Thang Nguyen 555

Long ago and seems so far away….(I fell in love with you…before the second show)…Almost, but before that, we kids ran around the neighbourhood – an alley in the middle- looking for anything. One day, that anything happened to be my bro-in-law’s fishing rod. It just happened that an really old couple across from us kept arguing non-sense, verbally abusive and being obnoxious. I thought I could play “hero” for one day, like a David Bowie’s song.

So together with a bunch of “facebook followers”, I stuck the rod through their window (in Vietnam, tropical heat was unbearable unless you opened all windows but only with metal rods for safety). When they were so into their fights – with backs against the fateful window – I would poke thinking just to distract them for a quick second before withdrawing the rod and ducked out of sight.

Mind you. These were really old folks, borderline senile and forgetful. (We were 5 years-old and down). Their being startled and stopping mid-sentences (cursing) to find out what/who poke at her back drew huge LOL’s from us. On my third attempt, at repeating the by-then new routine: sticking the rod as far as possible, poking , then pulling with both hands as quickly as possibly could. This time, the rod got stuck: I got her nose (an animal shrei<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<k “Oi Gioi oi! Chet toi roi! Oh my Goddddd….Someone is killing me). Out of panic, I yanked even more before did a Kabul withdrawal.

Long story short, of course, I got spanked. Really good and it’s my turn (Karma) to shreik>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>please stop, don’t kill me. The old neighbour got a stitch. I was time-out, benched, on lock-down for weeks. I guessed my brother-in-law got his fishing rod back.

And I, who tried water-ski, snow-mobile ski, horseback riding, helicopter riding, ballroom dancing and hapkido…(before I broke my arm after 4 weeks), never have I tried my luck at FISHING>>>>>>>>No way, Jose! Years later, in Boston Chinatown, I ran into one of the kids of that fishing expedition. He recalled right away the incident:” hey, look, this guy went fishing: know what he caught? An old lady”.

LOL@myself”

“Cougar”. The term wasn’t invented back then. Or else, I’d have to live down as a Cougar Catcher (” nguoi cau ba cu”).

Haven’t we heard enough or watched enough! And the control room keeps punching “Stay tuned” graphics to fill up the empty air – precious air-time – without regards for our own time (in the times of pandemic, our time all of a sudden becomes more precious commodities – irreplaceable).

Or the field reporters would end the – we call it “stand-up” in ENG trade- with “only time will tell”.

Recent weeks finally prove those reports right: only time will tell (whether Taliban 2.0 is not like the Delta variant)….

Sure. Me too. I am waiting since I heard the press briefing in Kabul i.e. “women will have all the rights…WITHIN the limits of Islamic law”. Once, I watched a black/white documentary in class: the beheading of a princess (out of many princesses) who committed adultery…in Saudi….people dressed in all-white robes. That year, I also watched “Deep Throat” on campus, courtesy of Student Union (under Free Speech Amendment).

I wasn’t majoring in Cross-Cultural Communication back then. I was struggling with Speech 101, Political Sc 101, Econ 101 (micro-economics – learning about “diminishing return”).

Putting it together, just my freshman Winter quarter (back then, Penn State was still on quarterly system), we can roughly understand how the Kabul situation unraveled…there is no need for those “only time will tell” answers.

Geography (poppy) demography (young student girls) theocracy (Taliban & friends) and democracy (300,000 strong army); ALL tried to gain a foothold, to win hearts and minds, one cave at a time.

Sounds like a dust-off Vietnam campaign (Ap Chien Luoc)…and hamlets/cone-hats. With Thieu tipping his body guards a few thousand piasters (pocket change) before stepping on a one-way Tan Son Nhut – Taiwan flight, pulling a Ghani dissappearance (BTW, at least President Ford emptied his cash for TIME’s David Hume Kennedy, Ford’s personal photographer/envoy as he boarded an Army flight to cover Vietnam last days – President Ford trusted pictures more than slanted reports…his photo, with him holding an orphan refugee who made it to SFA says it all).

Meanwhile, out of Kabul, we read about the 10 Afghan all-female robotic team who got out thanks to an Oklahoman female scientist – already a mother of 9- who “had to do something”.

Maybe they can someday “lean-in” and take over facebook or tik tok or Instagram. Time will tell! (don’t you hate to see time, not flowing to infinity in a straight line…TIME has betrayed us, by going right by us who sit as front-row spectators watching history go by, feeling apathetic and side-lined by our inaction).

Last week, I wrote about the haunting eyes of Kabul (a thousand-yards stare). On this more hopeful blog, I touch on those Afghan girls on the Robotic team (international competition team).

Some day, I will put together a mini-Woodstock (my fantasy), with the Hell Angels surrounding the stage as bouncers…(never again, Altamont – West-Coast version of Woodstock, as in Grace Slick who got hurt) whose performers are band after band of multi-coloured singers and drummers…male/female and anything in between, singing about and for a world of Rainbow…(maybe cougars can squeeze male genitals back stage for catharsis – only after having donated VIP-level to the Afghan Refugee funds…just kidding).

That day comes, it’s my job to stand next to the power supplies (back up of back up) to ensure no sabotage.

And the Heaven Angels as back-up to the Hell Angels at the power-supply generator- solar ones.

Join me, dreamers and drummers! George Harrison pulled it off (of course a lot of phone calls and leveraging the Beatles’ success) at his concert for Bangladesh…After 2 Trillion dollars, why can’t we donate musical instruments for those who insist that DESPITE the Taliban’s ban on music, many of us – me included – will not be silent. (They can take away the stereo, but not the music).

There is “no time will tell” on this blog. Over my dead body…after you jumped over my backstage body guards. Vaccines and our stance for Democracy might suffer “diminishing return” (again, from Econ 101) but I know our love for music and mothers will never cease. Let’s fight again, and again. Whenever and however we can. Stay tuned!

From the beginning to the end (relatively speaking), it’s been messy: no time to prepare, to plan it out and to execute flawlessly.

Todd Beamer might have planned his family’s Roman Holiday to the teeth, in the days leading to 9/11 and to not miss that fateful flight (UA-93), but only to ACT and act decisively, boldly and sacrificially (in the interests of others’ “Geater no man than he who died for others”) when his Newark-SF flight was taken over and turned into precision-guided missile by four terrorists.

He had bought team shirts for his two sons (one daughter on the way – Morgan Kay Beamer – combo of Todd’s and Lisa’s middle names). I am sure like Beamer, Biden while mourning the loss of his son Beau, would never have thought some day, he would put the other bookend to the forever war.

America (up to 70%) and the world (many in Kabul) are tired of war, violence and conflicts.

Those who think waging wars and planting explosives is the way to solve problems know nothing about pain and loss.

I don’t want to write on to “educate” them.

They have been down the deep end, with rote- recitation of the distorted and dark interpretation of the Koran, of the myopic translation of the Old Testament’s God of Vengeance.

A lot of people intentionally and wilfully profiting from wars and the staging of wars. Hope they sleep well at night.

But the Lisa Beamers of the world, the Beau Bidens of the world are paying stiff prices (and interests to balloon up to 6.5 Trillion per Kennedy School of Government at Harvard) for our continued way of life, of stuffing those Costco carts, and of spraying caramel atop supersized Starbucks cups.

Meanwhile, the sleeper-terrorists continue to order pizzas and call girls at the expense of their “sponsors”, oil and drug pushers, to stir up troubles (see Perfect Soldiers).

They paid by cash, dropped out of Architectural school in Hamburg (Atta) and got their wings from a Sarasota’s flight school. While Bush sat in Sarasota baby’s chair to listen to a class reading – lesson learned from Dan Quayle….”dont’ go up to the board ” – to avoid misspelling.g. “potato” (before auto-correction), the terrorists positioned themselves – first-class “Champagne?” – to storm the cockpit above 30,000 feet, using only flights full of fuel and box cutters for weapon.

Later on, they improvised, and we now have to take off our shoes (and some day, our undies – the Underwear bombers).

Damn them. Without the Beamers’ of the world, we would have seen our 2 F-16’s dent down UA – 93 (at the time on course for the White House, where our Angler was hiding in the WH basement, taking orders from POTUS – on Airforce One, the only plane on the sky). And if they missed, it would have been a self-inflicting scenario UNIMMGINABLE that loomed much larger than today’s Kabul (with American allies’ body parts caught and later found in C-17’s take-off wheels).

Beau Biden broke his father’s heart ….I remember “Run, Biden run”, but he was deep in loss and pain. And that grief and delay gave us today’s POTUS who not only has ample of empathy, but also decisiveness and leadership (not “Infinite Justice, doing the Lord’s work, eye-for-an-eye).

How long more can we drag on? Are we to listen to the Rices’ of the world at Standford (more time… more time). Or are we taking a lesson from Steve Jobs (stay hungry, stay curious) at same school commencement speech.

Beamer got nothing to lose (as the plane made an U turn toward D.C.). Biden got nothing to lose. Steve Jobs got nothing to lose. It’s their loved ones, the survivors of flight(s), of war and of waste, of loss and pain that have to live on in grief.

Yes, the haunting eyes of Kabul (see my other blog), the unintended consequences of an ill-conceived war footing, venturing into the unknown unknowns.

Those architects of war always live on to write memoirs and live off their royalties e.g. In Restropect…. It’s those who self-immolate (a Quaker – burning at the steps of the Pentagon – or plunging themselves into the side of it in a Jihadist war -in both cases, paying the stiff price: their own lives).

They are selling those memoirs on prime- delivery for fear the public will forget the Afghan war quickly, just as we have with Iraq, Vietnam, WWII and what not.

Then those parades get stale, the flags (made-in-China) get tossed, or stored next to next-year Holidays ornaments…America can’t wait to commemorate and celebrate, preferably the later …the Fourth and D-day…(sell the -American – dream) No one wants to wear a coat, standing in freezing cold in front of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Beamer or Biden, our amnesia will loom large over Twin Towers or Trump Towers. Nevertheless, One-World Tower still stand, as testimony of resilience, and reinvention. And my daughter, her daughters will write on, will stay hungry and curious….with eyes on the prize.

The haunting eyes of Kabul staring into the distance, a thousand- yards stare watching a series of Phoenix…. rising from the ash of war.

I am a war refugee. I once had two sets of clothes…much less than what’s in my daughters’ campus closet today. And we both have a humble start in America.

God bless this land, our common dream of a life free of tyranny, terrorism and tax (just kidding. I need the third T to end my rambling and ranting.).

Michel Polnareff once had a hit ” Love me, please love me”….followed later by the Who “See me, feel me, touch me..heal me”…to end with Todd Rundgren “Hello it’s me”…

Late 60’s early 70’s…stormed the music scene was Me, Me, Me. The Me Generation, after the We Generation.

Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway,…with hair and dance steps (later, Cirque du Soleil masked them all, Savior or sinners).

I predict an Afghan post-war generation turning inward (not to mention, no one seems to be able to travel anywhere due to the unwinding down pandemic on steroid).

Love me, please love me.

Even the credit card web sites need to make sure you are not a robot (Verify me, see me, authenticate me)…

I am not robotic. I might be represented by a series of coding, but I am not. .. Decode me…here are my passwords.

Back to our Stanford Lab experiment (where the actor who put on lab coat telling the subject to be sure about what they saw, in a room full of extras who said otherwise).

Oh! maybe I am robotic. I hear bell ringing, I salivate…(whether there are hamburgers or not).

Maybe I won’t have those shots, or the booster one. I am not sure. Those who surround me, eyes closed and hands raised: ALL SAID OTHERWISE.

Feel me, follow me, friend me.

The new ME generation 2.0, on line, on facebook and Twitter (where DJT has been blocked).

See, being lawful citizen has its perks.

You have “followers”, the digitally manufactured “community”.

WE ARE PENN STATE…WE ARE….

Finally I can identify with my three significant Alma Matter slogans: in High School, ours was a burning flame. Undergrad – WE ARE (roaring Lion)…

then in Grad School – “Let’s roll” (after Todd Beamer of UA flight 93) who did us proud. (I applied there having read about Jim Elliot, whose martyr legacy line is “he who is no fool, to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose” ….later on, I embarked on a pilgrimage to meet his wife (Mrs Elliot), even brought her some flowers to show her my respects for their exemplary life).

He who is no fool…(Je suis fool….Love me, please Love me).

In today’s China, young affluent kids refused to participate in society they deem “the rat race” (lagging after Japan’s Lost Generation (Shut out the Sun) – who was online all night, and slept all day).

Tik Tok, Tik Tok…we are all fools, working for free (Ghost work) to enrich the Super Rich (who apply Armies of Artificial Intelligence and suckers – after having been verified as non-robotic) to “scale” up their margins of profit and minimise their margin of errors. Oldest formula in the book: get them hooked , then feed them the dream/mirage (lies)…as long as possible…

Wake me up when August ends…for I have joined the Beat Generation, the Me Generation, the Lost Generation, and now the Digital non-Natives…non-Robotics.

I respond to all kinds of stimuli, be they analog or digital. hard Rock or soft Rock.. I am a permanent and hopeless sucker of a cult of delusion of narcissistic people who are occupied with nothing except living out their hollow life….

Je suis fool…Love me, please love me…(singing to my own reflections….often distorted by wind-swept waves – all the while, completely forget to gaze up to the stars).

Friend me, follow me unless I am blocked, snoozed and un-friended since the last time I checked my phone ping and Facebook bell.

When what happened and is still unfolding in Kabul appeared on the front page of major newspapers, I was jolted.

Saigon? Haven’t seen the name in the news for decades.

It reappeared once in a while on Broadway play (Miss Saigon – the helicopter and the abandoned mistress with slanted eyes).

But not along side clean-shaven Afghan young men running along, infront, behind the C-17 US Airforce Cargo plane (built for 150, but carrying 640).

There will be plenty of blames to go around.

Failure of execution. Failure of intelligence. Failure of imagination.

Failure. Period. Past. Now, let’s focus on the future.

Nothing we can do with spilled milk.

Will women need a male escort to get groceries…how about Winter clothes for the SIV (Special Immigration Visas) arrivals.

Been there, exact same spot.

I remember my Saigon moment e.g. John, head of Child Welfare Bureau where I worked as a volunteer interpreter. He pooled the office to buy me a Merriam-Webster Collegian Dictionary. Don, whose wife was from Holland, brought me some old winter clothes. What comes around comes around.

Now is the time. To build a future, for us and for those who are in need.

It’s not a Saigon moment in the sense that we are left behind (last chopper).

We are not “abandoned mistresses”. We are masters of our own destiny, and by helping others, we help ourselves.

Meanwhile, the real Saigon is still in lock-down. Time has stopped there as it is in Kabul.

Standing still.

No women seen on the streets of Kabul (a city of 5 million). No one is seen on the streets of today’s Saigon (10 million)

Covid rampant. Vaccines in short supply. Visas in short supply.

Our compassion is also in short-supply.

The most striking image I saw today on facebook, was a photo of a Vietnamese woman, in cone hat, with tattered shirt, strolling Saigon empty streets, normally, would be packed with buses and scooters.

The same happened here in the US last year, when homeless folks – the usual invisibles – all of a sudden, appeared out of nowhere.

Both the pandemic and post-war crisis show our failure of imagination.

Just as we had experienced it prior to 9/11 with stove pipes and inter-agencies wrangling ( and not sharing intelligence).

Those terrorists have won, by the long shot, capitalising on our failure of the imagination.

After all, how can good people envision Evil in others of the same species. Why would someone NOT want to live?

What I have become is what today’s Kabul residents desire. What they will become, depends on our generosity.

Bring those winter clothes out of your closets, open your wallets and chip in. It’s time for relief, not judging and passing blames. We have plenty of time left for it (post-mortem)…

For now, it’s the Saigon moment.

When firefighters, broadcasters and stockbrokers on Wall Street went about their daily routine in a crisp Fall day 20 years ago, they did not know their fates were linked with today’s thousands in Kabul.

Same aerodynamics that lifted the planes…same desires to work, earn, rest, play and go home to their families.

We all do.

Yet Evil (personified in people we call terrorists) wanted to disrupt what would be “normal”.

In the end, people cling to planes as they lift off.

Back then, people ran away from them as they plunged into the towers and side-walls of the Pentagon.

Normal people. Back from their vacation. Kids back to school. Company (Oracle) Fall kick-off meeting.

Coast-to-coast (Logan – SFA) or Newark-LAX…or what not.

Technology aided. Technology aimed at buildings (designed by a Japanese architect who studied, I surmised, earthquake and other tremors).

Yet it happened. No one had ever thought of the possibilities. Not the intelligence folks. Not the Head of Security of the World Trade Centre (O Neil, happened to be both).

The same thing today. We thought 1 Trillion dollars bought us time. To leisurely evacuate, withdraw or reduce footprints (whatever the euphemism we chose) in order to see the “forever war” reach its end.

Pin it on Ford, for Saigon; Biden Kabul.

But if we zoom out from immediate news-worthy chaos and crisis of the moment, we’ll see the embers of Colonial Empires still glowing and being scattered: from UK, USSR to the US ( who de facto has assumed responsibilities of world policing).

Meanwhile, China sits back and watches. It too has “pissed on all the trees” to claim territories, with Belt and Road initiatives, from Africa to Central Asia. It tries to learn, to cherry pick and play off one alliance against the other (the art of the deal).

So on any given crisp Fall day, firemen better kiss their spouses, place “love-you” notes in kid”s lunch bags, and stockbrokers, forget not the intangibles money can’t buy.

Evil is lurking. Using bad actors and state-sponsored armies. Whether financed via growing their own poppies, or received fund-transfer from an off-shore account, or embezzled public funds…(and most obviously, take the enemies’ arsenal as they had abandoned post), terrorists are advancing, and “Democracy” is pulling back to consolidate and confront future threats (cyber, Russia and China, climate and pandemic).

Yes, we are good at certain things (Leave no one behind, for instance)…but then, the execution of it, we find ourselves short. First plane that hit the North Tower, we all thought it was a commuter plane.

NO ONE understands evil. What bad actors are capable of. And most surprising of all, like a Hollywood twist, Evil has been lurking all along, unsuspecting, like a troop we trained at our expenses.

The chaos and even stampede in Kabul, the lifting-off plane, casts its shadow back in time, on the South Tower’s glass windows 20 years ago. The only difference now..is that, instead of seeing jumpers (out of the towers), we see climbers (and hangers-onto the departing US Airforce cargo plane).

I thought I’d never see another “Vietnam”, another “Fall of Saigon” until today: “Fall of Kabul”. Don’t tell me they don’t have some resemblance. I felt it…I see “dead people”. I fear for more…casualties caused by panic in the middle of a pandemic.

Those fateful flights are just the beginning…of a long climb, also known as upward mobility, convoluting through the American English alphabet to get to Z so as to become the Gates of the world.

God bless not just America, but other people too, those who keep thinking, and often times, are confused between the US and Heaven.

________________

Technology helps easy access to information, but it cannot help with transformation. For example: the Taliban are collapsing those lego pieces built over the past two decades, while in New York, the Governor resigned – after 60- years worth of institutional course-correction (sociall mores ).

All on facebook, all on google.

Another example. People in Vietnam know Western societies put heavy emphasis on human capital (hence putting health and safety first ) via vaccines and economic support during the pandemic.

Au contraire, people in Vietnam are left to fend for themselves, leaving jobs and losing their economic foothold.

Luckily, the Vietnamese abroad to some extent continue to support Homebase, a Homebase that kicked them out at the end of the war.

The more we see (ads), the more we want. But we have yet built up sufficient infrastructure of the mind, the contextual backbone and intellectual arsenal that civil society counts on: rules of law, rights of privacy and private property (IP), rights to vote , fairness in competition and social responsibility. Those guardrails and inoculation via civic education help smooth the rough edges (while greed greases the wheel).

We are witnessing a tectonic shift in digital architecture (Moore’s Law) and in social demographic (White minority by 2047 in the US). Back in the late 60’s early 70’s, we all watched the hot war on a “cool” medium (TV). For Afghanistan, we have grown callous as the war dragged on, changed course and actors, theatres ( with Iraq interlaced) being and us, inundated by the proliferation of social media, google and the newsmax of the world.

Our appetite for fear, risks, costs and casualties have shifted, from B/W TV to colour digital version of the Kardashians.

We attack people, their characters and shortcoming, reducing public discourse to mere People magazine version ( the lowest common denominator, to be amplified via trolling and post re-distribution). We take pride in knowing more (facts or misinformation) being better informed than everyone else, a “priesthood of all digital subscribers” with license to self- elevate to the top of the food chain.

In short, we know a lot (knowledge) but not deep enough(wisdom),.

The cult of personalities and of amateurs, paid for by advertisers using AI who/which prey on us…till we fall to sleep on…My Pillow.

The cult of shallowness and of triviality.

Always skating on the tip of the iceberg. Always exhibiting the latest trend and fashion.

No sense of history, of meaning and of perspectives.

We exist. Not live.

Social media only fuel what’s already there: our propensity to miss the forest while racing to the bottom.

Meanwhile, take a good look at those faces in Kabul. Won’t be long before they all got covered up, if not by now.

Sadness is befalling the city. Choppers in and out. Ferrying luggages and employees whose jobs are no longer needed.

The shutting-down of a long war. The bookend to a proud-people history.

Being a winner is now equated to being right.

That’s false logic. Winners in history also were toppled by other winners (so who was right?).

Just the moral arc of the cosmos, righting itself out. Only by zooming out , with really long lenses that we can see the contour, the shape of time. Then we judge not, knowing that our vision and view are quite one-sided.

Social media enables, but it also restricts us. Our spheres of influence shrinks to just inside our echo chamber….our digital Green Zone, with spiritual foods from our digital PX’s and shorthand emoticons, LOL.

By seeing only inside the hall of mirrors, we are inadvertently full of illusion of grandeur, of self-promotion and self-projection. The manufactured optics (with no last chopper to come to the rescue).

There is a word for it. Narcissistic.

Narcissus looks at his reflection, self-praising and self-assuring that he, alone, is King of the World (even hiring his own paparazzis..his own memoir ghost writer, publishing his own tweets and snippets).

We are all DJT’s since our moms – out of love – said we were the only child who deserved the most attention and admiration. Then when time comes for reckoning, we are all Andrew Cuomos.