Slices of Life, #8

To the unseasoned or ignorant, image is everything. Trump’s grotesque media performances, though, will be cited as a turning point in how the USA is perceived.

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Big Beautiful Faces — Aug 30, 2025.

In the New York Times on 9/11/23, there’s a photo of Joe Biden, standing with his head bowed, looking solemn. In the background is a saluting US soldier, dressed in white. The caption, “President Biden at a memorial to John McCain, his former Senate colleague, on Monday in Hanoi, Vietnam.” Why would Vietnam have a memorial to John McCain, you wonder?

It doesn’t. Here’s the exact translation of that plaque, “On October 26th, 1967, at Trúc Bạch Lake, the soldiers and people of our capital Hanoi captured alive the pilot John Sidney McCain, an air force captain in the US Navy, whose A4 plane was shot down over the Yên Phụ Electrical Plant. It was one of ten airplanes shot down that day.”

Through sloppy reporting, a Vietnamese celebration of having shot down a famous American is turned into a tribute. The photo itself is misleading enough, for it shows Biden as very serious or even noble. All posed photos are already manipulative.

Another photo in the same article shows the US delegation meeting Vietnamese officials, so 21 people altogether. Sat at a long table, they’re lorded over by a huge bust of Ho Chi Minh. Image wise, he’s their daddy, if not god. Also manipulative is Vietnam’s practice of forcing every foreign leader, Xi, Putin or Trump, it doesn’t matter, to pose in front of and below a giant Uncle Ho head. That’s just the house rule in Hanoi.

Hanoi having powerful world leaders standing beneath Uncle Ho is meant for Vietnamese. This simple trick reinforces its legitimacy.

Meanwhile in the USA, some forgotten grunt still lying in piss and shit at Walter Reed without his limbs, genitals, family and friends might be asking, “They plucked me from Iowa to fight that Super Commie. Now, they’re all eager to suck his dead dick!” Ignored by everyone, his thoughts don’t matter.

To the unseasoned or ignorant, image is everything. In DC, the US Department of Labor is being defaced by a huge banner of pussified Trump glowering. Looks great on Fox News. Sucking hard, Lori Chavez-Deremer even called it “your big beautiful face” to Trump’s gloating face. She won’t be remembered for anything else.

Before Trump, the US seduced the world with James Dean, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Lady Gaga, Obama and, frankly, just about every sloppily dressed US tourist tossing his cash around. This really worked in the Third World. “Even American bums are so rich!”

Trump’s grotesque media performances, though, will be cited as a turning point in how the USA is perceived. They are isolating America as much as his hostile trade policies. Two months ago, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands appeared to mock Trump’s mouth movements as he was talking. Though she denied doing this, the world had a good laugh, for they believed Trump deserved to be mocked. Last week, South Korean president Lee Jae Myung told Trump at the White House, “I look forward to your meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un, and the construction of a Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf at that place.”

Lee also said, “The only person who can make progress is you, Mr. President. If you become the peacemaker, then I will assist you by being a pacemaker.” “The only person” already sounds like mockery, though not to MAGA cultists. What about a Trump Tower and playing golf in North Korea? Is pacemaker a jab at Trump’s heart condition?

Before Trump, no US cabinet member would say “your big beautiful face” to her president, but that’s where we are. Also, his total lack of culture was once associated with the nouveau riche, but Trump was born into wealth. The Donald is indeed special. His very crassness is used to sell Trump to the heartland, itself degraded and infantilized after decades of the most toxic media ever concocted.

Already thinking about manipulative images, I heard with delight Mrs. Seven’s political thoughts this morning. She considered Nguyen Van Thieu, Nguyen Cao Ky and Bill Clinton very handsome, though she couldn’t quite identify the last. As a girl, she saw President Thieu on a horse carriage riding through Vung Tau. He waved in her direction. Struggling to pronounce “Trump,” she said two of her regulars were very excited about his victory.

“Of course we loved the American empire, because life was so good when they were here.” It wasn’t so great just 15 miles away in Long Sơn, or 25 miles away in Đất Đỏ, for those nearby towns were controlled by the Viet Cong. Instead of locals selling chewing gum, cigarettes, beer, marijuana or sex to tall white men with plenty of cash, they were shot at by the same.

That’s how it is, too, in the USA. One’s politics is almost entirely dependent on what town or even street one was born into. Nearly everyone, though, considers himself an “independent thinker.”

When South Vietnam collapsed on 4/30/75, there was widespread panic and terror, with people trampling on each other to board anything that could float out to sea. With the ocean not a mile away, Mrs. Seven’s family stayed put, however, because her dad was “so timid,” she recalled this morning. Even with so many nearby houses and shops abandoned, they didn’t join in the looting frenzy that erupted. Her senile grandma did pick up rifles tossed by fleeing ARVN soldiers.

For 20 years, all Vietnamese suffered terribly. During my first trip back in 1995, I witnessed widespread poverty. At an art opening in Hanoi, I met the de facto American ambassador, I can’t even remember his name, who, so friendly, gave me his card, “Just contact me if you need anything.” Bill Clinton was president. After the US normalized relations with Vietnam, life here improved dramatically, so millions of Vietnamese, not just Mrs. Seven, think Slick Willie is super gorgeous.

As for charming Obama, during a 2016 speech in Hanoi he quoted not just poet Nguyễn Du (1766–1820) and Ho Chi Minh, but general Lý Thường Kiệt (1019–1105) and composer Văn Cao (1923–1995). He also mentioned song writer Trịnh Công Sơn (1939–2001). It was a masterful performance, as enabled by his crack team of speech writers. A Vietnamese newspaper at the time praised Obama for his deep knowledge of Vietnamese culture, plus respect for Vietnam and Vietnamese.

Such seduction is no longer practiced. With Trump, the US is simply snarling fuck you at everybody, since the entire world, according to this self–loving child rapist who’s always right, has been cheating and bullying Uncle Sam for decades! I can only think of one other nation that’s always claiming victimhood as it bombs away.

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/30/25

Anus River in Vegas — Aug 31, 2025.

肛, meaning anus, and 江, meaning river, are both rendered as giang in Vietnamese. Until he broke off our friendship four months ago, my oldest friend was Giang. We met as freshmen at San Jose’s Andrew Hill High School in 1978. We even lived on the same street, Locke Drive. A cul de sac, it exited at a huge city dump. Though I couldn’t see it from my window, I certainly smelled it. As more Vietnamese moved into Locke Drive, nearly everybody else fled. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Chevette every fifth or sixth house. It was the cheapest model on the market. We called our street Xóm Rác, Garbage Hood. We were the yellowest trash of San Jose.

Though Anus River and I had nothing in common, we maintained our friendship over four decades. We hung out in San Jose, Fremont, Santa Cruz, Carmel, San Francisco, Berkeley, Philadelphia, Saigon, Hanoi and Vung Tau. Super square, Giang spoke and thought in clichés. He actually said to an embarrassed waitress, “Please send my compliments to the chef.” The one time I took Giang to Friendly Lounge in South Philly, I wished he would just shut the fuck up. Chattering away with stock phrases, Giang thought he was just schmoozing at his office’s coffee station. Making so much in sales, Giang once gave his wife a $50,000 watch for her birthday. Since she was way smarter than him, that marriage was already shaky. Its implosion, though, must be blamed on Giang’s temper. I saw him snap at people over nothing. Giang’s two sons from his first marriage stopped talking to him years ago.

Giang’s divorce was so devastating, he placed a noose around his neck. Regaining his balance, Giang dated four or five women, all Vietnamese, then he met his current wife in Saigon. Again, it wasn’t a great match. Not only was she much younger, but also, like his first wife, much smarter. I never trusted her words, eyes or smiles, and she’s too pretty to put up with this fat older guy who babbles nonsense almost nonstop. After their engagement, she kept screwing a handsome boyfriend. This bitter man emailed Giang photos and videos of them frolicking at some beach in Phan Thiết. It took months, but Giang got over it. With their two kids, he’s living with her in North Las Vegas. Though pricey enough, this mirage in the desert is still cheaper than San Jose.

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/31/25

During the Covid hysteria, I warned Giang repeatedly about Jewjabs, but he got three. Though Giang survived them, I noticed an increase in his crankiness. When it flared up so nastily in Vung Tau three years ago, I pointed this out, “Your temperament has changed, man. It saddens me.” We were sitting in a car on Trương Công Định Street. Before this shift, we could always joke around most obscenely or goofily. We were buddies.

Giang also ignored my warnings about his current wife. She’s a successful businesswoman, he countered, with ten employees. She doesn’t need to go to the USA.

Having given up everything to reach paradise, she was getting her license as a manicurist, last I heard. Instead of bossing people around in Saigon, she’s aiming to paint ghetto bitches’ toenails in Diamond Point or Bonanza Village. Maybe the Lowedown Hair and Nails is hiring? Should any 600-pounder fart in her face, she will certainly chirp in broken English, “Mustard been me!” After work, she can hear Giang’s encapsulation of whatever he’s just learned from Fox News.

About five years ago, there was a slew of YouTube videos about Kensington, a dismal Philly neighborhood swarming with heroin and fentanyl junkies. I had written quite a bit about Kensington, and one chapter in my Postcards from the End of America (2017) is devoted to it. Lately, I’ve noticed all these videos about Vegas in deep shit. With MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment dominating its casinos and hotels, Vegas has seen prices jacked up, with “resort fees” added to hotel stays for gym and pool access, even if you don’t use them! Free parking and cheap buffets are gone. Due to Trump’s assholism, arrivals from Canada and other countries have decreased markedly. The only increase are the homeless, including those many thousands dwelling inside Vegas’ underground storm drains. At least it’s cooler down there.

I’ve never been to Vegas, only Reno, and just for a few hours. Riding the Greyhound, I also stopped in Battle Mountain for maybe 20 minutes. I don’t know why a state so hellishly hot and barren is called Snowy? Still, if I had to spend two weeks in Nevada, I would choose Battle Mountain over Vegas or Reno. Though deemed by the Washington Post to be “the armpit of America,” Battle Mountain is true, it is what it is, and not a collection of phony attractions. It’s said that Vegas at its peak made even a garbageman or plumber felt like some pampered bigshot. It had to do so long enough to pick his pockets. I’m not interested in such illusions.

Casinos aren’t just disgusting, but pathetic. Those who want to visit a gambling mecca in ruins can pop into Atlantic City. Trump bankrupted several businesses there.

The last time I talked to Giang, he repeated Trump’s charge that all these countries, including Vietnam, have cheated the USA through unfair trade practices. He also expressed his delight at having returned to the greatest country on earth. Trump’s Golden Age was just getting started.

USA: (L): Reno, Nevada, 3/1/13 ; (R): Battle Mountain, Nevada, on 3/31/13

For Anti–Communist Vietnamese, the Fall of Saigon is commemorated in places like Westminster, CA and Falls Church, VA as Ngày Quốc hận, National Resentment Day. Inside Vietnam, it’s celebrated as Ngày Thống nhất, Reunification Day, or, more colloquially, Ngày Giải phóng, Liberation Day.

Since this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, there was a huge parade in Saigon. A day later, I emailed Giang, “Yesterday, Chinese troops marched in Saigon! Viet soldiers will participate in Victory Parade in Moscow. Vietnam, China and Russia will soon invade the USA to liberate pitiful Americans like you, so rejoice!”

The yellow MAGA seethed over my goofy joke. Whatever, man. Those living it up in paradise shouldn’t be so triggered by misguided raving from barefoot savages. You already have everything, dude! You’re no longer in some backward hellhole. Knowing no better, I spend too much time yakking and laughing with those who wear cheap, mismatched clothing. So simple minded, we’re amused by just about everything.

Cafe owner, “Lucky you! You get to drink coffee in the morning!”

Customer, “Even kings and lords can’t do better than this!”

Is that funny? Of course, it is. This dawn, Mrs. Seven and I were also delighted at the sight of that frog crawling from his hiding place. Like children, we kept staring at the ugly beast in wonderment as he stared at us. Bet you can’t do that in Vegas.

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 9/01/25

Dreasure You Bet! — Sep 01, 2025.

Not a fan of shopping malls, I’ve mostly ignored Lam Sơn Square, though it’s only half a block from me. This morning, though, I couldn’t help but notice this T-shirt on sale, “DREASURE—LIVE LAUGH LOVE / TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY.” You’d think somebody at Hòa Hạnh Clothing would have caught such a mistake, but maybe it’s an adroit neologism.

Though Shakespeare coined eyeball, addiction, lonely and swagger, the Stratford-upon-Avon layabout or flâneur couldn’t think of dreasure, a combination of dread and pleasure, duh! This profoundly ironic condition was already a universal affliction in the 16^th century, I’d bet. As for today, fuhgeddaboudit! Each of us should have “dreasure” tattooed on our forehead. We dread even our rarest moments of pleasure. Why? Because they’re such tiny blips in a swirling sea of longing, self-pity, self-love, nostalgia, sadness, drudgery and addictions. Did I forget anything?

After ten seconds of self-congratulations for having come up with “sea of longing,” I discovered it’s the title of a Robin Karsen novel. Amazon, “When rich and charismatic Jeff tries to sweep her off her feet, the broody hired-help Luke sees green. The results will be unpredictable, shocking—and steamy.”

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 9/01/25

Though Karsen and I are on the same level, she undoubtedly has more readers. To be more realistic, I must compare myself to Ron Wright. In his only Major League game, Wright struck out, hit into a triple play then a double play. That’s it for this charismatic man’s steamily shocking big league career. Should have leaned his mean mug into a 100 mile fastball, just to get on base!

So clueless about Lam Sơn Square, I didn’t even know it had movie theaters. Sitting at nearby Cóc Cóc, I discovered Vietnam’s current blockbuster is a war movie, Mưa Đỏ [Red Rain]. It’s about the 1972 battle for Quảng Trị. Based on a novel by Chu Lai (b. 1946), it features a budding musician who gives up a scholarship to the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, so he can risk his life to liberate the South. Though Chu Lai was himself a combat soldier, this plot is, well, very Hollywood, even if made in Vietnam. Its two minute trailer is super inspiring, so has nothing to do with any war’s actual horrors and squalor.

Paul Fussell, “‘All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.’ Thus Melville in his poem ‘The March into Virginia.’ War must rely on the young, for only they have the two things fighting requires: physical stamina and innocence about their own mortality. The young are proud of their athleticism, and because their sense of honor has not yet suffered compromise, they make the most useful material for manning the sharp end of war. Knowledge will come after a few months, and then they’ll be used up and as soldiers virtually useless—scared, cynical, debilitated, unwilling.”

Nearly 62, I’m not so innocent about my mortality, though I’ve only the tiniest taste of its horrors and sadness. Since my return from Jordan six weeks ago, I haven’t seen that hobbling black dog, so he must be gone. “Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,” writes Tennyson, and so do dogs, I suppose. “After many a summer dies the swan.” I’ve only seen geese in Vung Tau. About six of them are kept in a pen outside Coffee House.

After so many deep thoughts about war, Tennyson, hobbling dogs and geese, I rewarded myself with a trip to Lotte Supermarket, the finest in town. For a shameless haul of San Remo Spaghetti, Australian beef patties, Vietnamese beef balls, Vietnamese dark chocolate, Phuc Long tea bags, Bega’s Strong and Bitey Cheese and American Heritage Cream Cheese, I paid $75.08, so not exactly cheap, but still much cheaper for the same at any US store. Supermarkets stocked with imported goods are increasingly popular here, though many products, such as Fuck Long Tea, are proudly made in Vietnam.

Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/29/25

The motorbike guy who took me to Lotte is roughly my age. Today, we talked a bit about General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. He’s famous for shooting a captured Viet Cong in the head in 1968. With Saigon overrun and possibly lost, the South Vietnamese didn’t observe every nicety of war, but neither did the NVA or Viet Cong. Even in a street fight, guys start grabbing each other’s hair and balls, and they don’t hesitate from biting. It’s never like in the fuckin’ movies.

Sitting behind Dũng, I stated the obvious, “General Loan’s big mistake was to shoot the guy in front of an American journalist. Once he did that, he should have shot the American, too. That would have solved everything.”

Instead, this defeated general couldn’t even operate a pizza parlor in Northern Virginia, due to protests. Often, a life is defined by just a few seconds. Moreover, no man is ever seen in his entirety. So mean spirited, most of us relish each chance to caricature or slander. Makes us feel slightly less pitiful.

Now, I will run home to pop some of that chocolate into my insatiable mouth! Always hungry, we eat smoke even.

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

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