If there were another me, my lost twin, living in the US in parallel to the time I was growing up in Vietnam; wouldn’t it be interesting? (to show I was growing up quiet a lonely boy!?!) Like a childhood fantasy, perhaps I was adopted (hence all the mistreatment)? Every kid at one time thought that.
In the mid-50’s, the US had just introduced and implemented the G.I. Bill to re-integrate its huge WWII Industrial Military Complex back into civilian life. Two things occurred in tandem: the Cold War (with its flares up in Indochina) and the Flower Power with the British-Invasion.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, I couldn’t make the switch fast enough from French to English (as a second language) in the wake of US boots hitting Danang (China beach) and the US dollars changing hands. Our isolated society turned the corner, not for the better. Outwardly, it’s very much like “Good Morning Vietnam”, but inwardly, we were in denial – that the war would go on forever as long as foreign aid kept pouring in e.g. Lucky Strikes, Zippo, and C-rations.
In the US, opposition to the US involvement in Vietnam grew steadily, with sit-ins and teach-ins in Berkeley, Kent State and Columbia University.
It’s the youth (high-school grads) who got drafted and died in Vietnam while the other youth (college students) stood up against the war (if they had not fled to Canada, as recounted in “The things they carried”).
In Vietnam, I was transfixed by the split screen of Woodstock, the movie. Wow! those hairs, those bare chests and free-wheeling (in such contrast to those moonlighting English teachers who taught us – still in uniforms).
Couldn’t make heads from tails, I humped along : an English lesson here, a rock song there, ” What’s that sound every body look, what’s going down. .” Feeling topsy turvy as those torrents swept through our land and our life. Both WWs bombs combined, dropped there – with many still unexploded.
When it was all over, more than 130,000 of us joined then pre-existed 1,000 Vietnamese in the US; and opened a new chapter in Asian-American life.
With first migration (scattered to the four winds) and then second migration (re-clusterized in CA, TX, FL and VA). We thrived and self-taught self-paced civic lessons as we participated in campus life, work life, and political life. There weren’t any in-language materials for the late 70’s (when the US itself was struggling with stagnation).
Later on, in the span of four decades, subsequent waves of Vietnamese arrived. First wave: the Boat People (those who made it). Second wave: Orderly Departure Program – veterans and families of former ARVN, and finally, family-chain migration and foreign students.
The first 130,000 saw themselves as “naturalized” citizens of this country i.e. crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. Later waves have chosen to stay in hybrid mode: neither here nor there, double-dipping and cherry picking.
On Bolsa (CA) and Bellaire Avenue (TX), people could be spotted at outdoor cafes, ghettoizing and cocooning – just a fiber-glass away (from mainstream America.) Then came the I-phone and Boeing 747 i.e. connection and commute.
Voila. We situate ourselves in our own filtered world, of confirmation bias inside one echo chamber, looking for a fight or in-fighting, mostly. Can’t get out of it. Don’t want to. It’s comfortable to be culturally insulated: both talking a big game and riding the entitlement wave, the best of both worlds.
Facebook and Youtube took hold, and worker bees get to work! A match made in heaven: busy bees and ghost work (Adsense and Artificial Intelligence Ads crammed in regardless of video content ). Cultic and fake news ran rampant: Moon’s and Murdoch’s media, Washington Times and Epoch Times. Bit by bit, we succumb to gaslighting and (Pavlovian) salivating.
We don’t need to learn or practice English. DMV, Census and INS had to translate their instructions into Vietnamese to accommodate our growing population. This has done more harm than good since osmosis is no substitute for formal training. (Think of it as our self-imposed – Native American- reservation!)
First-generation immigrants’ reluctance to be fluent in host country’s language leads to their demise: limited access to primary sources. Instead, sheer reliance on short-cut and second-hand analysis of opinion leaders and in-language influencers proves corrosive. The fog thickens and permeates a community hooked on media opioid. Crowd just love side-shows, like “Hail to the King” on (Palm) Sunday, then “Crucify him” on (Good) Friday. The more “Like” the better, even after fb took those” Like” alerts down.
Our bodies are here, yet our heads elsewhere, remote-controlled, abused and enslaved like a bunch of “export” coolies who leverage high currency rates in exchange for the sweat of our eyebrows (this time, to build Digital Railroad). We have sold ourselves short unknowingly and unwittingly. In any conflict, just ask “who benefits in all of this?”. (Matt Dillon played a security guard who came up with a scheme to rob a Brink, AFTER it has finished its cash-collecting round). Have you ever wondered how the big Four get rich?
Or from what financial sources sons and daughters of “Communist Party” officials rely on when they populate N. America campuses?
With “free” face time, we interact with friends and families back home, trading tips and trading prejudices (that Black president etc..). For the sake of manufactured harmony, Saigon and Little Saigon unite under a common cause, against a common enemy: China. ( I wonder if Little Havana has the same pre-disposition. But the evolution is strikingly familiar).
Back in 1972, Nixon and Kissinger already played the China card, thinking it would nicely re-configure global politics (isolating the USSR). Its sell-out of Vietnam was an undesirable way to an “honorable exit” in “decent intervals”.
One stone, two birds – resulting in one ( Nobel Peace) prize two winners: Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger.
Containing China (by letting it be our producer and consumer) while bringing the troops (minus 58,000) home. Save lives and money. Brilliant!
(President Johnson couldn’t have done it, torn between two lovers – the Great Society and the bitch of a war – in his famous quote “I don’t want to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away to do what Asian boys ought to do for themselves.”) On BBC, Frank Snepp, author of two books on Vietnam, did not “get it” (re. Vietnamese for Trumps).
Back to my “Siamese” twin. He and I have merged and co-existed for 45 years. We reunited in College – in Sliding Door, Gwyneth Paltrow missed that train by half a second; hence, two scenarios unfold before her eyes.
Both of us share the love for music, for our motherland even when our future were not without setbacks and sorrow: the sorrow of war, of PTSD, of failure to communicate cross-culturally and to respond to our fellow men.
We wanted to be like those who had abandoned us while, at the same time, despising ourselves for doing so. That dissonance, like a tale of Kieu, drove us to the brink. We are mirrors that reflect America’s loss and loss of face. And vice versa.
It took a while to put the pieces back together e.g. MIA’s and Amerasian repatriation, ODP and Diplomatic re-linking (Obama later did the same with Cuba).
Our two societies – connected loosely on a shared and painful past – just like the Vietnam Wall and the Soldiers statues. This time, it’s us, the Viet Kieu (Vietnamese American) who set boots in Danang, 50 years later (ironically, one of the Navy Commanders happened to be of Vietnam descent). And John McCain, a national hero after late check-out of Hanoi Hilton.
When the hippies handed their reign to yuppies (Gordon Gekko – in an updated version, released from jail for fraud, yet still tried his modified version of “Greed is good” on the Street – his daughter not onboard. His name should have been changed to Rip Van Winkle since junk bond had been replaced by junk food, Beamers by Lexuses.)
Current cultic tragicomedy has been decades in the making. Recent Vietnamese arrivals are reluctant or refuse to get with the program i.e. pay the (admission) price for a seat at the table. Outwardly, it’s easier to drive a Lexus and to put on a pair of designer’s jeans. But (material) acquisition is no substitute for acculturation, just as acoustic is not cul-de-sac. The former makes us consumers, the latter citizens/class.
This latest election brings home that truth: we’ve got baggage to un-load.
Our path toward a civic life has been quite bumpy.
The burden is on us to acquire a new mindset (as oppose to being willful ignorant). The louder we shout, the clearer this Election is a referendum about ourselves, Viet-American, Asian-American or plain old American.
After our little short history of Vietnamese in America (parallel to US’), I bet we want to be taken seriously and not sidelined ( from US cultural, societal and political life). Mainstream America deserves our contribution, not exploitation. In our long history of overthrowing conquerors, it’s us who had to own our struggle for independence. The last skirmish was 79. No way around “the things we carry”.
Though survived the journey from hell to Hell Kitchen (buffet in the times of Covid?) cash- only workers might end up trekking to Canada (as foreign students have inadvertently started with their college admission applications – following the footsteps of their 60’s conscientious-objectors counterparts).
Illusion and misperception lead to mass hysteria. Remember those mass dash to secure toilet papers? Get off that chair and turn off those fake news. Hear the kids out; they have been begging daddy and mommy not to vote for so and so. Preserve those family values and a Republic that still can use our contribution, our self examination and soul searching.
Do it on behalf of those who did not make it to Disney Land (died at sea) or Promised Land (died of covid).
Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones (part of previous waves of British Invasion) keeps on with “You don’t always get what you want”. You can’t drive a Lexus down Bolsa Avenue, and dream of liberating Catina Boulevard. Ask any Cuban in Miami, and you’ll hear the same refrain:
“You can’t always get what you want.”
I think I might have found my twin, living in America – from Little Tokyo to Little Hanava – all along. When our parallel paths converge, it takes on a double-helix shape, once we made through the closing door from opposite side of the world. Just like a Murakami 1Q84 epiphany.
Thang Nguyen 555 