Thang Nguyen 555

Of the 35 places they said we most frequent (and now should be avoided for fear of contracting the virus), none listed our inner space.

Like a character in Steven King’s The Shinning, we are all bored to tears, having self-isolated for the whole damn year. Paranoid, apprehension, compassion fatigue and self-deprecation (from survivor’s guilt – 500,000 deaths by end of February). We hate ourselves, for being born in this century, having lived through this year, and having to put up with circumstances not of our own choosing.

Some even went further in defying the reality of an election, and other facts of life like donning a mask, and staying home.

It’s hard. We are more “Papillon” (Steve McQueen) who escaped after his many trials, than Dustin Hoffman (who stayed in the island and planted tomatoes).

We are mad. Some turn it outward. Others inward.

Undertandably so.

After all, we’re social animals. Nomads. Hunters and gatherers. Even our phones say so (mobile phones).

Information want to be free. Don’t individuals want the same.

I don’t see how Apple can sell many of their 12th version this year. By all counts, it should be the return of the desktops.

Of Zoom and Skype, of wireline telephony and cable television.

I am bored, I am bored, I am bored.

Feet planted in the confine of the four walls, listening to “Day after Day” by the Badfingers.

Smack in the middle of winter. Feeling betrayed, self-betrayed. All those dreams, trips and experiences, denied.

It’s one thing to be polite and civil “Good Morning”. It’s another to anticipate stranger’s path and avoid him/her out right, purposefully and by conditional reflex.

if any damage done during this year, it’s that we have been accustomed to social avoidance and Purell.

We have turned inward, by circumstances. We have become “mad Maxes”, with long beards and less-than-desired appearances. On top of that, Social Media, as if not already addictive, provide us with planned self-reinvention….(on line, we don’t need to wash our hands, and stay socially distant), one of David Bowie’s many 1999 correct predictions.

I am mad like Hell (but I don’t drag the wooden Cross across the Capitol).

I am mad like Hell (but I don’t take selfies during a botched insurrection at the Capitol).

I am mad but I don’t plough my car into the crowd of genuine protesters to advance my cause.

Me against the world of virus, of elements out of control, out of hand. Season comes and goes.

People too. But I stay, become my full self, both adversary and friend. Although mad at the world, I need to make peace with myself. After all, it’s who I have to live with far into the future.

Reflections of my life. Diary of a mad man. Mine and yours. In the times of covid. Near the end times, but not yet the end.

Gate this, gate that e.g. Watergate, Pizzagate…now Capitol Gate.

They like to break in to the Democratic National Headquarter. Not once, but twice.

Each time, the perpetrator gets impeached.

Nixon smells better in light of what has just happened (his “Plumbers” prosecuted and jailed, but at least no one died near Crystal City).

Leaders stand and fall on good/bad counsel. (Many great counsels are dead authors but their ideas are alive and applicable. Just read e.g. the Plumbers broke in Ellberg’s psychiatrist’s office to obtain his private file….then got caught at the Watergate hotel…today’s equivalent of hacking and ransacking your opponent’s and 3rd-ranking in line desk and while at it, took the laptop.

Information want to be free??? That which is hidden will someday be shown from the roof top???

Just think. You cast your vote. Your rep goes to Washington to certify the Electoral Votes. Then all hell broke loosed. Do you think your right to vote is not violated? Do you think you yourself are not trampled upon by extension of your hunkered -down reps, your expression as a citizen and existence as a person?

Democracy was raped last week.

It was a short win for the “unthink” , the un-called-for, the fringes who stole the mantel, the barbarics at the gate.

I am glad people are pursued and put on trial.

Like the Plumbers. The President. After all, the Press themselves were put on trial and beheaded to obtain the truth for us. Why not this time, the table turned.

We cannot let decency and democracy be torn apart in one charge up the Hill.

Democracy cannot be in exile and run for its life. If any, it’s “Ape” men that should be.

Long ago, they gassed millions. The treacherous act must have emboldened Hitler with a sense of invincibility. Mao, Mussolini, Pol Pot and Kim Jong-un, all think they are on top of the wave forever.

Information want to be free. People want to be free. Freedom itself want to be free. History shows that. That it’s not the tank, but the resistance against the tanks…until they need petrol.

I still love that Chinese “tank man”. He was holding two shopping bags…stopping the line of advancing tanks. We have his contemporary counterpart in the Capitol, a lone guard. His name is Goodman. And he is black.

The Black guard matters. The “Plumbers” don’t. We know that much. And that’s the way the human race is. Gate this, gate that. Nixon, this time, comes out smelling much better. Like Musk topping Bezos, Nixon Trump, both X-Gate Presidents. In admitting defeat, Trump finally won ….as the most impeached President whose “supporters” overshadowed the Plumbers. They tried to free not just the files, but the whole file cabinet.

It all started with anger turned inward. Angry at lost opportunities, at myself for making the wrong choices, taking the wrong turns and blaming the wrong people – anyone but myself.

In short, self-implosion.

I am addicted to winning, to be better than others, to never quit, to not lose.

Getting pushed from behind, pulled from up front.

I exist in a society, a technological society, that pushes forward, with flow and fluidity (faster = better).

I am aiming where the put is going to be ( I-phone 13??? should be cheaper in Asia since 13 is not a lucky number. Try to locate the 13th floor button in an old European elevator).

When the water was heated up , I jumped to the frying pan. I don’t allow myself to simmer for fear of slow-boiled effect. It will kill off my reflexes.

So I jumped. Always moving, like a nomad. An angry nomad.

An ape man from a hunter-gatherer tribe. My allegiance is primitively “not to bite the hands that feed you”…whatever hands are at the time. I am a spontaneous man. An emotional man.

Easy as prey. Easy to sway.

I follow fads, crowds and persuasions.

I give myself to the fleeting wind. A waving flag. A certain persuasion, especially when it’s “a lot of people”.

I am a stateless man, without sensibility and sense of place.

I am online, off line and everywhere.

My home is out there, in heaven and hell (perhaps the truth is in between).

I am hopeless and live day to day.

I love heroes and project myself onto them. To join the immortals, “to pull a Samson”. I thought of myself as from a tribe (Sparta preferably), invincible Demi-gods re-incarnated. An immortal.

I live in 21st century. But my heart beats to the drumbeat of yesterday. I I I…always me, me, me.

No one else. What Republic? What commons? What contract?

I did not sign up for this. For smokes and mirrors, reflection of reflections, like Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”.

Trickle-down economy? Tell that to David Stockman. All boats rise when the waters rise? Tell that to Katrina victims.

Meanwhile, things keep flowing forward. Fluidly one-way. Time doesn’t stop. Neither do I.

I don’t want to stop, restless and rumbled. Give me a cause. Give me a fight.

Give me a target. I am dying, imploding anyway. Wanting to take people down with me. No masks. No vaccines.

The world has heartlessly passed me by…Opportunities have passed me by. Perhaps they floated South to Mexico, then West to China. It’s one thing to make a wrong choice. It’s another when you had no choice. I have been cheated out of good things in life..Of A Roman Holiday, of Marie Antoinette, of Casablanca..things I know deep down I don’t deserve and will never have. Except for the 15 minutes that Andy Warhol mentioned cryptically and prophetically. On Parler, on Gab, on TikTok, on Twitter, on Youtube and on Facebook……..

My 15 minutes online. On Instagram and Telegram which “steal” my attention and auction them up for ads revenue.

I left a footprint, an imprint and an impression. My handwriting, fingerprints and footprints. On this Earth, across the river, over the hill and in the cave, where I will eventually lay down and die an unwanted death.

I have never built anything. Only consuming them, complaining about them and trashing them around.

I am an American.

It feels as though a thousand pounds have just been lifted from my chest as I hear fireworks and even gun shots (Texas) marking 2021 arrival. Like an approaching train that is finally here. The beginning of the beginning. The Big Reset.

Well, I even re-started my laptop.

And I shed some old skin and some bad attitudes while at it. ( Been grumpy and morbid since Feb).

Well, you know…..(picturing my lower lip extended and revealed the lighter pink flesh)…

Yes, I have lived a roller- coaster life. So what!

I am still here (and regretably, not the other 2 million+ deaths – many notable and noble- from covid in 2020 – LAST year).

During the Vietnam War, an average of 19 American died per day except for 2 on that last day.

I still don’t understand what conflict can contribute to humanity (in above example, we’ve got the Powell Doctrine i.e. if you put boots on the ground, be damn sure you dominate and win, and not starting a wishy-washy war, since in war as in election, it’s a zero-sum game i.e. win-lose).

The 50’s sent us on the road to rebuilding and re-setting. Trying to catch-up with the Russian, competing for the Moon. 70 years into it, I found people living under the freeways, in tent, six-feet apart. Can’t be more “social distancing” than being homeless while trying to stay covid-free. I saw EMS vehicles in front of a nursing home today. Hope whoever they came for make it from last year to the next.

If 2021 sees us with a new virus, I hope it’s a good virus (like White-Hat hackers) to cascade and pay forward, the way Chuck Feeney, MacKenzie Scott…have… (as opposed to “cursing at darkness”).

Let’s hope the Big Reset brings out better angels in us, in me. I promise to change a few things, besides a new attitude . I hope it were as easy as my re-starting the laptop. Or posting a blog about a glass half-full. Which glass isn’t? Are you kidding? New Year, New You.

Gotta to have a goodnight sleep. To hit the gym. To stop the frown, and put on a smile. Who wouldn’t want to see a smiling person walking through the door. It lits up the room. In a big Re-set, one lives as if he/she hadn’t lately.

Of course I want to know what’s going on, where to find fish and where to avoid the lions. Thanks to those cave-paintings. It must have been painstaking to carve into rocks for instructions’ sakes.

From oral tradition to print tradition (Silk-Road written contracts), from electronics communication to digital communication, we want to get out of the box and the cave.

We are both nomads and settlers, both social distancing and social butterflies (the worst punishment in prison is isolation).

People pick up on and monetize on the fact we are creatures of conformity; social animals with awareness of social status.

I spent my first 4 years alone, most of the time.

Then on my first day at school, I was left in a room full of crying kids. I too cried, not realizing what I was into. Later, at a stern-looking pediatric’s office, I again joined other kids who cried in the waiting room (his hand felt extremely cold as his instrument was poking on my chest).

Along with conformity, we have our bias. We mis-perceived (read into) communication as illustrated by a Vietnamese tale.

Once upon the time, an army man came home from a distant war. Wife and a kid he never saw greeted him (his wife was pregnant when he left for war). Right off, the kid said “You are not my Dad; my Dad only comes in the night”. Of course, he exploded. His wife jumped to her death. Then our newly minted single-parent burned a flickering candle bright enough to cast a shadow on the wall. “There he is, my Dad”.

Message intent never equates message perceived. Along the way via a medium, on which it is encoded, it encounters noise, breakdown, signal jam and lag to finally be decoded into some resemblance of what had originally been intended (no wonder in the old days, they sent multiple pigeons and horsemen for redundancy).

People in propaganda know this. They can parley, distort and destroy an otherwise good message. Conversely, even with the best of intentions, we still fail (total vaccination, for instance). Jack Ellul in Propaganda says, ” the strength of propaganda reveals one of the most dangerous flaws of democracy”.

Then comes the money part. Some time back in the 60’s, we watched the Evening News over TV dinner, and flipped the VHF channels, from 2 to 4 to 7, just to end up with roughly the same commercials (blitz) on all three networks. At least, in between, we can still have a conversation, a common culture, and a consensus e.g. a far-away land, a controversial war (norm).

Then Cable afforded us more choices. VHS recording (not Betamax) gave us the liberty to skip ads (time shift).

While broadcasting becomes narrow-casting, still under FCC regulations e.g. rebuttal and retraction….or else, license revoked.

Nielsen audience ratings are KPI’s to price out ads rates, Gallup poll and Pew Research for political opinion. Marketers often lamented that they were paying for half of the household TV’s that nobody were watching, but no one knows which half….

Precious spectrums were auctioned up with limits on ownership concentration in one market. 1984 saw Anti-trust Law in full force with the break-up of Ma Bell. Media are required to serve the public interests e.g. children programming, PSA’s and Fairness Doctrine/Equal Time, Letters to the Editors and anti-libel.

Broadcast stations can only run a certain amount of ads per hour while DJ’s cannot take bribes (payola). Truth in Advertising was enforced. So was Communication Decency Act (=PG-13) within the Communication Acts of 1996 (section 230). (Tipper Gore, remember?)

In between literacy (print culture 1517) and the airwaves (mass culture 1920,1950) we had evolved from being citizens of a nation to being consumers of news. The press and the politicians operated (used to) on a symbiotic mode i.e. scratch my back, I scratch yours. Newsroom was completely partitioned from their marketing/business side. Katherine Graham, after inherited the Post from her husband, allowed Ben Bradlee to have full reign, hence, the Pentagon Papers and ensued lawsuits.

Then big boys e.g. Time Warner, Disney, News Corp etc.. threw good money to buy up media outlets, consolidate them as conglomerates.

With digital transformation and social networks, everything changes ( I- tunes for 99 cents, New York Times, also 99 cents per month). While broadcast stations are still required to test their Emergency Broadcast System, the APARNET, once invented for communication continuity in the event of a nuclear strike, has been commercialized. No longer one-to-one as in telephony, or one-to-many as in Radio/TV, the internet allows (many-to-many, and some day, South-to-South information flow e.g. S Africa to S America) to upload and mesh up. Gigs can code, hack and share (MP3 &4) across geographical boundaries. The results? Culture shock and cultural imperialism if not blocked outright by state-enforced firewalls. In short, society and politics are upending.

Delayed “narrow-cast” can now be viewed on facebook and youtube, with Web 2.0-enabled viewer’s comments…NOT subjected to FCC mentioned rules and regulations (un-regulated). Bad news travel. Fake news travel 6 times faster than real news. “Tech” companies, not ” media” companies, touted zero-tolerance on pornography, hate speech and school-bullies, can barely cope with Russian interferences in 2016 and 2020 elections’ protests.

Not only consumers of news, we are also cogs or co-producers – of an user-generated content and machine-generated ads apparatus. No longer do we have to wait for the Evening News. The news cycle is 24/7 accessible from anywhere. Mobile technology opens the flood gate for both mis- information and “dis” information. Propaganda is sugar-coated and unrestrained. Social networks become social MEDIA, while unburdened by FCC regulations. A match made in heaven: consumers’ attention for ad dollars, and consumer’s time to augment bots’ (machine) learning. Algorithms rule. Soft wares eat your lunch.

We no longer are in the flesh (off line) but exist only as data points (online).

The death of expertise (foreign correspondents & Editorial Board) and the cult of amateurs i.e. no more guard-rails and speed bumps.

Inadvertently, we help “bots” complete those captchas, auto-completion, translation and transmission of fake news. Our “volunteering act” both reduces product-development cost (we do ghost work for free) and helps Social Media capture ad revenue via evolving smart algorithms . This new micro-targeting: what we click, how long we stay on an article, what we share and re-tweet … helps capture higher returns on otherwise wasted marketing dollars.

Meanwhile, feed and friends recommendations walled us in our echo chamber and digital sweat-shop, to enrich Mark (fb) and Jack (Twitter): click, re-tweet, rinse, repeat..

Add an I-phone into the mix, social media could now “ping” us, like an Amber Alert, demand our attention, which then be auctioned as commodity to ad sponsors (many of whom have to do-it-yourself ads). With scroll feature, a powerful “mainframe” in our pocket enables a digital deluge that flushes our brain at the touch of an app (the chips are ever smaller and always-on). It’s a new symbiotic relationship, this time, not the Media vs Politics, but Big Tech and us (Big Audience/Producer), endorphin pusher and users of virtual drugs (no beef, still salivate).

Before we know it, Web 2.0 has become an instrument of exploitation and extraction if we let them ( Harvard’s drop-outs have become digital colonialists, botnets our lords. Robot, the name for slave, now our master, seduces us and uses our “reputation” as influencer to spread fake news). Netizens (people and bots) now number in 4 to 5 billions, all function as news editors and distributors.

What to do? Boycotting and missing out? rationing our use and access? Calling out and contributing positive content to balance out addictive and toxic ” social “media”? Or becoming a Luddite?

With its speed, scale and scope, Facebook Nation is 2.5 Billion strong (equal to China and India combined). It is the news aggregator monopoly, richest in data-collection and manipulation. Memories from past posts, our quantified and edited selves all sorted, analyzed and stored in the cloud….this virtuous cycle keeps feeding itself propelled by Network Effect, pumping dopamine right into our neurons with positive reinforcement from “friends” and “bots” – knowing we’re social animals with soft spots for “fat and sugar” in our digital diet.

How come those Macedonia kids got so rich – 2016 Election, who enrich Ryan’s World with a hefty $30 Million in 2020?. Currently, Newsmax and Fox News anchors retracted their slandering of Dominion Voting Software (per anti-libel act). Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Apple and Amazon took a sharp turn by cutting off the Commander-in-Chief’s account and cohorts’ Parler.

Now I wish we were back in the cave, reading (or braille-reading) those paintings. Forget the “good” times in between. Those TV dinners tasted no good anyway. And did we really have a conversation in front of the tube? (think Rob Reiner and his father-in-law, Archie). We always succumb to selective memories (that radio days were the best – “FDR’s fire-side chat” during Pearl Harbor brought the country together against enemies, foreign or domestic i.e. Japanese-American.

We succumb to conformity ( that everyone watched M*A*S*H* and our friends share this, then it must be true) e.g. Gab and Telegram. We, to a final analysis, are our worst self-propagandist and self-hypnotist. We belong to a generation of narcissists, prisoners of our own device, whose glass cage is an equivalent of Narcissist’s reflecting pond. A young author even coined the term “trick mirror” to depict her growing-up digital.

I think the future is better, only if man and machine got along. But then, any choice we make comes at a price. Our first news carrier, a runner, paid for it dearly with his life as he delivered the news at the foot steps of Marathon.

I should just leave this blog blank.

That way, you, the reader can just “read-into” it, before a single line is penned.

Such is the nature of pre-judging (a priori).

All men are mortal alright. But it is also true, all men/women carry a set of pre-conceived notions and expectations about life and its potential. Without those parameters, Social Security wouldn’t be able to price out our payments. So are the actuaries for our compensation and contracts.

How much is a man’s/woman’s life worth? what’s left of him/her after cremation for “dependents”?

What’s the cost of child rearing, of education e.g. a couple of hundred thousands to raise a child in the US, students loan/debt (depends on whose point of view), one’s expected earning potential and retirement benefits.

Our information-rich society is telling us we can now know (with prejudice) most of yesterday’s unknowns e.g. how many more months do we have to live (medically) and how soon we can travel freely (when 50% have caught the virus) etc…

No wonder cyber espionage is on the rise evident in latest hack to the Treasury of the US and hundreds of US companies.

Amazon is building its supercomputer also. So is IBM. And I am sure, China has collected (and applied shaming on) from its citizens…: who did not return its public bikes, who crosses the street on red lights…

We want the machine to be bias-free. Yet we know it’s human errors and human programmers that inject “prejudice” into those “innocent” machines.

Facebook and Youtube have collected a treasure trove of data on our Likes and Shares.

Amazon has zeta bites of consumer data to crunch (Recommendations software).

It’s we who enable current data-driven society. We who upload our profile, our photos and our places of travel. To the cloud. To the servers. And to the big Four.

Soon they will face the music (EU already imposed a fine on Twitter). Anti trust law. Privacy law. Cyber security measures. Imagine how enlightened we, the users, would be if we could access a fraction of that ever-growing database so far at the big Four’s disposal and exploit.

Just when we thought we have left the tribal village behind (as in an example of unwanted pregnant gals leaving the village), the global village pings us, beeps us like an Amber Alert in the night in a high-privacy high individualistic society.

If we manage to climb a few rungs away and upward, we get pulled right back in ( since we are so and so’s daughter …who did not approve of out-of-the-wedlock pregnancy . Of being gay. Of being handicapped.) Sociologists have coined such phenomenon “urbanization”: people move to the city, where it’s more anonymous, more impersonal to seek self-advancement and reinvention.

Many of us want to escape the past, to put on a new persona, surrounded by Likes and Recommendations (from social media).

Having paid so much attention to fulfilling work and (false) life expectations, we face a reality: what do we do with this stranger staring at us in the mirror? Do we know ourselves better than Amazon and Facebook (depends on how dependent and addictive we are to social media). Do we get all the positive reinforcement just from a machine?

The more click baits we post, the cycle reinforces itself. And we end up living alone offline, and together with people of the same prejudice online. There is a word for it: echo chamber, whose residents are all digitally walled-off. Always Us vs Them.

We find ourselves with in-bred view of the world (which world?). The only world that shrinks (golf partners keep dying on you) while the rest are growing, populating and pro-creating. At some point, we don’t recognize it at all e.g. France is battling the encroaching world of Islam. That which we don’t understand or pay attention to, threatens us. Again, all due to our pre-judgement ( that differences are worse and undesirable).

Don’t blame it on our tribes, our teachers and our texts. It’s us. We all deride some satisfaction by ridicule or cast others as irrelevant and inferior. That way, we , while enjoy momentary sense of group unity, are not challenged or forced to grow. Homo Erectus of the tribal village keep putting on blinders and finish the race (of life) by base instincts, ..full of pre-judgement, never evolve and explore the fullest potential of Homo sapiens in a global village. We should learn from the big Four, whose wealth catapult in such a short time.

Wish I had just left this page blank from the start. That way, you can read into it whatever you want.

First the disease. Then the vaccine. Finally the rush to spend to line people up for a jab.

Who are we going to enlist? Dead Presidents? X-Presidents? Or Presley (Elvis).

It’s called “pair-association”. The “Like” factor i.e. if I like Lady Gaga, I am more likely to buy VOCE VIVA.

Entertainment (pleasant) and Medicine (unpleasant) make unlikely bed-fellows; yet… from Snake Oil to Shampoo… they are a couple.

Elvis Presley was recruited for a Polio vaccination campaign….Michael J. Fox for Parkinson’s (and recently planned but scrapped, Dennis Quaid for a covid push – ironically, he played a Secret Service Agent in Vantage Point).

Besides the Church, Madison Avenue has done us a dis-service (by turning propaganda into an art form and a science): “buy this pass (indulgence) for Peter’s gate..” “think different”.

The hidden messages to monopolize our attention, behind those catch phrases and chants are:

• you are missing out….you should see that many (proof) of your friends and neighbors are buying , hence, you should play catch-up (he who dies with the most toys wins) and keep up your status (of being equal…..with the Jones, folks like us tend to do or buy this )
• the celebrity/hero you admire are choosing this or doing that… you should too (be all you can be, join the Army – incidentally, recent Presidents never followed this advice of “being all Presidential they can be”)
• conversely, the celebrity/hero you worship doesn’t like that….hence, neither should you (GOP? don a mask?)
• if you think it’s true, perhaps it is (Dems are gays, GOP’s tax less ….while hard data tend to disprove this).

It’s been since that experiment conducted by Pavlov (dog-meat-bell-saliva—–>dog-no meat-bell-saliva) that our society has been played by bad actors, from Strong-Man State to Consumer Society.

Tulip (as in century past mania in Holland) or Tweeter (as in Trump) bit by bit, tweet by tweet, we’re sucked in, 140 characters at a time while living in a Pavlovian post-truth world. Logic and consistency tells us to wait it out, the crowd can’t be wrong ( truth vs illusion) to follow-through….to persevere….tomorrow….soon….you’ll see…..just to find out the other side….of that proverbial Pavlov door is placebo.

Last century’s the Seekers, after selling all their possessions and waited all night for nothing, hugged one another in the morning, to self-congratulate on their faith – rationalizing their illusionary & vain pursuit – that it’s their tenacious faith that delayed End Times.

The antidote, per Walter Lippmann, who studied propaganda effects of WWI, is to stay out and away from crowd and chants, from what stirred but not shaken (truth mixed with untruth or half-truth). If Dracula were to appear in full form and in full light, we wouldn’t follow.

The Lt Governor of GA said it best on PBS Newshour: “At some point, people are going to realize they have been duped”. At the end of any slow-boiled experiment, all frogs realize they have been cooked.

BTW, because of false advertising (esp when it relates to health), we now have “Truth in advertising” and FDA.

Those guard-rails still stand despite many failed attempts to bend them.

Once upon a time, there was a disease, then the cure, then the rush jab…

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”.

Saigon during my time was divvied up into a dozen districts joined by multiple roundabouts. Growing up during the height of the Vietnam War, I came-of-age not without incidents. Those news events got out via News Bureau pouches and diplomatic pouches, but the personal stuff stayed in the vault of my memory.

Sometimes, our alley activities intersected with world events e.g. district 3 kids turned out to watch the burning monk (incidentally, this act of protest inspired another Quaker across the world to do the same outside of Mc Namara’s Pentagon window). Other times, we just created our own fun….e.g. 2 condense milk tin cans on each end as telephony….or movies projected outdoors (I can still hear occasional roars of laughter when those B/W reels showed one of my cousins putting on his newly-wed’s ring as a pledge).

Our paved alley was for multi and mix uses e.g. gym and outdoor water park since it rained half of the year with half-breeds, both French and Indian – in our Garden of Eden ( we were 5 and without swim wears).

Then we grew up a few more years, old enough to toss secret love letters to each other. Fights broke out, always championed by the alley bully. A struggle for an Alpha Male position. This took a worse turn when a new kid showed up in the block.

Bold with a beautiful voice, Aily captured our hearts. Her mom put on makeups and went to work at night – we kids wondered what kind of work for a single mom to earn money during war time, with GIs, their wads of cash and a short R&R.

She then grew into her mom’s shoes…with makeups and all-black outfit for club gigs. All I remember was seeing an older guy gave her a ride on his fancy scooter out of our alley ( after she has pitch-perfected her Carpenters’ number…”Long ago, it seems so far away….”)

Our alley resumed binge watching e.g. Wild Wild West and Mission Impossible on Armed Forces Channel. American imports were well received on the streets and over the airwaves. Its music found one of our own “superstar” who rose above the alley and soared at an early age.

At the far end of that alley, Aily was the only kid who chased her dream while our bully was chasing his LSD. Last I heard, he died of an OD. Now I wish I knew what has become of our superstar….of “Long ago, it seems so far away…..it’s just a radio…come back to me again…and play your sad guitar”…

Told you. You can go into Library of Congress and dig up now declassified materials on the war, its “5-o-clok follies” and news briefs. Of Bob Hope’s Christmas Specials, but the personal angle? they are deep inside my head…voices and noise, scenes and sadness, laughters and fun. We are children of war…but not without resilience and life itself.

It used to be someone else’s domain and responsibilities e.g. large-scale WW’s, large-scale energy outfits, large-scale media outlets, large-scale public health care….

Now, everything seems to splinter off, scattered around – distributed. What is newsworthy? what is real? (how many data points to make a proposition proof-positive?) Where to stop playing God with virus and vaccine?

We can’t handle this new version of truth. We’re asked too much, beyond hoarding toilet papers and donning a mask, staying out of hospitals while practicing self-care.

We stay home. We stay in front of the screen. Unable to figure out where to look for relevant and pertinent information to stay alive (fb has just released an interview w/ Dr Fauci re. vaccines).

What’s the different symptoms? Flu vs allergies, covid19 vs SARS-cov-1….

Alvin Toffler once touted that technological wave usher in swift changes which turn us into pro-sumers (instead of being mere consumers). By that, he meant, we have to actively ascertain and engage in our act of consumption, be it news media services or health care services.

Can’t handle the truth!

It’s like giving Uranium to Uber drivers, guns for tots and grenades for Salvation-Army kettles.

Too much all at once. Real news vs fake news.

Real election vs fraudulent one.

Real vaccines vs ones whose efficacy are in question.

We live in a time of information overload. Plenty of access, too few expertise.

We need to beef up our self-education and fine tune our filtering.

We need to – by default – build our own defense system (drones?), our own newsroom, our own ICU on top of home office, home classroom and home cooking. The outer world is “back-sourcing” ghost work to us e.g. pumping your own gas, recycling, energy saving and self-checkout.

21st-century living no longer is a walk in the park.

Can’t blame it on Big Government, Big Tech (Media) and Big Banks. Too big to fail. It’s us who are dispensable – like scapegoats- on the altar to appease the rage of the gods (in the form of virus, forest fires and flood).

The plagues are here. They are undoing our vaccine-enabled prolong life span. Life expectancy was teetering around 49 for male living back in the 1950. Now it’s 77+ . Tell that to 410,000+ deaths. A death is a death – under a Theocracy or Democracy.

Can’t handle the truth.

Who is to blame? Congress gridlock? the Cuomo brothers? the Max brothers? Or it’s us? Who are the pro-sumers and the consumers? Climate change due to smokestacks ? (we thought we had farmed it out to Beijing?). Or the truth hit home, and we are the ones to be condemned by future generations, future Gretas. TIME magazine cover should feature a mirror so each reader can see for him/herself who is to blame.

Can’t handle the truth.

It’s been a month since Nov 3. We are migrating to a parallel universe to continue our conversation, our new echo chamber. We will talk – in French, it’s called Parler. For me, I will just pray instead of Parler (more privacy and less influenced by those mass-induced MLM cultic hype and hysteria).

That which doesn’t kill us, makes us strong. Nothing is more potent than truth itself. If it doesn’t kill us, it will set us free.