A Perspective on the influx of Vietnamese to Minds

As anyone with a keyboard and a brain cell to rub against it knows there has been a crashing wave, hell more like a tsunami of Vietnamese folks joining Minds recently. I've seen some whinging because they are driving some content posters down the popularity page. I've also seen a lot of people embrace the recent additions (particularly the owners/creators of Minds). I understand both positions and figured I would add my voice to the din.
I was born in the early 1960s, a middle child of a Naval Officer who spent most of my first 12 years deployed off the coast of Vietnam. All my friends fathers did the same. Some we knew did not return from deployments. I sat crosslegged on the shag carpet watching Walter Cronkite and the other propagandists lie about the war. Of course I did not know at the time they were lying. My enlightenment came later, during my first WESTPAC deployment in 1981 when we were busy in the South China Sea picking up boatloads of starving, dehydrated Vietnamese who were fleeing the tyranny that Jane Fonda and the media said would never happen.
It happened. It is part and parcel of all collectivist systems, including and especially communism/socialism. The soul-crushing control wielded against the people of Vietnam has been in place since before I was born and it continues today almost 60 years later. That is long enough. Too long, in fact.
My father and many other good men and women spent many years of their lives trying to help the Vietnamese. I, my siblings and many other youngsters lost decades of their childhoods waiting, hoping that their father would return.
Those hardships pale in comparison to those suffered by the good people of Vietnam, who have endured unimaginable horrors.
I've been around long enough and done enough deployments to know that our country, no matter how well intentioned, cannot by force of will, make another country free. However, as an individual I can lend the hand of friendship and welcome to those internet refugees who have found their way to Minds. They come here to speak freely, hopefully to plan on how to free their country from the cabal who has it by the neck.
In that spirit, I welcome the Vietnamese to Minds and offer any help I can in any small way. I encourage others to do likewise.

This is their refuge from the censorship of Facebook and Twitter. After all what is Minds if not a place for people to meet and speak freely?

#Vietnam #Welcome #CommiesSuck #vietnam #Minds