Let’s not forget other borders as well, especially those we share.įree-trade and open borders mean challenges, and whether it is Britain and Germany yesterday, or China and the U.S. Tea, silver, opium and guns are part of the mix.Ĭhina has a long memory and, since the lease ended on Hong Kong, Taiwan is looking good when you are hungry. Our fights are old and have their roots in hegemony. Balances are hard to maintain as the centre keeps changing. Would the Nationalists have been better? Who knows. Mao rose to power and you see the result. The Rape of Nanjing still gives me chills. We won the war and beat the Japanese in the east, and saved the Chinese. There we sat, before our TVs, trying to determine who was on which side as Pavlovian signal switching was rampant. (Siri: Kang Sheng).Ĭhina was the play and we fought a losing battle, while pumping oil out of the Gulf of Tonkin as fast as we could…they were French-owned fields… until nationalization. I guess we play the cards we are shuffled. were “Imperialists.” Apparently, Political Science wasn’t her strong suit. Jane Fonda went to Hanoi and broadcast the notion that the peasantry was just that, and the U.S.

Tet, Mekong and Hanoi all became part of our lexicon. My, my, my generation, to echo the Who, saw Vietnam through Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, every night at six.

I think of Flanders at this moment and mud, misery and death for twenty-somethings. It is always the same this time of year as the first freeze up kills everything. Fall and Halloween have ended and a cold November day in Midland dawns.

Knee deep in doot