@iky_fwjett Yet the fear is irrational, because Chester Zoo doesn't have bears (besides sun bears and spectacled bears, which are docile and basically harmless).
@labisiffre@leethommo I saw them live twice before Chas's sad passing. Fun and funny, obviously, but such talented musicians, technically (a detail that I hadn't fully appreciated before then).
You are not describing history.
You are describing the American bedtime story about history.
Let me remind you what actually happened on our soil, not in your textbooks.
North Vietnam did not "invade" South Vietnam.
Vietnam was one nation that foreign powers divided on paper and expected us to accept the way a prisoner accepts the shape of his cell.
There is no "North Vietnamese people" and "South Vietnamese people."
There is only one Vietnamese people separated by a imaginary line drawn by outsiders.
You talk about 1954 as if the partition was destiny.
It was not.
The Geneva Accords mandated free and fair elections in 1956, so the Vietnamese could reunify peacefully.
Eisenhowerโs own intelligence admitted Hแป Chรญ Minh would win by 80 percent.
That is why the United States blocked the elections.
That is why your puppet regime was installed.
That is why the country was carved in two to prevent democracy, not defend it.
You call our president Hแป Chรญ Minh a "brutal scourge."
Your CIA called him "the George Washington of Vietnam."
The only thing dangerous about him was that he wanted a Vietnam not ruled by France, Japan, or America.
But let us talk about the Gulf of Tonkin, since you think "the rest is history."
There was no second attack.
There was no assault on the Turner Joy.
There was only American radar chasing ghosts in a storm, and a White House searching for the excuse it needed to unleash a war it had already decided to fight.
McNamara admitted it.
The NSA declassified the evidence.
Your own navy officers testified the incident never happened.
Yet from that lie came three million Vietnamese dead, eight million tons of bombs, Agent Orange burned into our soil and our DNA, entire provinces turned into moonscapes.
And you still recite this story as if the United States came to rescue us from ourselves.
Let me be very clear:
America did not enter Vietnam to "help" South Vietnam.
America entered Vietnam to prevent the independence of a country that refused to kneel to Western power.
The people who fought the United States were not foreign invaders.
They were farmers defending the same land their ancestors defended for over 2,000 years against the Han, the Tang, the Song, the Mongols, the Ming, the Qing, the French, and the Japanese.
We were not fighting for communism.
We were fighting for Vietnam.
And we won.
That is the part your version always forgets.
You lost a war you cannot psychologically accept losing, so you rewrite it as a morality play where America tried to save a "good" Vietnam from a "bad" one.
There was no good Vietnam and bad Vietnam.
There was only Vietnam
And the empire that tried to break it.
The rest is not history.
The rest is denial.
@Glinner@_GoodyBCampbell "It doesn't really matter." Righto. So it's fine for me to brandish a hatchet at you whenever some unrelated Irish fella should commit a crime. ๐๐ผ