Who Is Afraid of Liberation?

Yes, I think the triumphalism is premature, but optimism is another thing entirely. There are growing signs of uppitiness among the once-silent majority of the world’s ordinary people–those not represented in the coffeehouses of Brussels or in the General Assembly. There is nothing inevitable about the success of a revolution; the tyrants can delay the realization of those trends as long as they control the guns. But oppression inevitably breeds discontent and systemic inefficiencies.

End caveat; pan to reality. Bloggers are smuggling us a stream of black-market samizdat that has left the Big Media stunned. This is just a partial list:

• Pro-democracy demonstrations in Kuwait, Egypt, Bolivia, Nepal, Pakistan, China, and more. More here from Austin Bay, who predicted much of this, and notes how pro-democracy movements have adopted a common mantra: kifaya! (enough!).

• Protests against (possibly) rigged elections are spreading through ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan;

• Hezbollah and Syria managed to turn out some impressive numbers for their counter-protests, but according to astuteblogger, there’s reason to question how those numbers were produced. He makes a compelling case that it would have been mathematically difficult-to-impossible without trucking in large numbers of Syrians and Palestinians, hardly a measure of Lebanese enthusiasm.

• Oh, and the South Korean left thinks that mere words in support of giving people the right to choose their own governments equals an Iron American heel. Sure, I could rail against the sheer blinkered illogic of it all day. I could try to work through why these same people protest when the U.S. proposes to remove its iron heel from Korea, and I could muse about just exactly why the f*ck any prudent oppressor would start off by handing his subjects the right to self-government. But the point comes where playing with your kids matters a whole lot more than diagnosing the neuroses of a patient who’ll never take to the therapy anyway.

I’ve saved the best for last.

Regular readers know that my favorite city on earth is Saigon. No one, incidentally, calls it by that other name. Every Great City needs a few things to make it great: a unique topographic feature, a unique form of transportation, unique ways to have fun at night, unique food / drink, enough friendly people to allow meaningful interaction with them, and beautiful people of the opposite sex–even if just for one’s discreet and unobtrusive admiration. Saigon has a smooth, balmy, smelly river plied by sampans; cyclos pedalled by smiling, scarred little men who have lived through war, maiming, reeducation, and untouchability; flocks of graceful young girls in ao dais floating through the streets on bicycles; jungle canopy growing over crumbling parisian boulevards; warrens of trade and commerce as unrestricted by conscience as you’ll find anywhere; an assortment of ’66 Mustangs, ’74 Hornets, and ’72 Citroens that seemed hastily abandoned, yet meticulously preserved; the low and steady roar of swirling two-cycle commerce; and the fragrance of strong spiced coffee, diesel exhaust, and decaying jackfruit. It is at once supremely relaxing, sensual, and corrupt.

Of course, Saigon was not free for the Saigonese, but in unguarded moments, they’ll whisper their stories to you: the woman whose husband was killed by the Viet Cong; the men who had spent seven or eight years watching others die in reeducation camps; the aging bar girl-turned-snack vendor in Nha Trang with her pouty-yet-tragic stories of her own time in the camps, and who had reverted to fashions and cosmetics that were straight out of 1972 as soon as the authorities declared her rehabilitated.

Those who had lived through the war seemed beaten and hopeless, yet resigned and forgiving of all sins and crimes, ours included. Yet in my entire (brief, admittedly) time in Viet Nam, the only two anti-American views I heard were from a government tour guide and a German–you know the type: wire rims, shaved head, dyed goatee, spandex, day-glo backpacks, piercings . . . seen three and you’ve seen ’em all. Ja! Ve are all indivichualsss! These types never ventured more than two blocks from Pham Ngu Lao or 200 meters from their hostels or tour guides. I think they’d all been fitted with ankle bracelets back in Bremen. While I was hitchhiking in the mountains and sleeping in strange villages on the Cambodian border where there be bandits and Khmer Rouge sweepings, the spandices were shopping for tourist crap, scoring hash, and rereading the “Dangers and Annoyances” sections in their Lonely Planet books.

By the way, since nobody’s using it anymore, when can we have the term “liberal” back? I’ve always envied it, since it smacks of “liberation,” something I’ve always romanticized. I have some social views that are mildly liberal or libertarian and have no more use for Rockefeller Republicans than Harry Truman or Scoop Jackson did. And since the liberals have all started calling themselves “progressives” and for the most part consider liberation to be blut-fur-ol neocon madness, I say let me be a “liberal.”

Viet Nam is a far more open society than, say, North Korea, and foreign influence is streaming in. This week, Claudia Rosett tells us of a fracture in Viet Nam’s universal sense of resignation:

Given that Vietnam’s secret police almost certainly eavesdrop on any contact he has with the wider world, I was prepared for a discreet and carefully phrased conversation, meant to minimize his risk. Dr. Que was not. He got straight to the point: “What I want is liberty for my people.” The question now, he said, “is how to make regime change in Vietnam.” For democratization of his country, he added, “support from the rest of the world is important.” Specifically, he wants Hanoi’s decaying communist party to “put forward a timetable for free and fair elections.”

It’s enough to warm a neo-liberal’s heart. A good cause, well fought but badly led and managed, sometimes ruthlessly and often stupidly led and managed, succeeded in driving most of Vietnam’s rural population into a state of terrified neutrality between two groups of scary people. America realized, too late, that the Vietnamese would have to determine their own destiny and defend their own freedom, imperfect as it may have been under Nguyen Van Theiu. The Vietnamese formed a halfway-effective army just in time for the United States to cut off all of its funding. For the Vietnamese to win back their own freedom–something that hardly seems perceptible at this point–would undoubtedly bring prosperity to the enterprising Vietnamese people and some peace to many American vets.

But really, I just hope Jane Fonda lives to see crowds of Vietnamese cheering as the front-end loaders come for Ho Chi Minh’s statute in front of the Hotel de Ville.