AD.

x-o-x-o-x-o (by Smith)

This from an essay by James Cameron, 1966:

One felt extremely alone in Hanoi. Among its 600,000 inhabitants there seemed to be nobody like oneself–nor was there, nor had there been for years. It had been far from easy to get there; the thing was virtually unprecendented, and felt it. This was not a place where non-Communist Westerners were welcomed, since recently the only ones who had come had arrived in B-50s and F-105s and blown things up, like bridges and people, which was not agreeable when you saw it, nor indeed very persuasive. My European face was accepted so long as I was taken to be a Russian technician or a Czech diplomat; when they learned who I was the reaction was astonishment, curiosity and doubt.

But one was through the looking-glass at last, in the capital of North Vietnam, in Hanoi, which the Americans will say is full of demons and the Communists will say is full of heroes. It seemed to me, on the contrary, to be very full of people, largely indistinguishable from those of Saigon except in the bleak austerity of their condition.

The important thing was that one was now through the looking-glass, and everything outside–home and London and New York; everything–was now a sort of mirror image, where black was white and white was black, good was bad and bad was good, defence was aggression, military efficiency was wanton cruelty, right was wrong. It was not the first time this had happened to me, but more strikingly now than ever before. Once you turn all the political value-judgements into terms of people, they become both simpler and more difficult.

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