[2012 Democratic National Convention]
I very rarely watch TV, but while living in Norwich, England in 2005, I turned on my telly for Harold Pinter’s Nobel speech. This bit has always stayed with me:
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people,’ as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’
Whatever his personal style, each American president is entrusted to dump bullshit not just on the American people, but the world. Delivering lie after lie with just the right facial expression, body language and tone, with never a sarcastic or mischievous glint in his eyes, he’s a first-rate actor, but you can’t rise that high without perfecting your craft. Obama was excellent in this regard, but Clinton, Trump and even Bush were very good, too. Each was chosen for his character, and if you think you had any part in these selections, you must hurry to get your fifth booster shot!
Why, then, do we have Joe Biden, who routinely flubs his lines, when not farting in front of royalty or shaking hands with nothing? Under his watch, the greatest show on earth has become a tawdry, bush league circus without even a three-legged lady to amuse us a little. As a horror attraction, Kamala Harris is simply boring. Couldn’t they have trotted out a much more appealing couple? The repulsiveness of this tag team is the whole point, however, for they want idiots to think the country’s fortune could be reversed if these clowns were removed.
Before Biden as zombie was deployed, he was even tasked with sounding literate. Welcoming the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, to Washington in July of 2015, Biden quoted from Nguyễn Du’s “Tale of Kiều,” an 1820 poem of 3,254 lines.
Biden, “Thank heaven we are here today. To see the sun through parting fog and clouds” [“Trời còn để có hôm nay / Tan sương đầu ngõ vén mây giữa trời”]. I would translate these as, “Providence has left us this day / When mist melts below, clouds part above.” In any case, someone plucked out lines 3021 and 3022 so Biden could impress a Vietnamese audience. Most Americans wouldn’t recognize a quotation from Whitman, much less Nguyễn Du. The US and Vietnam were ready for a new partnership, Biden meant.
I hope you don’t think Biden could handle any poetry beyond the shortest Ogden Nash, “Why did the Lord give us agility, / If not to evade responsibility?”
In 2000, Clinton already quoted Nguyễn Du while visiting Hanoi, “Just as the lotus wilts, the mums bloom forth / Time softens grief, and the winter turns to spring” [lines 1795-6]. Since those words are spoken by Thúc Sinh, a skirt chasing adulterer with one nasty wife, this citation by Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend had Vietnamese snickering. Someone at State Department must have had a good laugh at burger clown Bill’s expense.
Visiting Hanoi in 2015, Obama continued this tradition, “I hope you think back to this moment and draw hope from the vision that I’ve offered today. Or, if I can say it another way—in words that you know well from the Tale of Kieu—‘Please take from me this token of trust, so we can embark upon our 100-year journey together [lines 355-6].’”
Between jiving, schmoozing and charming, US presidents do slip in key messages, or instructions, if you will, so here’s Clinton speaking in Vietnam on 11/17/20:
Today the United States and Vietnam open a new chapter in our relationship, at a time when people all across the world trade more, travel more, know more about and talk more with each other than ever before. Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent. The movement of people, money, and ideas across borders, frankly, breeds suspicion among many good people in every country. They are worried about globalization because of its unsettling and unpredictable consequences.
Yet, globalization is not something we can hold off or turn off. It is the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water. We can harness wind to fill a sail. We can use water to generate energy. We can work hard to protect people and property from storms and floods. But there is no point in denying the existence of wind or water, or trying to make them go away. The same is true for globalization. We can work to maximize its benefits and minimize its risks, but we cannot ignore it, and it is not going away.
So there you have it, globalization is a force of nature that can’t be resisted. Moreover, it shouldn’t be resisted, since it’s the salvation of mankind, just as Communism was once trumpeted.
Nationalism is not just reactionary or Fascistic, but dangerously so, for it leaves each population helpless in front of problems only globalism can solve. In Covid-19: The Great Reset, Klaus Schwab explains:
In a nutshell, global governance is at the nexus of all these other issues. Therefore, the concern is that, without appropriate global governance, we will become paralysed in our attempts to address and respond to global challenges, particularly when there is such a strong dissonance between short-term, domestic imperatives and long-term, global challenges. This is a major worry, considering that today there is no “committee to save the world.”
Get that? Without “appropriate global governance, we will become paralysed,” so we need “a committee to save the world,” but from what, you ask?
From media-hyped pandemics, oil, natural gas, bloody red meat, white breasts, dark thighs, procreation, hugging, smiling, debating in a civilized manner, probing official lies, being left alone to mind our own damn business, getting rowdy in a pub, travel, longevity or just breathing, etc. We need creeps like Schwab, Soros, Gates and Yuval Noah Harari to show us how to reach net zero, basically by snuffing ourselves out, to make room for self-chosen ones.
To facilitate this earth-saving task, there are Albert “Remember the Holocaust” Bourla’s serial jewjabs.
Injected, you can follow the example of Mali, 22-years-old, who used her car to block traffic to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, to protest “climate destruction.” I’m assuming Mali didn’t just get her sleek wheels for this “no more oil” statement, so she’ll keep motoring.
Mali did stop thousands of cars from moving, so there was marginally less pollution during her trigger event or mini putsch. Grilled by the press afterwards, no one mentioned climate engineering, so the greatest cause of climate destruction was, as always, not addressed. Like Biden, Trump, Chomsky, Goodman or Unz, Mali distracts.
It’s nearly 11AM in Vũng Tàu, so I’ll stop here to head down to the beef place for a nice lunch, plus a Tiger beer or two. I’ll also order some french fries, which Vietnamese like to eat with margarine and sugar. “Just give me some salt,” I’ll have to ask again, since all those double-jabbed waiters can’t remember squat.
Nice kids, they all live above the restaurant, and just had their two-day yearly vacation, as paid by their boss. Though they only spent one night at a guest house, some packed suitcases as if they were going away for a week.
At the end of each long shift, they sit at a long table to enjoy their own beef dinner. Beef is good, and so is sitting together to talk and laugh.
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