Prelude to Vietnam
It’s taken a minute. The adjustment from India to Vietnam. An immeasurable sadness filled me as I gazed out the airplane window, down at the jungles between Saigon and Da Nang. So many of our loved ones, young men sent to Vietnam to fight against their will, enduring hell, and then murdered, maimed for life, or cerebrally destroyed… and for what? I was a teenager during the war. The horror, the losses, are baked into me. It will never go away. And now I feel a layer of mockery sliding over this ache like slime. I see that Vietnam is peaceful. The country runs smoothly under communism. We were sold a bill of goods by our government.
Many of us knew it at the time and protested.
And now from this distance, viewing my country in this moment, my heart is breaking all over again. There were times I was proud to identify with America. Freedom of speech. The American Dream of equality. When I was young, there was a middle class. There was hope of buying a comfortable home. But we are far from equal now. Capitalism has not played out as the founding fathers had envisioned. A whopping sixty percent of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. A dream of getting ahead of the game by even two weeks remains an elusive hope. At the same time we have more billionaires than ever. They live luxuriously, running the show, profiting from the hardships of the working class. Profiting from our dissension.
The situation shows no signs of improving. Our Supreme Court has ensured through several terrible decisions that these billionaires and corporations have carte blanche to buy our lawmakers. The interests of the ordinary citizen are simply not represented.
Indulge me just a moment as I don’t find it productive to complain without offering a solution. Here it is. We could follow the lead of other democracies like Canada and Germany, who disallow profiteers to steer the direction of their nations. It takes only a simple declaration. Political equality is a right.
Isn’t it? Is there any question? That’s the premise of democracy.
An amendment to the constitution could be this simple and straightforward:
Section 1. The United States is a democratic republic committed to political equality among its citizens.
Section 2. No person or entity shall exercise disproportionate political influence by reason of wealth.Section 3. Congress and the States shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation.
You’d think this was a no-brainer, but the biggest hurdle is that our legislators have zero incentive to pass this. Money is power. And if that is not the driving force behind their position, consider the case of Elissa Slotkin. Can a true statesman even survive the regime?
Realistically, change like this would need to come from citizens pressuring their state legislatures for similar constitutional protection. The momentum of states aligning their constitutions with the will of the people would theoretically eventually pressure Congress to respect the nation’s values. That’s how this type of change could most likely happen.
But back to why my heart is breaking watching events unfold from this vantage point half way around the world. Not only does the US have internal struggles. Lack of affordable housing. Food prices too high for the average family to afford healthy meals. Unaffordable health care. Unbridled violence, some of it sanctioned by the federal government. A drug epidemic. Racial and gender inequality. To name a few.
But now too, the world is watching us regress to imperialism, arrogantly overpowering smaller nations for their natural resources. America’s motives are again veiled in dubious propaganda and backed by a military brainwashed to self-righteousness. Even worse, this time there appears from here, no public outcry. I hang my head. It is an understatement to say that the rest of the world is disappointed in us. What does freedom of speech even mean when the President is a convicted felon, when no one wants to sort out the truth from all of the self-interested noise?
As I mentioned, I do not believe in criticizing without offering solutions. And so I feel compelled to justify myself. What am I doing to help? I am only traveling now and observing.
But I did write a book recently laying out a feasible game plan for climate action and social change: Cloud Eight, the title chosen as we are not on Cloud Nine.
But maybe we could be. The United Nations has 193 member nations who have agreed to regularly submit proposals for improvements within their respective countries which comply with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN General Assembly. I was pretty thrilled to meet three college students recently while staying at a hostel in Ajmer, India familiar with the SDGs. To get you on the same page, there are seventeen. Four examples are: good health; industry, innovation and infrastructure; decent work and economic growth; and, climate action. The proposals are evaluated for their compliance in aligning with all relevant SDGs. So for example, let’s say India decided to tackle its problem of garbage pickup and institute a system of regular collection. Or an African country wanted to provide clean water for a region. Its proposal would be evaluated by teams of experts: engineers, financiers, public policy makers. And here is the gold mine! Each submission is an opportunity for anyone and everyone to jump on board and offer proposals on how to best effectuate the goals. In these times when the Internet has brought equal access to everyone, finding a team with the requisite talents to collaborate is an easy matter for the ambitious entrepreneur truly interested in making a meaningful difference. Another concern of mine, apart from a deep concern over climate change caused by flagrant disregard of these SDGs, is the plight of refugees. As of mid 2025, around 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced globally, meaning they were forced to flee their homes because of conflict, violence, persecution or other human rights violations. So I wrote a novel highlighting the fact that many opportunities are out there if one simply follows the SDG submissions, and suggesting ways to include refugees in resulting contracts. Realizing that few people would be aching to pick up a blueprint about kickstarting a green economy utilizing refugees as a beach read, I couched it in a sci-fi/fantasy scenario offering relatable societal insights and humor. So I did that. I’m sorry that I don’t have a marketing bone in my body and it hasn’t yet caught on and spread like the wildfire it should if the next generation is going to save the world my generation deeply fucked up. But it could any day now.
Please set the world on fire with your dreams. Not literally of course. But with the power of the dragon.