I’m tired of …

Whenever I came home, my father called out: “the American.” I didn’t think of it too much until years later. Had he meant it as a tease for my weight and baldness, my relative wealth, or something more?

My father lived through three wars, all his life almost, was a POW for seven years after the fall of Saigon, tried to be an American here in California, and then decided to go back home in a small poor village to live the rest of his days.

I often think of his calling me the American because I am not sure if I feel that way. After 45 years of living here, eating American food, speaking American language, working in the Federal Government, I still don’t feel that way.

Lately, all I heard in the news is the evacuations from Kabul which seemed quite orderly to me compared to the last days of Saigon. If not for the 13 dead young soldiers, all will have been forgotten in a matter of weeks. Then the repeating, reliving of 9/11, the tragic attacks that killed thousands of Americans. Oh, so sad.

And yet, I still don’t feel American. What I feel is a bigger, broader and deeper pain for the world. We don’t talk about millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians, and thousands (upon thousands) of Afghans, millions of amputees who still need artificial limbs, rubbles that have been bombed over and over.

If it is all about America First, count me out. I want no part of it.

If it is “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” I don’t want any part of it.

We need to get off our high Suburban SUVs and the 60 thousand-dollar Teslas and look around.

Go with me. Be a vagrant for one day.