Vietnam war memorial. [InSapphoWeTrust/Flickr][some rights reserved]“...are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana wrote the line in 1905 in “The Life of Reason”, and Winston Churchill remembered it well enough to paraphrase it in 1948. But, nonetheless, according to most contemporary politicians, the real aspects of history suck. Just make things up as you go along. And maybe, if you yell your version of the past loudly enough, you might become president.
I have been getting Memorial Day missives, and I am puzzled at what people want to remember. And why. I understand and empathize with those reminding all the revisionists out there of what was going on underneath the turmoil and hippie self-righteousness of the Vietnam era. The country needs to accept the fact that it wasn’t black and white. But I have received wails concerning everything from the National Rifle Association and public gun-toting to military discounts-- all in connection to this Day. I don’t know why I personally have become a magnet for such thoughts, but it has indeed had an effect on me.
Our blunders into Southeast Asia are an especially appropriate subject here in New Orleans. We have a huge Vietnamese population, and their influence has been profound. Interestingly, most of the refugees from Hanoi in the North that managed to get out were old-world French-educated Roman Catholics, escaping the Communists. They have settled in Algiers and around the Mary Queen of Vietnam church in New Orleans East. The neighborhood has fantastic bakeries, and delectable Vietnamese versions of New Orleans poboys on rice-and-wheat-flour baguettes called bánh mì. Those who got out of the South were predominantly Buddhists running from the corrupt and brutal dictators of Saigon, and have settled most heavily in Avondale and around several temples on the Westbank. Oddly enough, the Americanized Buddhists have the best barbecue: thịt nướng.
