Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Sắm? mua sắm

I've never studied Vietnamese.

If born a few years earlier, I'd perhaps have been sent
by my government to Vietnam as  (choose one):
  · an emissary of peace
  · a pawn of imperialism
  · fertilizer

Anyhow, we in America now enjoy hard-fought freedoms won in part by the Vietnam carnage:  We've no required military servitude (draft, selective service) thanks to the sacrifices of Vietnam. No longer can America's wealthy, aging evil arseholes use federal funding to beat & brainwash our youth - shipping them abroad, forcing conflict with local enemy young'uns to battle unto death.

That American process is now open solely to volunteers  (and this season they're battling elsewhere).

But back to the word sắm - a word for the war we fought and lost - "SHOPPING"  - (sắm means "shopping" in Vietnamese).

Better shopping than suffering... But we were told the Vietnamese people were threatened with hell. That's why America & its allies bombed everywhere, and killed with abandon.

Why did we fight?   Did the average shopper win?   An online image search for  sắm  (link) shows scenes that might highly disturb the 50,000+ Americans (and 5000+ South Koreans, and 500+ Aussies) sent to horrible deaths in Vietnam. We killed over a million people in Vietnam, and badly lost (!?)   Was it simply corn-fed Daddy Warbucks vs. Tycoon asiatica? President Nixon & Nobel-laureate Henry Kissinger warned of horrors and fed us lies. Travel to Vietnam -- see for yourself. The shadow of war is unpopular with Vietnam's youth. But asking questions is vital to us, because America still fights elsewhere. Every American should examine the perversity of U.S. government deceit & understand it extends well beyond Dirty Dick Cheney. Our history of slavery, and genocide (native Americans), should indicate a need for careful checks-and-balances to counter psychopathic abuse of weaker folk.

"sắm" and "mua sắm" -- let's go shopping ...
It seems we fought for consumerism, for shopping, for love of profit and glitz.

Let's pray our leaders don't mislead us.
But expect they do & will....