Looking Back From the Moon

(Ha Long Bay, Vietnam)

The Information Highway is paved for all to use, but in some stretches it is heavily patrolled with occasional roadblocks. In less than a decade, the internet has revolutionized the world, connecting major cities first, and then second world countries and now the third world. One flip of a 20th century switch and, as Walt aptly predicted, the world has become small after all.

Traveling with my Wi-Fi capable laptop in tow, I’ve been fortunate to find limited Wi-Fi access in both India and Vietnam. Surprisingly, the access speeds in Vietnam surpass those I located in India, with its red hot IT sector. Having Wi-Fi meant easier access to write and post to this blog. It also led to my discovery that within an hour of being on-line in Hanoi, the ability to view my blog was blocked by a mysterious firewall message. Initially, I thought it might be the result of a server error or some malfunction with the site. After trying to access the site through several other computers on different days, I realized I was experiencing a government imposed IT roadblock.

Frustrated, surprised and dumbfounded, I sent e-mails to friends and family inquiring as to whether they could access my blog. They confirmed they had no difficulty doing so. To my naïve disbelief, Big Brother is alive and well on select routes of the IT superhighway. I began to take it personally as if the government wanted to restrict my thoughts, but after some percolation realized that it was much larger than my stories from the road, it was everyone living in Vietnam’s way of life.

Imagine searching the web for information on a political candidate only to have spin stories from the government show up as the search results when other media articles, critical of the candidate, do not appear. Or how about having the government monitor your web searches and telephone calls? As an American, these notions offend the very liberties that shape our national character, the right to be free from government intrusion where government is by the people for the people.

In Vietnam, the government also believes it is for the people, the workers, farmers and emerging middle class. As the course was set by Ho Chi Minh in the 1940s, the Communist Party in Vietnam believed it was protecting its citizens from imperial powers like France and the U.S.. So who is(was) right? Are Communism and Capitalism really that much different?

As I wrote in my first blog from Vietnam, I was curious how the citizens would react to me as an American thirty years after the conclusion of the war. A week later and now I have to come to understand the Vietnam War from another perspective, that of fear, the fear that if Communism came to a country near you that the liberties Americans take for granted would be marginalized or erased altogether. Not being able to read my blog is frustrating, not because I want to read it, I already know what it says, it is the feeling that something or things are being kept from you. If I cannot read my blog, what else can’t I read? I tried to access a few other news websites, some of them were blocked and others were not.

So while some of the theory and idealism behind Communism is to create more of an equal economic playing field for all citizens, the practical effect of governments leading countries like the former Soviet Union, present day China and Vietnam has been one of a police state, monitoring its citizens, restricting access to information and the world. The governments mentioned above claimed and claim to be working for the people, improving their lives.

And that brings me to the irony of the present day administration in the US, “working for the people”, protecting its citizens from each other (e.g. Schiavo legislation) and terrorists. The United States of America was founded on principles that liberties were god given (“inalienable”) and could not be taken away by any man or group of men. But reading the headlines in the US today and the parallels with what we feared most during the Vietnam War and Soviet days are unnerving.

Is the government wire tapping its citizens far off from the KGB stories we heard from the USSR in the 1980s? Is the White House restricting access to documents written by Supreme Court nominees in their prior civil service roles significantly distinguishable from Vietnam limiting information on the IT highway? Or how about awarding large government contracts to companies like Haliburton without submitting to the normal bidding process? Or allegations of campaign fraud at some of the highest levels of government?

The above is not meant to suggest that the American government has gone commie, but sitting in Vietnam, there are some disturbing similarities. Whether you label it communism or capitalism doesn’t matter to me, what matters is that in pursuing liberty, justice and happiness, the heralded essential elements to our independent free thinking national character, is not quashed under the guise of providing security, effectively throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Traveling the past seven weeks has reconfirmed for me that the US is a charmed nation and I am fortunate and proud to be a citizen, but looking back at my country from what might as well be looking from the moon to the earth, the headlines streaming across the BBC World channel are disturbing. Is it possible that by trying to protect us from the outside world that we become cell mates with those who we sought to avoid becoming?

In my final analysis, I wonder if the Vietnamese people care they cannot access all of the information on the net (assuming they know there are restrictions in place)? And then I wonder if Americans care about the politics in our country? I mean do we really care? Election year after election year, stories of apathetic voter turnout roll off the wires as the final sub-par numbers are tallied. At the deepest levels I think we do, unfortunately, I think push will have to come to shove before any marked return to a government run by the people for the people is again held in highest esteem. Out here on the edge of the South China Sea, I suspect there are 82+ million people (minus the body politic and hard line communist party members) that would give up everything for a chance for the American Dream.

Let us never forget from where our ancestors came, whether it be England, Italy, Ireland, Russia, China or Vietnam, all of them were pursuing something more than they had, and let’s not also forget the sacrifices made by many since who have fought to preserve the liberties that we enjoy today. Sometimes you have to lose something before you can find it again, but it’s always best if you just keep your eye on the ball, then you never have to go searching for what you already had.

And now I haven't fall off the deep end and I didn't hit my head on the pavement, just like to switch it up a bit. More on Vietnam travels tomorrow.