memes

Modern Vietnamese people who simply study the past, yes. But speak to the ones who fought in the war or the ones who are taking care of agent orange kids. They don’t forget that shit regardless of how they feel about modern America.

As a Viet, my feelings trend towards resentment more than anything. Having to migrate here hugely because opportunities at home weren’t as good as the country that pillaged us, then learning that said country celebrates that pillaging and sees you as subhuman unless you’re some gusano removed waving a fascist flag of a country that no longer exists. It’s pathetic. It’s also frustrating because these types are usually the only types to exist in the Vietnamese diaspora, so I grow to resent people even in my own community. You cannot have differing thoughts or else you’ll be ostracized, or killed if you piss off some washed up general or his kid. Sometimes they’ll say “go back to Vietnam if you love communism so much,” the underlying message being that the US values free speech and freedom or whatever, but ironically, Vietnam is on good terms with the US and bad blood between southerners and northerners are largely forgotten. People criticize the government openly all the time and even sing southern nationalistic songs without anyone caring. Wave a red flag in the US and you’ll get a protest outside your house.

I don’t know if other Vietnamese migrants feel the same. Or if they even care - in my experience, they usually don’t because they usually already love the US (though complain about everything being expensive, isolating, violent, and traffic jams). But these are my feelings after learning beyond what textbooks say and seeing other Vietnamese Americans’ relationship with America

It is only western leftists, at least in my experience, who engage in this kind of moralistic peacocking over people who by now are all either dead or very old.

Like yeah the viet cong were justified in doing whatever they had to do to get the US out of their country, even if that meant shooting teenagers conscripted against their will. But it's only in the US and Europe that you see leftists kind of reveling in post-hoc revanchist violence.

I think its another symptom of there being no consructive, material political project for people to rally around, and a reaction to the fact that we live in easily the most jingoistic, propagandized society on thr planet.