Linh Dinh > Quotes

“I don’t know if you or I exist, but somewhere there are poems about us.”
― Linh Dinh

“In Austin, someone has scrawled on the bathroom wall of a cafe on Congress Street, “I don’t know if you or I exist, but somewhere there are poems about us.”
― Linh Dinh

“In Austin, someone has scrawled on the bathroom wall of a cafe on Congress Street, 'I don’t know if you or I exist, but somewhere there are poems about us.”
― Linh Dinh

“In a consumerist culture, people rebel by buying a different brand, and instead of staging a real rebellion, which requires secret planning and stealthy strikes, American pseudo-radicals are constantly fingering themselves as soon as they hit the sidewalk. It's a fashion thing. In this illusionistic and narcissistic society, it's imperative that you look a certain way if you want to be slotted into one of the socially acceptable subgroups. It's all cosplay, all the time, for even the nerd look has been commodified and imbued with irony.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“A man who leaves his wife is also a kind of immigrant. He rejects the home he's always known for another. Is it a surprise that Americans have the highest divorce rate in the world? If ditched lovers are also counted, then our rate of betrayal becomes truly stratospheric. To start over and advance or save ourselves, if only in our minds, we're willing to destroy everything. Soaked in a depthless, sampling culture, we're also expert at forgetting. Not only do we have no historical memory, but our personal past can be willfully and instantly erased, with hardly a ripple in its wake, and there's no one around, no community, to remind us of our shames. Extreme narcissists, we cling to bizarre narratives that allow us to make the most preposterous statements without flinching, or indulge in the most perverse and damaging behaviors.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“That there is no consequence to massacring foreigners, our criminal rulers have long known, but they also know that when Pentagon guns are turned on Americans, a good portion of the world will break out in cheers, just as we've whooped and hollered as our tax-paid munitions splattered their loved ones. When blood darkens our streets, our victims will dance in theirs, no doubt, so why are our transfat asses still parked at this sad cul-de-sac as that day of reckoning looms? When you're broke, though, it's hard to move a mile, much less out of the country, so many of us will simply escape into our private universe, inside our various screens, and ignore, as best we can, an increasingly ugly reality. Moreover, some still believe there is no serious decline, while others that a unified fight is possible.

For the most hopeless, there is always suicide. This month, a thirty-year-old Bensalem man and his fifty-nine-year-old mother attempted, it appears, a suicide pact by breathing toxic fumes from a borrowed generator. Only she died, however, so now he's charged with her murder. Neighbors said they had fallen on hard times and "had nothing left". Not that long ago, it was highly unusual to have young adults living with their parents, but not anymore. As this trend continues, many Americans will know exactly one house their whole lives, but at least they'll still have a home.

Should you be homeless in greater Philadelphia, there is one place you can have a private bed and bathroom for a few hours, at minimal cost. Keep this information in mind, for you might need it. At Bensalem's Neshaminy Inn, you'll only have to cough up $34, including tax, if you check in after 7 a.m. and leave by 4 p.m. This will give you plenty of time to refresh yourself or even have sex, with or without a (paid) partner, many of whom routinely patrol the hallways. Dozing before dark will also spare you from the worst of the bedbugs, and don't even think of complaining about heroin addicts' bloodstains on the walls, no sheet on your bed or used condoms beneath it. You didn't pay much, OK?”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“In a country with few private rooms, where people live on top of each other, lies and half-truths become the only forms of privacy. People lie because they assume everyone else is a liar. Those who don’t lie must be either saints or idiots, or just plain rude. In this shimmering world of big and small deceits, people often have to snoop and spy to hunt down the illusive truth. There is an instructive story of a poor man who won a lottery. He moves his family into a mansion where each of his thirteen children could have his or her own room at last. For the first time, they could think in silence and examine their firm or flabby flesh in a full-length mirror. They could hear the creak and hum if their own brains, feel the drafts from strange doors being opened. Frightful memories ambushed them sporadically. The oldest boy realized he had a flat chest, a beer belly and no muscles. The oldest girl discovered a condor-shaped birthmark spanning her behind. After a month of daydreaming, reading, masturbating and unbearable loneliness bordering on madness, they all decided to sleep in the same room again.”
― Linh Dinh, Love Like Hate

“Unless you're living in the best neighborhoods, Philadelphia is indeed everything David Lynch claims it is: a very sick, twisted, violent, fear-ridden, decadent and decaying place. Huyen was so shocked, she wanted to go back to Vietnam immediately. Only pride prevented her from doing so. Grays Ferry was sullen and desolate and everyone seemed paranoid. Saigon is often squalid but it is never desolate. Vietnam is a disaster, agreed, but it is a socialized disaster, whereas America is -- for many people, natives or not -- a solitary nightmare. If Americans weren't so stoic and alienated, if they weren't' so cool, they wouldn't be so quiet about their desperation.

Huyen could handle poverty, but she had no aptitude for paranoia, the one skill you needed to survive in Philadelphia. In Saigon you dreaded being cheated or robbed; in Philadelphia you feared getting raped and killed. In the end, Philadelphia was even worse than Eraserhead, because it didn't last for 108 minutes but went on forever. As in Vietnam, Huyen sought comfort in American movies to escape from the real America she could see just outside her window. Every American home was its own inviolable domain, a fortress with the door never left open. The rest of the world could go to hell as long as there was enough beer in the fridge and a good game on TV. And utopia was already on the internet, why go outside if you didn't have to? In the morning, Huyen kept the door locked, bolted and chained, and watched Jerry Springer -- in his glasses and tweed suit the image of a college professor -- to learn more about Americans and improve her colloquial English. In the afternoon, she took a bus to the YMCA to attend an ESL class. At night, the couple barely screwed in the land of bountiful screwing. His wife was so tense, Jaded went back to masturbating.”
― Linh Dinh, Love Like Hate

“[W]hen nations crumble, they often crack along racial or ethnic lines, and there's no reason why it won't happen here, but since racial hatred is as barbaric as they come, I don't wish to live long enough to witness this catastrophe. From 1882 to 1968, white mobs lynched 539 blacks in Mississippi alone, the most in the entire nation, but now, there are white groups who keep tabs on the staggering number of black-on-white murders, maimings, rapes and recreational assaults. Seeing their share of the population decreasing relentlessly, they speak of a white genocide. As for the elites, though they don't welcome social unrest, since it's bad for business, they will benefit from increasing racial animosity since it distracts from the serial crimes they're inflicting on us all.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“The Mind

The mind is a hotel with a thousand rooms. When I tilt my head a certain way, I think about certain things. When I tilt my head another way, I think about other things. If I sleep on the right side of my face, for example, I’d dream of a pale rose, the future, or a continental diner in Passaic, New Jersey. When I sleep on the left side of my face, I’d dream that a hand is squeezing my heart, that I’m in prison, or that I’m watching hockey at an airport bar, about to miss a flight.”
― Linh Dinh

“Seeing you dumpster diving the other day, I meant
To say hello and toss you a quarter, but the Secret
Service wouldn't allow it. Plus, it would look phony,
For I did shove you out into the cold years ago.
Had to, or I wouldn't have made it this far, so
Just be glad for your old buddy, as you chew
Wet french fries and suck on leftover ice.
[Barack Obama to his soul]”
― Linh Dinh, A Mere Rica

“Quang Trung explained to Hoa that he called his band Love Like Hate because that was how he felt about Vietnam. “I love Vietnam so much I hate her. How can I not hate her when I love her so much? I am like a son who froths at the mouth because he has to watch his mother sell her pussy. She’s sold her pussy to the Chinese, French, Russians and Americans, and now she’s selling it to the Taiwanese. She’d sell her pussy to anyone because she feels inferior to everyone. She’s thrilled to be humiliated because someone is paying attention to her. And when she’s too old to sell her own pussy, she sells her daughter’s pussy. That’s Mother Vietnam for you!”
― Linh Dinh, Love Like Hate

“The dying mall has attracted some odd tenants, such as a satellite branch of the public library and an office of the State Attorney General's Child Predator Unit. As malls die across the country, we'll see many kinds of creative repurposing. Already, there are churches and casinos inside half-dead malls, so why not massage parlors, detox centers, transient hotels, haunted houses, prisons, petting zoos or putt-putt golf courses (covering the entire mall)? Leaving Santee, Chuck and I wandered into the food court, where only three of twelve restaurant slots were still occupied. On the back wall of this forlorn and silent space was a mural put up by Boscov, the mall's main tenant. Titled "B part of your community", it reads:

KINDNESS COUNTS / PLANT A TREE / MAKE A DONATION / HELP A NEIGHBOR / VISIT THE ELDERLY / HOPE / ADOPT A PET / DRIVE A HYBRID / PICK UP THE TRASH / VOLUNTEER / CONSERVE ENERGY / RECYCLE / JOIN SOMETHING / PAINT A MURAL / HUG SOMEONE / SMILE / DRINK FILTERED WATER / GIVE YOUR TIME / USE SOLAR ENERGY / FEED THE HUNGRY / ORGANIZE A FUNDRAISER / CREATE AWARENESS / FIX A PLAYGROUND/ START A CLUB / BABYSIT

These empty recommendations are about as effective as "Just Say No", I'm afraid. As the CIA pushed drugs, the first lady chirped, "Just say no!". And since everything in the culture, car, iPad, iPhone, television, internet, Facebook, Twitter and shopping mall, etc., is designed to remove you from your immediate surroundings, it will take more than cutesy suggestions on walls to rebuild communities. Also, the worse the neighborhoods or contexts, the more hopeful and positive the slogans. Starved of solutions, we shall eat slogans.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“Westerners prefer sex toys so they can avoid playing mind games with each other. Conditioned by capitalism, they cannot share anything. They must hoard everything from their sins to their thoughts to their genitals. The sexual situation in the West is sorrowful nowadays, and that’s why a country like Vietnam is the answer.”
― Linh Dinh, Love Like Hate

“In Tom's River, an hour away from Vineland, there's also a large tent city. Increasingly pessimistic, most of us don't dream of any bright future, but are planning for the worst. How many of us are squatting in foreclosed homes? How many are scraping by on just a fraction of what we used to earn just a few years ago? How many are quickly exhausting their scant savings? How many will be fired next week? Meanwhile, this criminal government continues its systematic impoverishment and suppression of us all. Fragmented and confused, we have no plan to combat any of this, but are looking to be saved by the very architects of our ruination.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“Started in Argentina, escrache has spread to other Latin American countries as a popular movement to oust, shame and ostracize retired generals, politicians and other powerful figures who have committed unpunished crimes. After locating the criminal in question, the organizers would inform his neighbors that here lives a state-sanctioned mass murderer or torturer, or a looter of public funds. Later, thousands of people would converge on this man's house to publicly indict the blood-drenched fat cat. Though this Latin American version of a Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush or Obama is never physically attacked, the monster will be shunned by many of his neighbors, with local businesses even refusing to sell him a meal or a newspaper.

Critics of escrache have denounced it as a form of vigilante justice and, as the outburst of an angry mob, something that should be declared illegal, but the protesters are only reacting to acts that are themselves clearly illegal, not to mention outrageously immoral. The protesters' public harassment does not compare to their targets' torturing and/or raping, then throwing their victims from airplanes into the ocean, or kidnapping their children and erasing their identities.

Too often, the state will use the legality argument to bind its opponents, while doing whatever it pleases, legal or not. Not satisfied with a monopoly on violence, the state also wants to be the sole interpreter of what's right and wrong, as implied by the often-bandied-about legality question, and the more criminal the state is, the more illegal, the more it will shriek about the need for everyone else to walk the straight and narrow, according to its own power-drunk markings. Talking to Borzutsky's class, I asked the students to consider escrache in the North American context. Who are our criminals in high places and what should we do about them? Unlike our southern neighbors, we have neither the clarity to identify our enemies from within, nor the courage or unity to confront them. To be fair, though, our top criminals don't move among us, with many never even being mentioned by our obfuscating media, as great a killer of brain cells as any, and worse than any glue. Even when not anonymous, however, the most malignant Americans are hidden behind guarded gates, bulletproof glass or acres of real estate, so that it would take considerable enterprise to target them.

When faced with an illegal and ultraviolent enemy, we must resort to any and all tricks, be extra clever and strike hard, for real, but most of us are too tightly bound to our bifurcated harness to do more the jiggle, every once in a while, an electronic voting machine. Geez, I wonder who they'll let us pretend to vote for next time, if there's a next time?”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“This year, Keystone charges $21,750 in tuition and fees. In comparison, UPenn docked $9,600 for the same in 1984, so for the current cost of a Keystone education, once could attend an Ivy League school for two years, with enough bouncing coins left over for many cases of beer and bong hits. UPenn's tuition and fees are now $47,668. Of course, wages haven't increased fivefold in thirty years. The obscene overpricing of a diluted education is yet another sign that we're failing future generations. To stuff the pockets of a few smirking old farts and their precious scions, countless young people are maimed.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America

“The American presidential election is a drawn-out, byzantine process that involves precinct meetings, regional caucuses, state primaries and national conventions, all to give citizens the impression that their participation matters, for in the end, the lying buffoon who gets to stride into the White House has long been vetted and preselected by the banks, death merchants and brainwashing media that run our infernally corrupt and murderous country.

It's foolish to expect a system to allow anyone who threatens it to the least degree to rise to the very top, for all those who benefit from this system will do all they can to snuff out such a pest each step of the way. He'd be lucky to get a job teaching freshmen English at the community college, and is as out of place in this bloody scheme as an Iowa beaver trapper at a Hamptons pool party. As for dissidents who get print space or airtime, they are but harmless, distracting foils or court jesters. Since voting cannot change the system but legitimizes it, voters become collaborators in all of the system's crimes, as well as their own destruction, for the system works against nearly all of them.”
― Linh Dinh, Postcards from the End of America