I first began to notice these electric scooters when I was in Vietnam. Young people would use them to zoom from their apartment building to the gate to pick up delivery items. I used to make sarcastic comments to my wife, like, "What's the matter with him? Do his legs not work?"
At the time I just wrote it off as a Vietnamese thing, but since I've returned home to America, I've noticed lots of able-bodied young people zooming around on park trials on electric bikes or electric scooters. And I can't really understand it.
I guess I can understand it from the kid's perspective. Kids love zooming on stuff, and they don't care about things like exercise or carbon footprints.
But what are the parents thinking? (I'm assuming in most cases the parents are the ones who paid for these things.) Did the parents see these things in the store and think, "Oh, great! Now my kids can get even less exercise while increasing their carbon footprint at the same time!"
I mean, we are facing an obesity crisis and an environmental crisis at the same time. Why did we humans think it was a good idea to make it so young people can bike and scooter while using up electricity and not moving at all?
I should note I also see a fair amount of people in their 20s on electric bikes or electric scooters, and I think by the time you're in your 20s, you should really know better. You know about carbon footprints. You know about the value of exercise. Use your own legs!
Addendum: I have no issue with anyone who actually has a mobility issue and uses these. If you are 65 and have bad knees, go ahead and use an electric bike. I'm just talking here about the mass adaptation of these things as a kind of general use for everyone.
Monday, January 16, 2023
I'm still following Jordan Peterson on Twitter. And every day, I'm getting more and more disillusioned with him.
I frequently get the urge to write a blogpost about how I've completely lost respect for Jordan Peterson. And then I remember, I already wrote that post last year. And I refrain.
But it strikes me now that I was too nice to him in that previous post. I started that post off by saying:
"God help me, I actually like Jordan Peterson".
After the past year of continuing to follow Jordan Peterson on Twitter, I would like to revise that statement somewhat. Jordan Peterson is an idiot. A moron. An opportunist. A grifter. A pea-brained social media addict incapable of processing complex ideas.
This is the Tweet yesterday that finally sent me over the edge.
...but I've been thinking of writing some version of this post now for the past few months.
Ever since he got reinstated on Twitter, Jordan Peterson has been constantly attacking climate scientists and spreading global warming skepticism. Who does he think he is? When did this become his aware of expertise?
That, plus Jordan Peterson--at least as he comes off on Twitter--is filled with bile. He is constantly furious at various people.
He is also a bully. He will occasionally use his huge platform--his millions of followers--to attack ordinary people on Twitter.
Whatever the reason, though, I'm done with the man.
This will be my last post on Jordan Peterson. I'm unfollowing him on Twitter to eliminate the temptation of writing another post next year about how I'm even further disillusioned with him. I'm just done. Clearly there's no hope of anything intelligent coming from this man ever again.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
I've been following Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Twitter now for a while. For no particular reason, other than I thought she was cool, and I like to follow cool people on Twitter to see what they have to say.
I have to confess, I didn't know a ton about her. I knew she was a feminist, and championed women's rights in the Middle East.
I knew Christopher Hitchens really liked her, so during my Christopher Hitchens phase I was inclined to think positively of her.
And I'd seen her on TV before (Daily Show, Real Time, etc) and thought I liked what she had to say.
I had heard some people say she was part of the Islamophobic group, but given her biography I thought she had earned her right to be critical of Islam.
But... she tweeted out something the other day that I thought was just insane.
If sea levels rise, then what? Apocalypse? No, the situation is called the Netherlands. Perhaps, we should all learn how to build dikes. Next climate summit and all climate summits after that should be held in Holland. Proost!
This is insane for all the obvious reasons I probably don't even need to point out. Rising sea levels is only one of many problems that we are going to be facing under climate change--food shortages, fresh water shortages, natural disasters, killer heat waves, etc.
But, even assuming that you accept Aayan Hirsi Ali's presumption that all we need to do is build more dikes to combat climate change, it still doesn't make sense. How about we just stop climate change, so we don't have to build all those dykes? I mean, it's got to be way cheaper to solve the problem now than just deal with it later, right?
So I chimed in.
Or... we could cut emissions so that the sea levels don't rise. It would require some investment, but it would be a lot cheaper than having every coastal city in the world learn how to build dikes.
But then I started looking at Aayan Hirsi Ali's tweets. (Despite having followed her for years, I haven't been seeing her tweets. Must be something to do with the Twitter algorithm.) And a quick glance through indicates she's full on into this conservative culture war grift.
This is how to defeat CRT: through the ballot box.
Looking at her bio on Wikipedia, it looks like she's been associated with Right-Wing nuts for a long time. It was on me for not knowing more about her I guess.
Thursday, March 04, 2021
So, I broke my own rule again, and tweeted about politics. I couldn't help myself. This fake Dr. Seuss controversy is just so emblematic of how broken our political discourse is. (Blame the media, blame social media, blame the grifters who make their living preaching about the cultural war.)
...and what? I promise that no publisher will ever be able to cease publication of any book ever, even if it becomes unprofitable for them? Don't get me wrong. I'm not happy that these books aren't being published anymore. I love everything Dr Seuss, even his lesser known books. But you can't possibly make a political issue out of this, can you? It's not the Democrats' fault. The real problem is that corporations are in charge of our cultural heritage. The corporations own the rights to these books, and if they want to withdraw them from circulation, there's nothing you can do about it. But it's not a left vs. right issue. How about passing this law: If a corporation decides to stop publishing a book (or movie, or whatever), they automatically lose the rights to it and it becomes public domain. Then anyone who wants to can publish it. There, I just solved the cancel culture problem. The attempt by conservatives to channel this outrage into electoral victories is really dishonest. What specific legislative reforms are you proposing that will prevent a corporation from ceasing the publication of a certain book?
"Vote for me and..." ...and what? I promise that no publisher will ever be able to cease publication of any book ever, even if it becomes unprofitable for them?https://t.co/sv9LioK4KFpic.twitter.com/wun3EXJkdX
Don't get me wrong. I'm not happy that these books aren't being published anymore. I love everything Dr Seuss, even his lesser known books. But you can't possibly make a political issue out of this, can you? It's not the Democrats fault.
The real problem is that corporations are in charge of our cultural heritage. The corporations own the rights to these books, and if they want to withdraw them from circulation, there's nothing you can do about it. But it's not a left vs. right issue.
How about passing this law: If a corporation decides to stop publishing a book (or movie, or whatever), they automatically lose the rights to it and it becomes public domain. Then anyone who wants to can publish it. There, I just solved the cancel culture problem.
The attempt by conservatives to channel this outrage into electoral victories is really dishonest. What specific legislative reforms are you proposing that will prevent a corporation from ceasing the publication of a certain book?
Actually a brief addendum to these tweets: Taking a closer look at the article I linked to, she's actually not talking about the publisher's decision to stop publishing those 6 books specifically, but Loudoun County Schools. So my point perhaps doesn't apply very well to this article, but I think it still applies to a lot of the conservative talking points that have been circulating in the last 24 hours--i.e. a lot of other conservatives have been complaining about the publisher's decision.
Second Addendum (March 5, 2021): As long as I'm talking about so-called cancel culture, I should link to Whisky's post on the Gina Carano controversy: Retreating from the sands of Iwo Jima As Whisky implies in his post, this may be less about "The Left" and more just about how The Mouse does business:
Carano on the other hand is a fighter first, and an actor ... well, being an actor is somewhat further down her list of priorities. Indications point to her spoiling for a fight with the Mouse. And the Mouse don’t fight — the Mouse makes situations disappear.
Yours truly chimed in in the comments to point out that this is nothing new--The Mouse has always moved quick to get rid of any actors actors who could potentially be controversial. See the biographies of former Disney golden boys Tommy Kirk or Bobby Driscoll.
I've been seeing this sentiment on Facebook and Twitter a lot recently. And while it's not wrong, I'm uncomfortable with the unspoken implication that often goes along with it--they deserve to get beat by the police.
This is the kind of freedom to protest we want for all citizens. We shouldn't be demanding that white protesters get treated like black protesters. We should be demanding that black protesters get treated like white protesters.
Let me state at the outset that there has been some hyperbolic language about Rush Limbaugh on the left. I'm willing to grant that Limbaugh is not the worst person ever.
But, what he is is a polemicist and a party hack. He's spent his whole career exploiting and exacerbating the divisions in American society. He's consistently peddled the narrative that Americans on one half of the political divide are on the side of good, and Americans on the other half of the political divide are bad. And he's consistently manipulated or distorted the facts in order to serve this narrative.
The July–August 1994 issue of Extra!, a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), alleges 50 different inaccuracies and distortions in Limbaugh's commentary.[171][172] Comedian Al Franken, who later became a Senator, wrote a satirical book (Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations) in which he accused Limbaugh of distorting facts to serve his own political biases.[173]Of Limbaugh's controversial statements and allegations they have investigated, Politifact has rated 84% as ranging from "Mostly False" to "Pants-On-Fire" (a signification for extremely false), with 5% of Limbaugh's contested statements rising to the level of "Mostly True" and 0% rated "True".[6] These debunked allegations by Limbaugh include suggestions that the existence of gorillas disproves the theory of evolution, that Ted Kennedy sent a letter to Soviet General SecretaryYuri Andropov seeking to undercut President Reagan, that a recent lack of hurricanes disproves climate change, and that President Obama wanted to mandate circumcision.[174][175][176][177]Limbaugh has been criticized for inaccuracies by the Environmental Defense Fund. A defense fund report authored by Princeton University endowed geoscience professor Michael Oppenheimer and professor of biology David Wilcove lists 14 significant scientific facts that, the authors allege, Limbaugh misrepresented in his book The Way Things Ought to Be.[178] The authors conclude that "Rush Limbaugh ... allows his political bias to distort the truth about a whole range of important scientific issues."
In other words, he does not deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award which is designed to:
recognize those people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".[2]
...unless, of course, we've entered some strange new reality in which our government is now unable to distinguish between what is serving the national interests of the United States and what is serving the interests of the Republican party.
Which apparently we have.
I know in the past 4 years there have been so many new lows that nothing seems to shock us anymore. I read the news of Donald Trump giving Rush Limbaugh the medal of Freedom, and I thought, "Oh, of course, that's just the kind of thing Donald Trump would do."
But it's still worth being shocked and outraged about this. Every new time our institutions are corrupted, we should be outraged.
Healthy functioning republican governments do not claim that someone who is serving the partisan political agenda of one party is providing a great service to the nation. This is yet another sign that our republic is changing into something else.
So the President's son has published a book called “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us”. This is the President's son, accusing half the country of thriving on hate and wanting to silence the other half. Besides being blatantly untrue, this is the kind of rhetoric designed to divide the country and set us at each other's throats. And the President is promoting it on twitter.
My son, @DonaldJTrumpJr is coming out with a new book, “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us” – available tomorrow, November 5th! A great new book that I highly recommend for ALL to read. Go order it today!
In some alternate universe somewhere, people are shocked that the President of the United States could engage in such divisive rhetoric instead of promoting a shared sense of civic virtue. But of course it's not shocking. It's the new normal.
In other news, day after day more and more solid evidence is coming out that President Trump has engaged in blatant corruption and abuse of power. All this mountain of evidence has done nothing to break the faith of Donald Trump's core supporters. Donald Trump still enjoys the support of the Republican party, and conventional wisdom is that the Republican controlled Senate will never vote to impeach him. So it looks like he's just going to get away with it.
Ninety-nine percent of white evangelicals and 98 percent of Republicans who rely on Fox News as their primary news source do not believe Mr. Trump should be impeached and removed, the survey found, compared with 94 percent of Republicans over all.
And I know we now live in a world in which different political groups now live in different realities, so very little facts are agreed upon. Which makes discourse impossible. But you can't tell me that Donald Trump's supporters believe that he is good for the country as a whole. What they know is that politics is us against them, and that they view Donald Trump as one of "us" and he is hurting the "them", and that's more important than what is good for the country.
In other news, the U.S. is pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. It's difficult to overstate how devastating this is. This, quite literary, could mean that the human race will not survive to the end of the century.
On CNN today: 11,000 scientists warn of 'untold suffering' caused by climate change
Even if everyone agreed on the need to take urgent action, it would still be difficult to beat the clock on the climate change apocalypse. But we can't even agree that this is a crisis.
In New Delhi, the air has (once again) become so bad that the charts can not even measure it. It is literally killing people to breathe the air.
The causes are a combination of traffic, farmers burning their crops, and fireworks set off for the Diwali festival.
An Indian friend tells me that the government in the past had tried to ban fireworks for the Diwali festival, but the outcry from Hindus was so great that the government had to relent. The fireworks must be set off, even if it means choking the people of New Delhi.
In Saigon (where I live now) the air pollution is regularly at unsafe levels. Yesterday on the expats Facebook page, someone posted the air quality number. The comments were filled with surly people (both expats and Vietnamese) telling him to stop posting this, what was the point? We all had to live in this pollution anyway, so why complain about it? One of the Vietnamese commenters wrote in a proverb: "You can't run from the sun"
In my apartment, I always worry about the baby. We have the windows shut and the air-filter on constantly. Our attempt to purify the air, however, is undercut by our Korean neighbor, who smokes in the hallway right outside our door.
I can some days hear him coughing--hacking--very loudly. He sounds in pain. But he keeps smoking.
A college friend of mine--someone highly educated (a lawyer)--posted this to his Facebook page:
Dan SheaApril 6, 2016 · McGregor, FL, United States
From a Florida ER doctor:
Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids - that's right 8, all Illegal Anchor Babies and she had the nicest nails, cell phone, hand bag, clothing, etc. She makes about $1,500 monthly for each; you do the math. I used to say, "We are the dumbest nation on earth," Now I must say and sadly admit: WE are the dumbest people on earth (that includes ME) For we Elected the Idiot Ideologues who have passed the Bills that allow this.
Sorry, but we need a Revolution, If the Illegal Immigrant is over 65, they can apply for SSI and Medicaid and get more than a woman on Social Security, who worked from 1944 until 2004. She is only getting $791 per month because she was born in 1924 and there's a 'catch 22' (notch) for her. It is interesting that the Federal Government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890. Each can also obtain an additional $580 in Social Assistance, for a total of $2,470 a month. This compares to a single pensioner, who after contributing to the growth and development of America for 40 to 50 years, can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012 in Old Age Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Maybe our Pensioners should apply as Refugees! Consider sending this to all your American friends, so we can all be ticked off and maybe get the Refugees cut back to $1,012 and the Pensioners up to $2,470. Then we can enjoy some of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years.
PLEASE SHOW THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW
But the post must have confirmed what my friend wanted to believe about immigrants--that they are all lazy, awful people sucking away our tax dollars, and so we are justified in hating them--and so he posted it without bothering to check it.
I posted the link to the factchecking sites in the comments of my friend's post. He left the post up on his Facebook page anyway.
Snopes traces this urban legend through various iterations. It started out as a Canadian story, then got changed through the years as various people added more and more exaggerations to it.
In September 2017, an April 2016 Facebook iteration of the rumor shared by Dan Shea began circulating once again. As of 13 September 2017, it had been shared well more than a quarter of a million times:
Actually it's up to 1.4 million shares now.
All by people who didn't bother to check if this was true, or didn't care.
Dan Shea, who created this rumor, obviously knew he was fabricating it since he added in some of his own flourishes from the original. And if he didn't know before, he knows now, because his Facebook page is filled with people commenting and either politely factchecking him, or angrily telling him that this isn't real. He seems to glorify in the notoriety rather than show any contrition.
And that's not even counting all the other websites this story is showing up at. A simple Google search of "Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids" will show this story popping up again and again and again. It's obviously been making a lot of rounds.
From a Florida ER doctor: Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids - that's right 8, all Illegal Anchor Babies and she had the nicest nails, cell phone, hand bag, clothing, etc. She makes about $1,500 monthly for each; you do the math.u
What has happened to people's civic virtue? To the idea of community? To the idea of all working together for the greater good? To the idea of sacrificing your own self-interest for the benefit of society?
That sentiment existed at one time, right?
Can we go back to that?
We are in danger of succumbing to nihilism. In order to turn around from this, we need to think positively. Value life. Take care of your body. Eat healthy. Stop drinking. Stop smoking. Take care of the environment. Think about what is good for the country as a whole, not what is just good for your faction. Think about what is good for the world as a whole. Try to help other people, not to harm them. Bring good into the world, not hate.
We can do this. We can change things. But first we need to stop the way we're currently living. We can't survive like this.
Tuesday, August 06, 2019
Addendum: I'm still Mad About This Video Game Thing
(An addendum to the previous post)
And another thing that makes me so angry about this whole "video games cause mass shootings" nonsense...
Listening to the pundits and politicians talk about the link between video games and violence, it is very notable that none of them are citing any evidence. At all. They're just talking about how they don't like video games, and how they're sure that it must be doing something bad to young people's minds.
Look, if you want to just complain about how you don't like what the young people are doing these days, you can retire and spend all day on your front porch.
But if you go on TV and make these allegations, you should do your homework ahead of time.
And it's bad enough when pundits do it, but then when actual politicians (people in actual positions of power) start talking about how they "feel" video games are behind these massacres, then this is the height of irresponsibility.
It's a stupid debate, like I said before. But, fine, if you guys want to get into it, then let's get into it. What does the evidence show? What is the statistical correlation between violent crime and video games? What is the link between crime rates and the popularity of video games in countries? What is the evidence that video games cause violent behavior? (This data is easily available. The topic has been researched to death. There have been literally thousands of studies on this by now).
This is serious topic. And the opportunity cost of addressing the wrong issue will mean that we've lost the chance to prevent the next massacre. So we should be taking this seriously.
Instead what we have is a lot of out of touch old people talking about how they don't like video games. Either they're stupid, or they're being deliberately obtuse in order to misdirect.
I am rapidly losing my patience with civil debate and am getting to the point where I just want to scream obscenities at people. Which on one hand is a completely natural reaction to everything that's been happening the past few years, and yet at the same time is exactly the wrong thing to do if we're ever going to make any progress.
But really, it makes me so, so angry when I see people still blaming gun violence on video games.
This is the stupidest argument ever. For reasons so obvious that I feel like I'm wasting my time typing them out again. Violent video games are popular with kids all over the world, but the U.S. is the only place that has regular gun massacres. Japanese and South Koreans play way more violent video games than the U.S., and they don't have these gun massacres.
Part of this frustration is just fatigue. I've been pointing out this fact out on this blog for over 15 years now. (See this post from 2003. And this post from 2012.) And I just weary of having to type out the obvious over and over again.
But it's not just me. Lots and lots of people have been making this really obvious point. For years.
So why are we still having this discussion about video games?
Friday, February 08, 2019
Since I left Christianity and became an agnostic, I've gone back and forth on the value of religion. Some days I think it's an oppressive force. Some days I think it does a lot of good and helps people through their daily life. (See HERE and HERE for examples of me admitting that religion might do some good.)
Karl Marx famously called religion the "Opium of the People" because it encouraged people to not worry about improving their condition here on earth, and instead promised them a paradise after they died.
Union organizer Joe Hill wrote a famous song about this--The Preacher and the Slave
Long haired preachers come out every night try to tell you what´s wrong and what´s right but when asked about something to eat they will answer with voices so sweet You will eat, you will eat, by and by in the glorious land in the sky way up high work and pray, live on hay you´ll get pie in the sky when you die.
But all of this is unfair, isn't it? In this day and age, Christians don't actually go around saying we don't need to worry about health care because we're all going to heaven, do they?
No, actually, turns out that they're still saying exactly that. In pretty much exactly those words. Quote from Phil Robertson:
I already have health care. It’s given to me by God. Eternal health care. I’m guaranteed to be raised from the dead. I have life and immortality given to me by God through Jesus Christ... The temporary reprieve is not worth it. I'm telling [Kamala Harris], I have eternal health care, and it's free! Doctors can give you a little temporary reprieve, but they cannot save you from physical death. The doctors who treat you, they die, too.
For those keeping score at home, put another point in the "Religion is an Oppressive Force and We Need to Resist It" column.
The game's not over yet, of course. Give me another couple days and I could be veering back towards the "Religion Actually Does Some Good" side of the ledger, depending on what else happens in the news. But for today, I'm playing The Preacher and the Slave on my jukebox all afternoon.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
So, this popped up in my twitter feed this morning:
As we near #Christmas, Christians reflect on the meaning of Jesus’ teachings of love, forgiveness, and caring for others.
They asked Trump which Bible verse inspired him. He chose an Old Testament verse Jesus spoke out against: “An eye for an eye,” reflecting his vengeful soul. pic.twitter.com/d9gIRYSD2I
The tweet is new, but apparently the news is old. I Googled it just now, and it looks like the quote is from years ago. But it also looks legit. This really is a real Trump quote.
And actually, a search through my own archives indicates I've used this before. It was in the context of an IELTS lesson, so I just prompted my students to discuss the issue, and didn't editorialize about it myself.
But, for some reason I never went on a rant about this before. So I'm probably overdue for a rant.
I complained way back in 2008 that the fact that this Bible verse keeps popping up as a conservative talking point indicates that conservative Christians aren't actually reading their Bibles. To quote myself from 2008:
Back in my Calvin days, I can’t tell you the number of times a conservative Christian would try and justify the death penalty to me by quoting from the Bible “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” It used to drive me crazy because (as anyone whose actually read the bible knows) Jesus specifically repudiates this in Matthew 6:43 “You have heard that it was said ‘Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also….”
I’m digressing here I know, but this is one of my pet peeves.
Makes me absolutely furious how little Christians know about their own doctrines. I'd rant about itt more, but what can you do? We are living in times when things have gotten so stupid that it's almost a waste of energy to get outraged about things like this.
I guess we'll I'm on the subject, I might as well through in a link to GOP Jesus. Even though I know you've probably seen it already.
The joke has of course been done before. Al Franken riffed on this same theme with "The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus" in his book: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
So...I've already expressed my thoughts on the Olympics 10 years ago. But I'll say my bit again. I believe the Olympics encourages nationalism, that it is harmful to the future of humanity, and that the best thing we can do is to boycott it or ignore it completely. When reading a book of George Orwell's essays a couple years ago, I discovered that he made the point much better than I did all the way back in 1945. So I'm just going to re-print his essay here instead of trying to say it myself. (I've stolen the text from here).
The Sporting Spirit by George Orwell (December, 1945)
Now that the brief visit of the Dynamo football team has come to an end, it is possible to say publicly what many thinking people were saying privately before the Dynamos ever arrived. That is, that sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will, and that if such a visit as this had any effect at all on Anglo-Soviet relations, it could only be to make them slightly worse than before.
Even the newspapers have been unable to conceal the fact that at least two of the four matches played led to much bad feeling. At the Arsenal match, I am told by someone who was there, a British and a Russian player came to blows and the crowd booed the referee. The Glasgow match, someone else informs me, was simply a free-for-all from the start. And then there was the controversy, typical of our nationalistic age, about the composition of the Arsenal team. Was it really an all-England team, as claimed by the Russians, or merely a league team, as claimed by the British? And did the Dynamos end their tour abruptly in order to avoid playing an all-England team? As usual, everyone answers these questions according to his political predilections. Not quite everyone, however. I noted with interest, as an instance of the vicious passions that football provokes, that the sporting correspondent of the russophile News Chronicle took the anti-Russian line and maintained that Arsenal was not an all-England team. No doubt the controversy will continue to echo for years in the footnotes of history books. Meanwhile the result of the Dynamos' tour, in so far as it has had any result, will have been to create fresh animosity on both sides.
And how could it be otherwise? I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.
Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved. it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
Even a leisurely game like cricket, demanding grace rather than strength, can cause much ill-will, as we saw in the controversy over body-line bowling and over the rough tactics of the Australian team that visited England in 1921. Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners, is far worse. Worst of all is boxing. One of the most horrible sights in the world is a fight between white and coloured boxers before a mixed audience. But a boxing audience is always disgusting, and the behaviour of the women, in particular, is such that the army, I believe, does not allow them to attend its contests. At any rate, two or three years ago, when Home Guards and regular troops were holding a boxing tournament, I was placed on guard at the door of the hall, with orders to keep the women out.
In England, the obsession with sport is bad enough, but even fiercer passions are aroused in young countries where games playing and nationalism are both recent developments. In countries like India or Burma, it is necessary at football matches to have strong cordons of police to keep the crowd from invading the field. In Burma, I have seen the supporters of one side break through the police and disable the goalkeeper of the opposing side at a critical moment. The first big football match that was played in Spain about fifteen years ago led to an uncontrollable riot. As soon as strong feelings of rivalry are aroused, the notion of playing the game according to the rules always vanishes. People want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated, and they forget that victory gained through cheating or through the intervention of the crowd is meaningless. Even when the spectators don't intervene physically they try to influence the game by cheering their own side and “rattling” opposing players with boos and insults. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
Instead of blah-blahing about the clean, healthy rivalry of the football field and the great part played by the Olympic Games in bringing the nations together, it is more useful to inquire how and why this modern cult of sport arose. Most of the games we now play are of ancient origin, but sport does not seem to have been taken very seriously between Roman times and the nineteenth century. Even in the English public schools the games cult did not start till the later part of the last century. Dr Arnold, generally regarded as the founder of the modern public school, looked on games as simply a waste of time. Then, chiefly in England and the United States, games were built up into a heavily-financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and rousing savage passions, and the infection spread from country to country. It is the most violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige. Also, organised games are more likely to flourish in urban communities where the average human being lives a sedentary or at least a confined life, and does not get much opportunity for creative labour. In a rustic community a boy or young man works off a good deal of his surplus energy by walking, swimming, snowballing, climbing trees, riding horses, and by various sports involving cruelty to animals, such as fishing, cock-fighting and ferreting for rats. In a big town one must indulge in group activities if one wants an outlet for one's physical strength or for one's sadistic impulses. Games are taken seriously in London and New York, and they were taken seriously in Rome and Byzantium: in the Middle Ages they were played, and probably played with much physical brutality, but they were not mixed up with politics nor a cause of group hatreds.
If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Jugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators. I do not, of course, suggest that sport is one of the main causes of international rivalry; big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism. Still, you do make things worse by sending forth a team of eleven men, labelled as national champions, to do battle against some rival team, and allowing it to be felt on all sides that whichever nation is defeated will “lose face”.
I hope, therefore, that we shan't follow up the visit of the Dynamos by sending a British team to the USSR. If we must do so, then let us send a second-rate team which is sure to be beaten and cannot be claimed to represent Britain as a whole. There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteriesa wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
--Matthew 23:1-7
Over the years, I - have- written - several -times - complaining - about the religious right and hypocrisy, and by now I probably should be past the point where it still shocks me.
I should just accept the fact that religious people are hypocrites, and then just move on with my daily life, rather than continue to waste all my time ranting against it.
Hypocrisy in religion has been going on since time immemorial. 2,000 years ago, Jesus noted that all the religious leaders of his day were complete hypocrites. (I've only quoted a small part of it, but the whole 23rd Chapter of Matthew is one long rant against hypocrisy).
Others have pointed out before me the irony that Jesus would go on to found a new religion, which would then attract all the same hypocrites that the old religion did.
And yet...watching the Republican National Convention this week, it's hard not to just gag on all the pure hypocrisy coming out. And so, once again, I'm going to put my fingers on the keyboard and complain about this.
For years we've had to listen to these blowhards on the religious right complain that Obama wasn't Christian enough. Or that the secularists didn't respect Christian tradition enough.
The Trump phenomenon is a curious one--smarter people than me have been stumped by it--but apparently during this election year the Republican electorate was swayed by considerations other than religious purity.
Fine...Whatever. The times change. I wrote in a previous post that Trump's nomination signaled the Republican Party was evolving into something new.
So I fully expected the nomination of Donald Trump meant that sexual purity would not be an issue this election.
But instead the Republicans have gone even more extreme on sexual purity, with a platform that denounces all forms of sexual activity not sanctioned by the Church--no same sex marriage, no transgender rights, and pornography is declared a public health issue.
(And understand, when a political party declares pornography a public health issue, that isn't the same as when a private organization does it. That means they are announcing their intention to use the mechanisms of the government to restrict access to pornography.)
All this, in the same year they nominated a man who had appeared in pornography publications.
And this is just the tip of hypocrisy ice-berg. Remember Bristol Palin?
Or Newt Gingrich?
So what's going on? Samantha Bee made an interesting case a few months ago that the religious right that ideological purity was never important to the religious right--instead it is and always has been about the politics of resentment. In other words, they just want to hate people who aren't the same as them. They couldn't care less that their leaders never follow any of their rules.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Okay, I'm going to waste my time commenting about another article on the Internet again.
The purpose of these articles is to make you feel upset at all these terrible teachers who are mispronouncing students names. But as I read them, all my sympathy went to the teachers.
During my time teaching English in Japan, Cambodia, and Vietnam, I've mispronounced hundreds of students' names.
It was actually less of an issue in Japan. The Japanese phonemes are, for the most part, relatively easy for a native English speaker to pronounce.
There was, however, one exception--the Japanese liquid phoneme, which is difficult for English speakers to pronounce because it's somewhere halfway between an /l/ and an /r/.
The first name this sound became an issue on for me was "Ryoko." The romanized spelling of her is only an approximation. The actual sound of the "Ryo" syllable is unlike anything we have in English.
But I didn't realize that at first. When I first met Ryoko, I pronounced her name with an English "Ryo" sound.
"No, no teacher. It's Ryoko," she insisted.
"That's what I said. Ryoko. Right?"
"No Ryoko."
It sounded to me like exactly what I had said. "Ryoko, right?"
"No, no Ryoko."
"Isn't that what I just said? Ryoko?"
"Ryoko."
"Ryoko?"
"Ryo"
"Ryo"
Not only could I not pronounce it correctly, I couldn't even hear the difference between what I was saying and her corrections.
This is because of a well-known linguistic phenomenon called "acoustic filtering" in which people lose the ability in infancy to perceive sound contrasts that don't occur in their native language. In the other direction, it's the same reason that Japanese and Korean speakers can't hear the difference between the English /l/ and /r/. And it's the reason I couldn't hear any difference between my pronunciation, and the way Ryoko wanted her name pronounced.
Over the 8 years I was in Japan, I studied Japanese a lot, and although I never mastered pronunciation of the Japanese liquid consonant, I was eventually able to hear the difference between my pronunciation, and the Japanese pronunciation.
In Cambodia and Vietnam, I never even got that far. I often still can't hear the difference between what my students want me to say, and what I think I'm saying:
In Cambodia in particular this was a problem because I was teaching young students who were at a particularly vulnerable age (11-14). If I mispronounced one of their names in a way that their classmates thought was particularly funny (for whatever reason), the rest of the class would leap on the mispronunciation, laugh about it, and tease that student.
I did my best but, once again, not only could I not pronounce a lot of these names, I couldn't even hear the difference between what I was saying and the students' corrections. "But isn't that what I just said?" I would be constantly saying.
The students, being in an EFL setting, had limited contact with foreigners, and this was their first experience of a stupid foreigner horribly mispronouncing their name. They couldn't understand why these phonemes, which were so simple for them, were always getting horribly mangled in my mouth. Most of them laughed it off and said, "Whatever. Just call me whatever." But some of them got combative about it. Or resentful. Or sulky.
In return, my own name has been horribly mangled. I have a name that ends in a dark l sound (W), which was impossible for the Japanese to pronounce. (My name was "Joeru" in Japan) and appears to be very difficult for the Vietnamese and Cambodians to even perceive. (Many Vietnamese and Cambodians have had a difficult time hearing the difference between "Joel" and "John", so I've grown used to just responding to "John" over here.)
Now in Vietnam and Cambodia, I'm in a monolingual classroom, where I only have to deal with the phonemes of one single language. Pity the poor teacher back in the states, who's got to deal with multiple names from multiple countries.
I mean, look, I get it. I feel bad for these poor kids. It sucks being an immigrant. It sucks being different when you're a teenager.
But if your name contains phonemes that do not occur in the English language, your teacher is probably going to mispronounce them. And I know it sucks for these kids, but the poor teacher is doing the best they can most of the time.
This is, for better or for worse, the immigrant experience, and it's not just linked to racism. Statistically speaking, most of the white people in America come from backgrounds other than Anglo-Saxon. And our Irish, German, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Welsh, Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese, Danish and Greek ancestors all had their names mispronounced as well.
My own surname (which has been an endless source of amusement to my Australian friends) is an Anglicized version of a Dutch surname that apparently was difficult for native English speakers to pronounce.
...Of course all that being said, I'm talking here only about phonemes that are difficult for native English speakers to perceive/produce.
If the teacher can pronounce the student's name correctly, but simply never bothers to learn it, then that's just plain lazy. And if it's simply a matter of something like the sound/spelling correspondence not matching English expectations, then of course the teacher should learn the correct pronunciation.
Now, she's not actually wrong on her main point. The traffic congestion in Ho Chi Minh City is a problem. But then she manages to mangle just about all of her details.
Her biggest problem is exaggeration. Yes, some people do run red lights in Saigon. Yes, some people do drive on the wrong side of the road. But the majority of motorists actually follow the traffic rules.
For comparisons sake, it's much better than Phnom Penh. One of the first things I noticed surprised by when I first came to Saigon from Phnom Penh was that the majority of vehicles in Saigon actually stop at the red lights (unlike Phnom Penh).
So Dahleen Glanton is completely wrong when she writes things like:
Of course, there are rules of the road. But in Vietnam, they clearly are meant to be broken. There are plenty of lawbreakers behind the wheel in Chicago, too, but in Saigon it's harder to find anyone who actually follows the law.
Complete exaggeration. As is:
By the way, everyone ignores one-way street signs. There's no right side or wrong side of the road, so a motorbike could be gaining on you from either direction, even on the shoulders.
Some people definitely ignore those one-way signs in Saigon, but everyone? It's not everyone by a long shot. The majority of motorbikes actually go the direction their supposed to go in Saigon. She also doesn't understand how the traffic lights work here.
A red light, for instance, does not necessarily mean stop. It's merely a suggestion. It doesn't even mean you have to slow down, as long as the driver in front of you is still moving. What it does seem to mean is that you get to stay with the flow of traffic, even though it's not actually flowing.
The majority of the Vietnamese actually stop at red lights in Saigon. When they don't stop at red lights, it's usually because there's no traffic at the intersection.
In many countries of the world (not only Vietnam), the unwritten convention regarding traffic signals is different than it is in America. In America, a red light means you have stop no matter what. In many other countries, however, it is assumed that a red light means that you have to yield to any traffic going the other way, but that you can continue if the intersection is clear.
It's a cultural difference. It's not a sign that the Vietnamese are crazy drivers or that they don't know how to follow the rules.
My next issue with Dahleen Glanton is that she has a very poor idea of what causes the traffic congestion.
In Vietnam, cars are way too expensive for most people to own. The government adds exorbitant taxes and fees to the price of a new car, meaning a Toyota Camry that costs about $23,000 in the U.S. would skyrocket to about $60,000 in Vietnam. A motorbike on the other hand can cost as little as $200. That makes motorbikes the vehicle of choice for just about everyone. And there lies the problem in a city of 9 million people.
And there lies the problem? No, she completely missed the point here. The fact that the government deliberately taxes cars out of the price range of most Vietnamese people is not the problem. That's the solution! That's why there are 7 million small motorbikes on the road in Saigon instead of 7 million cars.
Each motorbike occupies a much smaller space on the road than a car would. (And in Vietnam, as in most of Asia, the roads here are much smaller than the American roads). And so consequently the traffic problem in Saigon is ameliorated somewhat by deliberately limiting the number of cars on the road.
And then finally, there's also this ignorant little bit:
Now another interesting area involves appropriate motorbike wear. Men, it seems, can get away with anything. But women have to be careful. It's OK to drive your motorbike wearing high heels and pencil skirts. Comfort has nothing to do with efficiency. The most important thing, though, is to make sure that no skin is showing. Even in 90-degree heat, long-sleeved tops, jackets, gloves, socks, scarves, hats and a mask that covers everything but your eyes are must-haves for the modern motor-biking woman. That's in order to protect the skin from sun. In Vietnam, I'm told, a woman's beauty is determined by the lightness of her skin. Therefore, a woman's body must be shielded from the sun at all costs. On the beaches in Vietnam, the locals come out in droves after sundown.
Ah gee, people in a tropical climate avoid the sun during the daytime. Imagine that. How strange these Vietnamese are!
This is difficult for people from the Northern Hemisphere to understand, but people who live in the tropics have a different relationship to the sun than we do.
I know this from experience, because my first year in the tropics it was difficult for me to understand.
I remember during my first year here, I was on a road trip through Malaysia with some Malaysian friends. As we got near the beach, and saw how beautiful the ocean looked, one Malaysian friend said, "If it's not too hot this afternoon, let's go swimming."
I was from Michigan, so this surprised me of course. In Michigan, when it's hot out is the perfect time to go swimming. But in Malaysia (and Vietnam) during the heat of the day you can still feel the sun scorching down on you whether you're in the water or not.
Over here, the (relative) cool of the evening is the best time to go swimming.
Dig it! The sun in this area of the world does not mess around. When you see the locals covering up their skin, it's for good reason. And it's for reasons other than pure vanity. Covering up from the sun can actually make you feel cooler than leaving your bare skin exposed to the rays.
Dahleen Glanton apparently didn't notice this, but a lot of the men will also cover up their skin
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
So, I was on YahooNews today, and saw this Chicago Tribune Article in my Newsfeed.
...and after reading it, I felt the urge to respond.
I know, I know. It's a losing battle trying to respond to everything wrong on the Internet. But indulge me on this one. It's an interesting case study in the kind of propaganda we Americans are subjected to day in and day out through our media.
First of all:
On a recent visit to Vietnam, I followed the path of the war — from Hanoi to Danang to Ho Chi Minh City. In rural towns in the North, the Vietnamese flag — a red banner with a single gold star — waves from pole after pole along busy streets. In the South, a 23-foot-tall bronze statue of former President Ho Chi Minh stands in a downtown square in the city that was once called Saigon. For anyone who might have any doubts about the outcome of the war, the message throughout Vietnam was clear: The Communists won.
The publication date on this article was May 2nd. It's unclear when the actual trip took place, but let's assume she wrote this article up just as she was coming off of the trip that she's writing about.
The two days preceding May 2nd were April 30th (the anniversary of the re-unification of Vietnam) and May 1st (International Communist Holiday). If ever there is a time when the Communist flags are going to be out in full force, this is it.
For comparison's sake, imagine a visitor going to the United States during the week of the 4th of July, and then writing about all the American Flags they saw everywhere.
By the way, as a side note, many visitors to the United States actually do pick up on exactly this--how prevalent the American flag is everywhere you go. It's not actually like this in all other countries, so it's something that people always remark upon when they visit the United States. I've had several friends (British, Japanese, Australians, Canadians) make comments to me about how they were so surprised by the prevalence of the American Flag everywhere during their visits to the United States.
So you get what I'm saying here. For an American to comment on this, as some sort of unique quirk that the crazy communists have, is a bit rich.
Moving on...
In the 40 years since the war ended, most Americans have moved on. Unless you lost a loved one — there were nearly 60,000 American fatalities — or know a veteran suffering in the aftermath, Vietnam has been filed away as ancient history. It has taken a back seat to the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not the case in Vietnam. The civil war that dragged on for 21 years is ingrained in the country's cultural and political landscape. And telling the story has become an industry.
Yes, this is true enough. Although at least some of this obsession with Vietnam War history as tourism is demand driven. Every day thousands of backpackers arrive in Vietnam, almost all of whom have no knowledge or interest in Vietnam's 2,000 year old history other than the American War they've seen in the movies. So Vietnam caters to the tourists' expectations.
Moving on...
From the Cu Chi tunnels, used as hiding spots and supply routes by Viet Cong soldiers, to the "Hanoi Hilton" prison, where a future U.S. senator named John McCain was among those held as prisoners of war, the Vietnamese government makes a faulty case against good and evil. According to its officials, the captured U.S. pilots were treated like guests at a country club.
One of the interesting little tidbits I picked up from Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War is that there is debate among the captured U.S. pilots themselves as to whether or not their treatment constituted torture. Some of them feel that they were tortured, but others maintain that they were treated a bit rough at times, but they were certainly not systematically tortured in any fashion.
In the government-run War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, America is portrayed as the archenemy of the Vietnamese people. The exhibits depict U.S. soldiers as heartless villains — even criminals — whose sole mission was to slaughter families, torture innocent villagers and spread ruin across the region.
What? You mean they don't see us as pure hearted defenders of liberty and freedom? Why, wherever did they get that impression?
Moving on to the next part of the article:
Displayed among the three floors are remnants of the weapons used by U.S. troops: tanks, missiles, bombs and machine guns. There are life-size pictures of children missing limbs, born without eyes or with tumors covering their faces — the result of Agent Orange, used by the U.S. military to clear foliage in the jungle where the fighting occurred. But perhaps one of the most startling photographs is that of a young, gun-wielding U.S. soldier standing over the decapitated remains of Vietnamese bodies. I realized that much of the presentation was just propaganda. Yet my initial reaction was shame. I lowered my head and silently cried.
The phrase "just propaganda" is a loaded phrase. In one sense, it's true because the War Remnants Museum is guilty of sins of omission. There is nothing there about the atrocities committed by the Communists (like the Hue Massacre (W)). Sins of omission are of course a form of propaganda.
But in another sense, it's denigrating the exhibits in the museum to label them as "just propaganda" . It makes it sound as if their truth value is questionable. But it's not. Everything documented in that museum happened. Agent Orange happened. The massacres happened. The bombings happened.
Continuing to quote from the article, the very next line is:
Then I remembered that these were simply boys, far from home, fighting a war that had no rules.
The conjunction "Then" here is problematic, because it implies a logical progression from completed action to subsequent action. It reads as if the author is saying "Confronted with photographic evidence of the massacres my country perpetrated, I initially gave in to the impulse to feel shame and sorrow, but THEN I remembered that the soldiers were simply boys far from home, and the feelings of shame vanished."
That is what she's saying here, no?
It is undoubtedly true that the Vietnam War was a war without rules. But whose fault was that? When the US army had instituted free fire zones, and started massacring villages, undoubtedly the war was operating without any rules.
But having begun to fight a war without rules, the fact that there were no rules then becomes the excuse?
The My Lai massacre, for example, was not an example of soldiers simply getting out of hand in a war without rules. It was a massacre lead by the officers. Officers Captain Medina and Lieutenant Calley were on the ground with the men, ordering them to conduct the massacre.
In other cases, it was clear that discipline broke down among the ranks. But this has never historically been accepted as an excuse. For example the Japanese General Masaharu Homma (W) tried to stop the atrocities committed by his troops in the Philippines, but was unable to do so as discipline broke down. This was not accepted as an excuse, and he was executed by the Americans as a War Criminal.
Moving on, a little bit further down the page Dahleen Glanton writes:
For so many reasons, Vietnam was a war that was impossible for America to win. But isn't freedom worth fighting for?
Oh, where to begin with this one?
First of all, the people living in a country have the freedom to choose their own form of government. There's no freedom more basic than that.
Secondly, the government in Saigon was never free or democratic. The government changed frequently in Saigon during the course of the war because of various coups, but it was never a democracy, and it did not allow freedom of speech or freedom of expression. The Saigon Governments were a series of increasingly unstable military dictatorships that would never have lasted if they hadn't been propped up the United States military.
Thirdly, if you accept that "freedom is worth fighting for" as a justification for getting into foreign wars, then there are all sorts of despotic regimes all around the world that the United States would have to go and overthrow.
The tourist attractions might tell one story, but outside, the impoverished living conditions of many Vietnam people tell another.
Ah gee, a third world country has impoverished living conditions. Imagine that. If communism was so great, why didn't Vietnam magically transform into a first world country with American standards of living? Huh? Huh? Answer me that, communism!
In point of fact, Vietnam has made remarkable progress towards modernization the past 30 years. It's much more advanced than it's neighbors in Laos and Cambodia. There are, to be sure, still areas of poverty in the countryside, and Dahleen Glanton is going to harp on this for the rest of her article. But there's also been remarkable progress.
Also, although Dahleen Glanton completely neglects this in her article, some of the problems Vietnam has had overcoming poverty are directly attributable to the massive American bombings. To this day large parts of the center of Vietnam can not be farmed or built upon because of all the unexploded American bombs buried in the soil.
Next, Dahleen Glanton writes:
During my two weeks in the country, the Vietnamese people I met were kind and welcoming. Without doubt, young people in Vietnam had been taught about the war from the government's perspective. Schoolchildren surely were brought to the museums on field trips. Why didn't they seem to hate Americans? The answer, it occurred to me, is that the younger generation isn't buying the message that the government is selling.
First of all, it's always problematic when you describe the opinions of a whole nation of people as if they were a monolithic entity. Everyone does it, I know, but it's wrong. Some young Vietnamese people hate their government, some people love it. Some young Vietnamese are very cynical of the official communist story of the war, some of them buy into it completely. Some of them are conservative, some of them are liberal. In short, you have the same diversity of opinion in Vietnam that you would have in any other country.
It is true that Vietnamese people don't hate Americans. In fact they're very friendly and welcoming to American visitors. But in my experience, there is no connection between their view of history and their attitude towards Americans. Some of my best Vietnamese friends have completely accepted the communist version of the war history, but they're also able to understand that individual members of a country do not share the collective guilt for the actions of their government officials.
In Vietnam, the government controls the media — from television to radio to print. The Internet is regulated and censored. Officially, social media are off-limits.
Not true. Not true at all. I'm writing this blog post right now from within Vietnam.
But young people know how to get around the rules. Facebook and Google are very popular, particularly among the educated.
Yes, Google and Facebook are very popular in Vietnam. But notice how she makes it sound like this is true inspite of government laws. Currently there are no laws prohibiting use of Facebook or Google.
The canals and rivers flowing to the Mekong Delta are polluted and strewn with rubbish. The river water is undrinkable and even the rats, which are considered a delicacy by some Vietnamese, are unfit to eat.
Okay, this is true but...This is true of a lot of regions under a number of different governments. There are plenty of places in the United States where the river water is undrinkable. That's why we have treatment plants for our drinking water.
The fact that the Mekong is strewn with rubbish is a societal problem. It's because individual Vietnamese people are making the choice to throw their rubbish in the river. It's not because of an evil communist government ordering everyone to throw their rubbish in the Mekong. If anything, it's a problem from lack of government action, not because of government oppression.
Depending on how poor the family is, the government provides a one-time stipend of up to $10,000 to find better housing. But an apartment in the city costs twice that amount. It is cheaper to live on the banks of the river in the city. Otherwise, they must stay in the countryside, where education and jobs are even harder to come by.
Here I must admit that I don't know anything about the specifics of what she's talking about. Given how shoddily this whole piece is researched, and how much she gets wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if the details of what she's saying here turned out to be not as she is presenting them.
But for the sake of argument let's go with her version.
Given that housing prices in Saigon are much cheaper than they are back in America, $10,000 actually strikes me as quite generous. I pay $450 per month, and almost all of my Vietnamese friends tell me I'm paying triple what a normal Vietnamese person pays for rent. But even given my exorbitant apartment, I could pay my rent for 22 months with $10,000.
Secondly, note once again that what she's complaining about is not tyrannical Communist governance. She's complaining about the problems of free-market capitalism here, and complaining that the government is not intervening enough to solve the problems of capitalism. In other words, she's complaining that the Communist government of Vietnam isn't Communist enough.
These problems can't be blamed on the Americans. These are visible failures that the Communist regime cannot hide.
It would be wrong to think that the Vietnamese people don't love their country. They do.
But when it comes to the two-decade war, not everyone sees a clear winner. This was a war in which everyone lost, and its ramifications continue to haunt.
Oh come on! This is the best you could come up with to describe the failures of communism? You can go to any country in the world and find poor people who can't afford housing. Vietnam is a third world country. Of course it's going to have these problems.
Look, if you want to find problems in Vietnam, you can find them. The same way you can go to any country in the world and write about how the poor are getting a raw deal, or how government programs aren't working perfectly, or how the rivers are polluted.
But to use this to imply that the wrong side won the war is just lazy propaganda.
And one last point: Both Dahleen Glanton in her article, and me in this rebuttal, have been using the word "communism" as synonymous with the Vietnamese style of government. But just for the sake of accuracy, I should state that Vietnam abandoned Communist economics back in 1986 (W). It's essentially now a capitalist economy in a one party state bureaucracy (similar to modern day China).
