Thang Nguyen 555

Whatever happened will soon be behind us. A long dark night!. Death tolls… sadness and sorrow. Urban and rural, college campuses and on-line courses. Vaccines are shipped. We got our proverbial email notice: “Help is on the way”.

Good morning. To you, brother and sister. To those who are home-bound and bed-bound.

Today is the day. The beginning of the end. Our V-day. Our wading the waters to strange shores, to survival and thrive.

If we haven’t learned anything in 2020, then we are hopeless social animals, not worthy of being Homo Sapiens (savoire) i.e. knowing. We adapt and codify via our culture, our core values.

There were confrontation and even clashes last night (a lot of stabbing and injuring). Tip of the spears. Had to. Red vs Blue, Rural vs Urban, High-school vs college educated (please forgive student debt???), 4WD vs 2WD etc..stoked by our now defunct leader(s). Always ask yourself, who is going to profit from all this? Certainly not Coal Miner’s daughters on the other side of the track.

Even before 2008, the proverbial can got repeatedly kicked down the road resulting in economic collapses, distrust in big government and promises not kept like the Paris Climate Accord.

When the French say “D’accord”, it means they are going along…

This doesn’t ring a bell in our American head. Whatever it means, I must get my portion first. The US population, albeit small in comparison, produces a lot of “firsts”, most notably first in consumption and pollution.

It used to be first in production (Detroit), but gradually, stuffs are made somewhere else. Should we decide to rid off all foreign influences, interferences and off-shore production, we would have to bear ourselves naked, and cremated (the urn which contains our ashes was still made-in-China or elsewhere).

Such is American dependency, from cradle to the grave, on foreign oil, foreign car parts and foreign debts (in the form of government bonds and treasury notes).

Good morning.

I hope you buckle up. For the ride to nowhere (on Carnival cruise).

We will have to invoke every kind of national emergency, the same way Bush exhorted the nation to go shopping right after 9/11.

We will have to invoke compassion i.e. vaccination for the marginalized and disenfranchised (Austin Hwy 183 tent city, SF tent city, LA tent city). I used to come out on Friday nights to give hot soup and sandwiches to the homeless of then “Combat Zone” in Boston. Freezing temperature…”Please take your time to eat, it’s hot”

Just people in need. We all are: the shut-ins and the shut-outs, air stewardesses who are urged to wear “diapers” (so as not to use the toilet for fear of contamination).

Long ago, I thought I saw the worst, with people feasting on dead bodies for survival at seas. I thought those Thai pirates got away scot-free (after robbing and raping – leaving Boat People starved to death) were something most abhorrent.

But now I see I know nothing of Homo Sapiens (who are capable of heroic – as in United Flight 93 and despicable acts as in cave paintings of human sacrifice or online Hate sites.). Yet I greet today, our V-day with Hope, hope of a better day, of nicer humanity and improved living condition.

It looks as if 2020 worst is soon behind us. With vaccination comes travel, then economic activities, exchanges and forgiveness (purple families and friends), give and take, on and offline interaction, hello and goodbye.

That’s the reason I will have to practice saying it again (as if it were a lost art) : “Good Morning”.