{"id":32252,"date":"2021-08-14T12:08:13","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T17:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32252"},"modified":"2021-08-15T15:11:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-15T20:11:50","slug":"jai-honte-de-mon-pays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32252","title":{"rendered":"J&#8217;ai honte de mon pays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I chatted (bavarder) with my French pen pal. I told my pen pal that J&#8217;ai honte de mon pays (I am ashamed of my country). She asked me why and I told her we were leaving another Vietnam behind us. I was referring to leaving the Vietnamese and others who helped us to the mercies of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. I think we should expect the religiously fueled Taliban to be even less generous. We have but to look at today&#8217;s Evangelical Christians who have no problem with overthrowing 230 years of Democracy for their own eccentric brand of prolife let-the-unmasked-children die kind of world.<\/p>\n<p>I do blame Biden but there is so much blame to go around starting with George W Bush and his VP Dick Cheney. Last night I watched one of the old Republican commentators of that era Michael Gerson talking on PBS&#8217;s News Hour about our disgrace. As a spokesman for all the grand ideas of democratization back then he was shriveled up and shaking in a fury at how badly things have spun out of control. I told my pen pal I couldn&#8217;t bear to watch the news after that. I&#8217;ve been busy for the past five years preparing to return to France with the new language I&#8217;ve just begun to speak. It has been a godsend so I didn&#8217;t go mad watching our shitcicle of a President despoiling 230 years of American progress as he posted grifters, con men and suck-ups to critical positions across the federal government. <\/p>\n<p>I found <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vietnam_War_casualties#Aftermath\">an article on Wikipedia<\/a> that estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese drowned on boats attempting to flee to America. Out-of-sight-out-of-mind! 42,000 have died stepping on old ordnance and landmines since the war&#8217;s end and countless children have been born with mental deficiencies because of Agent Orange. I will never regret protesting the war. But even as it ended I was ashamed of our leaving with our tail tucked between our legs. Doing it now as the world burns and people drop dead of a virus that Donald Trump tried to wash away with Clorox doesn&#8217;t make it any better.<\/p>\n<p>J&#8217;ai honte de mon pays<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I chatted (bavarder) with my French pen pal. I told my pen pal that J&#8217;ai honte de mon pays (I am ashamed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,47,127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32252"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32259,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32252\/revisions\/32259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}