2020 election

[Smitty-48]

Oh, well, it is still a brutal communist dictatorship.

Le Duan was Stalin. They got rid of Stalin. But they're not free, they're just not being liquidated by Stalin.

The North Vietnamese never actually personalized the war with the Americans.

They did not hate the Americans anywhere near as much as they hated the South Vietnamese.

The Puppets in Saigon was who they blamed, and that's who they took revenge upon when they got there.

[Smitty-48]

That's the thing that made Le Duan so brutal.

He wasn't from the North.

He was from the South.

It wasn't liberation for the purposes of freeing the South from the Americans.

Le Duan was out for vengeance, he wanted to punish the South.

The NLF was the more brutal force. The VC were the most vicious. It was a blood feud in the South.

The North Vietnamese troops were actually idealistic kids who were being led down the garden path by Le Duan.

[BjornP]

In terms of oppression, Vietnam seem alot less oppressive than China, and somewhat worse than Russia. But meh, they're not spreading their ideology to foreign lands, and what oppression they have only hurts their own citizens. And if you want to make money off of them, they don't allow unions.

[Smitty-48]

None the less, it was no great thing that the North won and the South lost.

If the South had won, it would be like South Korea now.

[Smitty-48]

None of this has to do with America anyways.

America's demon doesn't exist anymore in the present.

America is trapped in 1968.

The Vietnam Demon is only in America.

Hardhats. Hippies. Identity politics is all about Vietnam, but that's South Vietnam, frozen in time forever.

[Smitty-48]

In terms of oppression, Vietnam seem alot less oppressive than China, and somewhat worse than Russia. But meh, they're not spreading their ideology to foreign lands, and what oppression they have only hurts their own citizens. And if you want to make money off of them, they don't allow unions.

They are still not a unified country.

That's the most striking thing.

By 1965, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were not even close to being the same country anymore.

Two totally different peoples by then.

The Reunification is in name only, in reality they are still deeply divided along those North South lines.

And that's a rubric for the dictatorship to crack down on the slightest dissent.

[BjornP]

Yeah, had the north won then promptly abandoned Communism they'd be SK now. Being Communist in an ever growing capitalist world is like choosing to be Stone Age when everyone around you is working iron.

In terms of economy, Vietnam is not Communist planned economy anymore, but that’s a much more recent development.

And yeah, I'd wish Americans realized just how stuck in the past they are with Vietnam. No matter their politics. Feelings of guilt or anger are useless when your "enemies" actually respect you and want to expand your trade, economy and American jobs.

[Smitty-48]

It was actually three wars.

There was the NLF war against their own government in the South.

There was the NVA war to exploit that to acheive Reunification.

Then there was the Americans fighting those two separate enemies.

Two Vietnamese enemies, one South, one North.

Who did not actually get along nor have the same objectives.

[Smitty-48]

And yeah, I'd wish Americans realized just how stuck in the past they are with Vietnam. No matter their politics. Feelings of guilt or anger are useless when your "enemies" actually respect you and want to expand your trade, economy and American jobs.

But the Vietnamese are not the Vietnam Demon.

The Demon is defeat.

The hardhats hate the hippies. The hippies hate the hardhats.

The two identity camps blame each other for the catastrophic defeat.

They use all sorts of proxies to fight about, but all the fights come down to the catastrophe which split the nation.

And whose fault that is.

[Smitty-48]

For example; the entire odyssey in Iraq.

Americans will claim, reflexively, that it was all a conspiracy for oil.

But that's because they can't discuss what it was really about, which was Vietnam.

The whole point, was to exorcise the Vietnam demon.

It was gonna be the big win to overthrow the defeat that cracked the republic.

Unfortunately, it played out exactly like Vietnam all over again.

First they split Iraq into a North and South Vietnam, then they felt impelled to march on Hanoi.

In 1991, they freed South Vietnam, er I mean Kuwait.

But that was not good enough.

The victory was not complete.

Until they had marched all the way to Hanoidad and hung Ho Chi Hussein from a tree.

But they don't like to talk about Vietnam.

So they will come up with other conspiracy theory to explain it, oil, the MIC, what have you.

Rather than the glaringly obvious Vietnam do over to get it right this time.