After dodging the draft 5 times, Trump finally decides to fight the Vietnamese.
These are the boat people, the people who fled here because of the ill-begotten war that this country made on theirs, and who fled because the enmity of their countrymen made their staying in Vietnam impossible. They have made peace with those circumstances. They have made homes and lives here. One of them, as Dave Weigel of the Washington Post pointed out on the electric Twitter machine, is named Stephanie Murphy, who fled with her family from Vietnam to this country in 1979. Presently, Ms. Murphy represents the Seventh Congressional District of Florida in the House of Representatives. This could get a bit sticky.
This is all about playing to the rubes (again) and using people of color (again) as props. That it reopens deep wounds that everyone thought were healed is irrelevant to a White House devoid of empathy or any sense of either honor or history. The cruelty is the point. It is the only animating principle of this American government.
But not the communist ones, cause they might be scary.
He wants to fight the people that Reagan talked about in his farewell address to the country.
The people who Reagan describe saving as “what it was to be an American. We stood for freedom.”
While many here hate Reagan, and that’s fine, if nothing else, the vision he presented in his speeches was good. Even if it was rosier than reality, the vision was good. It was something worth striving for.
And now the GOP had abandoned even striving for any of those things. They are bad guys we fought against.
You think they’ll start raiding local pho shops? I took this photo a couple months ago in the International District in Seattle.
Adorned with the colors and pattern of the South Vietnamese flag with a sign that says “Saigon”. The war ain’t ended for some of these folks.
Honestly? Yes.
The Fresno Area was once the main haven the Hmongs in America (I think Minneapolis is now for some reason), but we have a large southeast refugee Asian population. In areas of town there are Pho places on every corner.
Pho Real?
It says “Little Saigon”, which has been the (unofficial?) name of a neighborhood in Seattle since the 80’s. It’s like having an Indian restaurant called Bombay Palace. I seriously doubt a majority of Americans could name the city now.
Your comment about the flag colors has caused me to dive into a Wikipedia rabbit hole, from which I’ve just emerged, dusty and bruised. I now know far too much about the cultural history of Vietnamese flags than I ever needed to.
Lucky. They’re a lot thinner on the ground here in Portland.
They had it in their grasp, but instead of dealing for what they could get, they held out and got their collective dicks slammed in the dryer door.
Jesus Christ he wants to deport the boat lift immigrants? The people fleeing South Vietnam when we left? WTF?
This is how you know it’s all just ‘fuck you’ meanness. There’s no problem which is solved by deporting people who have lived here legally for 40 or more years. It’s not a policy proposal directed at any current difficulty. It’s just an opportunity to fuck some people over, people who aren’t white.
I guess in theory, deporting a bunch of Vietnamese who are sliding into their upper 70s might save some Medicaid money over the next dozen years.
Of course the legal and logistical bureaucratic costs involved in finding and deporting all those people, plus the interminable legal challenges to the dumbass idea itself would quickly dwarf any such savings.
At the end of the day, this is just another paper outrage that the White House is tossing out there to rile up the “liberals” (i.e., anyone with a shred of soul) and distract from the dumpster-train-fire-wreck that is his administration.
This is all Miller. He’s an epic POS.
It’s been pointed out elsewhere, but these Vietnamese are largely republican voters.
Yeah, I saw a couple of reasonable estimates that this group may be one of the largest remaining non-white groups of voters who are still reliably Republican.
Deport your voters to own the libs.
Finding new and inventive ways to shoot himself in the foot.
The women who sat next to me at work last season was a Vietnamese refugee as a kid. Her father apparently was given all the rights of a military vet. Her kids used his benefits to help with college and she received aid as a kid. I don’t remember if the Vietnamese who fought for us/with us were given special dispensation when they arrived here but I do think they did.