw messed up people, but never so many as now, on YouTube.<\/p>\n In Kensington, I\u2019d hang out in Bentley\u2019s Place<\/a> or Jack\u2019s<\/a>. Once, I sat next to some old broad who chugged an empty beer mug<\/a> for over an hour. It beat going home. On the street, I ran into a shirtless guy who was not shy about displaying his grotesquely burnt body and face. He called himself Jesse James<\/a>. Showing me his miserable property<\/a>, a landlord<\/a> grinned, \u201cI\u2019ve had people die in every single room of this house.\u201d<\/p>\n When a Bentley\u2019s Place bartender collapsed after downing too many shots, an ambulance had to be called, but she promptly woke up as it rolled into the hospital. Jumping out, she managed to walk back to the bar, to bartend, and liquor up some more. If a customer hadn\u2019t shown up in a while, she simply assumed he had overdosed or been shot. When an old regular reappeared, she nearly screamed because she thought he was a ghost. Bentley\u2019s Place is permanently closed.<\/p>\n This morning, I also watched a video of San Jose by Metal Leo. Heart of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area\u2019s largest city, it\u2019s also losing population, with its desolate downtown now filled with empty stores. When I lived there in 1978-79, San Jose had no major league sport. After the Earthquakes then Sharks appeared, even the San Francisco 49ers moved south, an indication of the shift in wealth and prestige in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n Though San Jose has its roving homeless and tent cities, it still doesn\u2019t look as bad as San Francisco, but I suspect it will soon surpass its northern cousin. Warmer, it\u2019s more amendable to sleeping outside. Plus, its industrial parks and corporate campuses are perfect for post-collapse Americans. Apple\u2019s circular headquarters already looks like a massive Hakka group home. Its size, though, may require more than one warlord. Each night, there will be skirmishes among zombies in the hallways.<\/p>\n Since too many blacks and Hispanics couldn\u2019t pass algebra in 8th grade, San Francisco decided to only teach it a year later, thus retarding the entire math curriculum. In the name of equality, idiocy is ushered in. A New York Times<\/em> headline from 10\/25\/22, \u201cCalifornia Students Have Dismally Low Math and Reading Test Scores.\u201d Though worst in dumps like SF, it\u2019s a nationwide problem.<\/p>\n In his video, Victor Davis Hanson blames America\u2019s unraveling on Democrats and the left, so there\u2019s a backlash that includes support for Trump. It\u2019ll be interesting, he says, to see how Democrats who have fled to red states vote in the next election, so, again, we\u2019re stuck in this Democratic, Republican bullshit.<\/p>\n Nothing will be solved until Americans realize these blue and red puppets all serve those that want to divide, bankrupt or even kill them. After triumphantly launching Jewjabs, Trump has never reflected on their evil consequences, so there\u2019s no remorse, he did his job. Nearly three years into this horror, Biden still pushes boosters.<\/p>\n With the media hinting at the return of Covid mask mandate, lockdown, travel restrictions and vaccine requirements, many Americans are uneasy, so protest videos have been posted online. Compiling a bunch, Del BigTree has this message, \u201c\u2018There\u2019s only one way we stop this. There\u2019s only one way we prove them wrong, and that\u2019s by making everyone we know stand up with us. It\u2019s time to stage, side by side, not to say by ourselves, \u2018Oh, hell no,\u2019 but a cacophonous, resounding, gigantic, screaming roar, \u2018Hell, no!\u2019 We will not do this again! We\u2019re the citizens of the United States of America. We\u2019re the beacons of light and hope and freedom and liberty for the entire world. If we go down, the world goes down.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a rousing call, but the jingoism at the end does jar. Increasingly, the world sees America only as a beacon for endless war, financial swindles, Jewjabs, Satanic music, sick movies, child mutilation and cross dressing freaks, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s moving away from the belligerent pervert.<\/p>\n Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have just joined BRICS, but these countries also applied: Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazahstan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam. That\u2019s a lot of oil, natural gas, gold, minerals, food and human capital realigning.<\/p>\n After the US-engineered coup in Ukraine, John McCain paid that doomed nation a visit, then quipped that its supposed enemy, Russia, was \u201cjust a gas station masquerading as a country.\u201d Disdain, contempt or ignorance colors America\u2019s view of every country, foe or ally.<\/p>\n To many Americans, the Third World is just a collection of \u201cshitholes,\u201d but consider Laos, one of the poorest Asian countries. Having spent time in Pakse, Vientiane<\/a>, Luang Prabang<\/a> and Phonsavan<\/a>, I can definitely say these cities are cleaner and safer than most American ones, with much less squalor and no human shit visible. Although drugs are cheaper and more available here than in the US, I don\u2019t see zombies staggering around. Although despair is hard to quantify, there must be less of it here.<\/p>\n For the longest time, violence in American cities was repackaged as grittiness or even glamor, so immature males over much of the world started to look and act like the worst American assholes. To be loud, obnoxious and always ready for a fight over nothing was hip or cool, the last an obvious oxymoron since there\u2019s no composure or manliness in such behavior. Luckily, this American contagion has not spread to Laos or Muslim countries I\u2019ve visited.<\/p>\n Playing to his navel gazing audience, BigTree has it wrong. If Uncle Sam collapses, much of the world will only cheer.<\/p>\n I began this article with two flies, so let\u2019s end with one more, William Blake\u2019s:<\/p>\n The Fly<\/strong><\/p>\n Little fly, Am not I For I dance If thought is life Then am I If the absence of thinking is death, then some places are clearly ahead of the rest. From sea to toxic sea, poop maps spread. The beacon is long dead, and the lighthouse has become a pestilent toilet. As language and math die, flies pester all your senses. Impotently, you swat.<\/p>\n [Vietnamese boys in Pakse, Laos on 8\/31\/23]<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nThy summer\u2019s play
\nMy thoughtless hand
\nHas brushed away.<\/p>\n
\nA fly like thee?
\nOr art not thou
\nA man like me?<\/p>\n
\nAnd drink and sing,
\nTill some blind hand
\nShall brush my wing.<\/p>\n
\nAnd strength and breath,
\nAnd the want
\nOf thought is death,<\/p>\n
\nA happy fly,
\nIf I live,
\nOr if I die.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n