Shithology

As published at SubStack, 9/18/22:

[Los Angeles, 11/2/09]

 

Donald Trump on 1/11/18, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?"

Anonymous commenter at my blog on 8/20/22, “Thailand is typical shithole country, among many others in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam.”

Fred Reed on 7/10/22, “Understand that countries in the ‘Third World’ are rising out of it while the US falls into it and levels of morality, taste, and behavior are higher.”

Who to believe? First off, if you haven’t traveled much, your takes on the world aren’t worth crap, but even if you have, they might still be diarrhea. I know enough whites whose experience of Vietnam consists of little more than fucking prostitutes, with a side trip to Halong Bay.

That’s like me pontificating about the Netherlands after two weeks in Amsterdam’s red-light district, where most of the ladies aren’t even Dutch, by the way. Never heard of Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh or Erasmus…

In “Scitan in Mind” on 1/19/18, I cited the lack of toilets at home as possibly a gauge of shitholeness, but after eight months in South Africa and Namibia in 2021, I realized the absence of private toilets doesn’t necessarily mean foul streets or neighborhoods. With no running water for most of its shacks, Swakopmund’s Democratic Resettlement Community was surprisingly clean, without disgusting smells. It’s more pleasant to walk through it than, say, San Francisco’s Tenderloin, where human shit sprinkles sidewalks.

There’s a baffling paradox. Still so rich on paper, the US is already a shithole in countless places, to the astonishment of foreign visitors. With even kids and old cripples dwelling in tents or cardboard dwellings, Los Angeles County now has 42,000 homeless. With shit, drug use, crimes and the homeless overtaking neighborhoods, families flee from San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland, Seattle and Washington DC, etc.

New York Times, “Homelessness, then, is a supply-and-demand problem. Without enough housing, not everyone has a place to live. And the homes that do exist cost more as people compete for limited supply. So more people are priced out, and more end up homeless.”

That doesn’t hold up because there are all these empty rooms and even houses across America. Lack of housing is when your cities have been bombed, with ragged survivors huddled among smoldering, rancid rubble. Mumbling “Make America great again,” you roast a corpulent rat, gorged on so many fine corpses.

A key cause of American homelessness is zoning laws at the behest of those still under roofs. In Vietnam, you can have 20 guys sleeping on hammocks in a room without neighbors complaining. Living among millionaires, you can still partition your home into tiny apartments, or convert it to a multi-story karaoke parlor, with garish signs and private rooms where guests can fondle or even screw hostesses. You’ve paid the cops.

Dodging this excitement, many of Vietnam’s nouveau riche have fled into gated communities, where they’re removed from many annoyances, contrasts, surprises and stimulations. Becoming even more virtual, they can imagine they’re living in LA.

Babylon Bee, “Well, SF’s packed with feces, you’ve got to watch your steps up there. And in Los Angeles, with all their homeless camps, the tents and drugs are everywhere!”

Counting turds, though, is hardly the best way to define shitholeness. If your culture is a roiling sea of shit, and your fellow citizens, from president on down, are talking shit nonstop, you’re dwelling in a world-class shithole.

Gratuitous violence, such as shooting, stabbing or punching strangers just because you’re pissed off, numb or braindead, also adds to your society’s shithole score. On 9/3/22, a 17-year-old Texan purposely plowed his truck into an old man on a wheelchair. In pricey Chelsea on 9/15/22, a man slammed a brick into the face of a high school student, as he was just sitting there, eating lunch. Also in Manhattan, a man was stabbed for no reason on 9/9/22. In Miami on 2/22/22, a man was suddenly punched by a stranger. Stumbling onto the street, he was struck by a car. Even libraries aren’t safe, but this shouldn’t be too surprising, since they’ve long been havens for the homeless to find warmth and bathrooms. In Anaheim on 3/26/22, a librarian was knocked unconscious by a nominal lover of books.

In a steaming shithole, anyone can be shot over next to nothing. In Philadelphia on 9/11/22, a 24-year-old cashier at 7-11 asked two men to show IDs to buy cigarettes, so one shot him in the neck and arm. Such incidents have become so common, hardly anyone notices. That’s your new normal.

A single block in Greenwich Village has hired armed security guards, but expect this trend to explode in coming weeks, for American cities must catch up to, if not surpass, South African ones! We’re number one!

Those raised in wokeness may not know the US hasn’t always been a cesspool of mindless, even violent boasting, with no values higher than eternal adolescence, coitus count, blings and online assholeness, with music unspeakably crass, and higher culture shrunken, then canceled. Check out these lyrics from two breakout rappers, Lakeyah and Latto:

First off, bitch, mind yo' business (Business)
Bad bitch, everyday like Christmas
Attitude, on "Fuck you, pay me"
It take more than a Bentley to date me

[…]

How y'all fuckin' on a rich nigga and ain't gettin' some? (What?)
Pussy tight, fat, wet, no smell (Ah)
I be buyin' Birkins like them bitches on sale (Yeah)

That’s the day’s poetry. As for prose to wipe your ass with, there’s the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Economist, etc. You’re dunk in shit.

A belligerent, degraded culture breeds violent acts, and America has long been proud of its unchecked aggression. Kill ‘em all, let God sort them out. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Join the army, travel to exotic, distant lands, meet exciting, unusual people and kill them. Kick ass and go home.

It’s true that blacks are responsible for an outrageous proportion of violence in the USA, but their worst proclivities are amplified by a culture that celebrates savagery. Where, you ask? In Jewish produced movies and songs, of course, while the Jewjuked media excuse such mayhem. Lionized urban niggas become role models for suburban and rural whites. Today’s Beaver and Wally would be rapping niggas. Shirley Temple would outtwerk Miley Cyrus.

In 1940, Temple at 12-years-old was interviewed by 45-year-old Arthur Freed, an executive at MGM. Charmed by the curly haired angel, Freed, née Grossman, unzipped his pants to show her his prick, but that’s just Hollywood. Freed is best known for the 1951 film, Singing in the Rain, which he produced and wrote lyrics for. “Let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place. Come on with the rain, I've a smile on my face.” Near death, Freed became president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Trust the science, ya’al!

With spreading violence, chaos, shortages of everything, lurking famine, war on several fronts, plus the increasingly undeniable carnage of the Jewjabs, a Biblical shitstorm is heading our way. It won’t be easy to preserve your dignity and clarity of mind, much less extracting meanings or beauty from such degradation, deprivation and menace.

This week in Vung Tau, though, I heard a fascinating story from the painter and poet Trịnh Cung. After the Fall of Saigon, he was corralled into a prison camp, where he met the poet Tạ Ký. Frail and in poor health, Tạ Ký wasn’t sure he could survive such hard labor on a near starvation diet, without a release date even, then his mother and son showed up, only to bring the worst news.

Since he had no visitation rights, she could only deliver this by pretending to be a local peasant, walking by the camp’s perimeter, where the latrine was. Squatting with other wretches to take a dump, Tạ Ký heard from his mom, “Your wife has married a Viet Cong colonel. At home, I’m taking care of the kids, so don’t worry. When it’s possible, I’ll come to see you.”

Winner of a local beauty pageant, Tạ Ký’s wife had worked as ticket seller at the Rex Movie Theater in downtown Saigon. Admirers would go there to glimpse her face.

A week after this news, Tạ Ký went to Trịnh Cung to ask for a favor. Would the younger man keep all his prison poems? It’s a terrible idea, Trịnh Cung replied, for it’s almost certain he would be snagged with them, so the poems would be destroyed, with Trịnh Cung and Tạ Ký savagely punished. Trịnh Cung could memorize one poem, however. Though both men survived “reeducation,” Tạ Ký would die in prison anyway, after he tried to escape Vietnam by boat.

The poem Tạ Ký entrusted to Trịnh Cung is about his lost wife, and the flies always buzzing around their communal shithole. It takes a fierce spirit to wrest poetry from transcendent pain and open-ended suffering. It is possible. I translate:

Flies and You

Flies from the latrine fly upward
Fly noises rustling like rippling waves
Fly eyes evoking Western hair
Flies on barbed wire like the black bead necklace
I gave you for our wedding
Flies on barbed wires like musical notes
Barbed wires make uneven musical staffs
So how can you sing?
A flock of swallows return
Not to herald spring
For I know spring has died
A flock of swallows return
To seek flies on barbed wires
The black bead necklace shatters
I call your name
Several times.

Prison 6, Long Khánh—1976


Ruồi Và Em

Ruồi từ hố tiêu bay lên
Tiếng ruồi lao xao như sóng gợn
Mắt ruồi nâu làm nhớ tóc Tây phương
Ruồi đậu trên dây thép gai như chuỗi hạt huyền
Anh tặng em ngày cưới
Ruồi đậu trên dây thép gai như những nốt nhạc
Dây thép gai kẻ nhạc không đều
Làm sao em hát
Có bầy én về
Không phải để báo tin xuân
Vì anh biết mùa xuân đã chết
Có bầy én về tìm ruồi trên dây thép
Chuỗi hạt huyền vỡ tan
Anh gọi tên em
Mấy lần.

T6, Long Khánh 1976