Of Love and Mice and Men

Of Love and Mice and Men

In the stillness of the night, your mind takes flight. It soars, then hovers, and finally flits from one area to another. It forces you to get up and walk over to the study room. Now you sit down and look back at it. It simply says: Write!

You saw her again last night. This time you cried hard and long. Warm tears wetted your pillow. The wetness woke you up. And you lay there in bed, motionless, taking full cognizance of the situation, of why you kept dreaming about her, of your pathetic, tragic infatuation which refused to die despite the fact that it took place more than 40 years ago. Every man has his own cross to bear. Yours is an indelible memory. Anyway, you thought of U2’s long-winded citation in his non-reply, which mentioned love and hate. You don’t hate anymore, not her, not this him, not that him, not even yourself. You experience irritation, annoyance, disappointment, surprise, but no longer hate. Dalai Lama is fond of telling a story about a Tibetan monk who had been incarcerated for a long time by the rapacious, expansionist Chinese and yet his biggest fear during his long imprisonment was that he would lose his compassion for the prison guards who tortured him. You thought of Sanford’s public self-flagellation over his inability not to fall in love with a lady from Argentina. The man was obviously romantic and lonely and hungry for true love which transcended money and fame and power.

You don’t hate the VC or those VKYN who followed the prevailing winds to endear themselves to the ruling elite while knowing fully well that the VC only love themselves and nobody else and that the reason and purpose the VC seized power--- through taking advantage of the patriotism of the people---were to enrich themselves and the hell with the country and the fellow countrymen. You only ask the VKYN, particularly those MCs who consider themselves as such, to live up to their name, to their self-declaration, to have a little love in their hearts and do whatever they can, to counter the growing existential threat coming from the expansion-minded Chinese. Thus, you found HC’s recent appeal to those MCs very touching. You have interacted with HC in person and found him full of warmth and love, in spite of his rough exterior. Remember the Confucian duties of the educated class in times of crisis in the country of your birth. Please be in sync with your conscience. Please don’t retire from your Confucian duties. Your duties are not delusions. They are real and pressing. Please don’t turn your back on your fellow countrymen who need your help.

There comes a time when a man has to ask himself a question: Is he a mouse or a man? Such time is now. Thus, I find it comical and sophistical (not sophisticated) that an article by an Australian ex-PM was posted in the forum to counter the perception that China is posing a threat to the security of her neighbors. This is not the first time I read such an article. China’s propaganda machinery is working overtime overseas. A German ex-Chancellor (the predecessor of the current one) now works for a Russian company. I believe the name of the company is Gazprom. Thus, I would not be surprised if one day it is revealed that Paul Keating, ex-Australian PM, was secretly in the employ of the Chinese. That was perhaps he wrote the article the way he did, challenging the recent Australian government’s White Paper. Not all politicians love their countries. Some, like the VC ruling elite, love money above all else. To those naïve, history- handicapped readers who don’t think the Chinese are posing a threat to the well-being of their neighbors, I ask them to talk with the Indians who lost some part of Kashmir to the Chinese; with the Tibetans; with the Muslim Uighurs in Western China, who are fighting for true autonomy and perhaps even full independence; with all the non-Mandarin speaking non-Han peoples living south of the Yangtze River (By the way, the fact that some Vietnamese words having similarities with those of certain non-Han peoples in South China doesn’t make a case for the argument that the Vietnamese people are racially of Han Chinese origin. Those Vietnamese who do so want to weaken our will of resistance to the Chinese and could be working for the Chinese. Be on guard of traitors. Our language is morphologically different from Chinese. Loan vocabularies are a common occurrence in matters of linguistics. It happens wherever and whenever there are interactions between and among peoples speaking different languages. There are many words in Vietnamese having origin in Khmer, Thai, and Malay. That does not mean that the Vietnamese have a close kinship with the Khmer and the Thai. I am not so sure about the Malay, though); and of course with the Vietnamese who experienced 1000-year colonization, of having books confiscated and shipped to China during the Ming rule of twenty years, of having to fight off the Qing invasions of late 18th century, of the border war of 1979, of having to cede the Paracel Islands and now in danger of losing the Spratly Islands as well, of having to yield land at the border, of having to cede maritime rights in the East Sea, of having to agree to the presence of the Chinese troops under the disguise of being laborers in the highlands. I know I have mentioned this litany of aggression of the Chinese before, but it is important to repeat this litany over and over again in order to drum into the consciousness of those stubborn and, dare I say it, stupid individuals who think the Chinese are a peace-loving, non-aggressive people

One fact of life has been true throughout human history and that is a rising economic power is accompanied by a rising military power. It takes money to arm oneself. USSR lost the Cold War because she didn’t have sustained economic power. China is a threat, not only to her immediate neighbors, but also to countries like Australia, India and the U.S. To think that the U.S. should not contain China is to be woefully uninformed of history. I submit that the U.S. is doing so already. The rapprochement with Vietnam, the warming of relationship with India-- particularly in the nuclear technology area, the understanding that India will assist Vietnam in the operation of the submarines once they are delivered from the Russians, the visits of American warships into the harbors of Vietnam, the visits of American Secretary of Defense to Vietnam, the training of Vietnamese military officers in the U.S, and the recent hue and cry in the U.S. of the provocations of Chinese ships vis-à-vis the American ships in the East Sea are all examples of the fact that the U.S. is recognizing the threat.

All Vietnamese, please wake up and be united against our historical enemy. If you don’t, your grandchildren will speak Chinese. To be weak is to invite attack. Yes, life is relative and truth is elusive. But one thing is absolute and clear: We, the Vietnamese people will not simply give in to the demands of the Chinese without a fight. Our ancestors did not and neither do we. The VC ruling elite are giving in, but the people, exemplified by individuals like LCD and VNG, are not. MitChongs, the VNYN compatriots, part of the cream of the crop of the society, sons and daughters of our beloved Vietnam, which side are you on? The corrupt and cowardly ruling elite or the people? Look into your hearts and find some love.

Wissai
July 3, 2009