American Strategic Deception Bureau

　However, as a former opponent, Vice President Johnson's position in President Kennedy's cabinet was quite awkward. Many young and energetic "scholar-type" cabinet members were very contemptuous of Vice President Johnson, believing that he was "decrepit" and an "outdated old man."

　God have mercy on you, Vice President Johnson was only 53 years old at the time. Sixty years later, an old man who was 30 years older than him was still running for president!

　Moreover, President Kennedy himself was extremely wary of this vice president whose qualifications and political experience far surpassed his own. On the one hand, he tried his best to keep Vice President Johnson away from the center of power and prevent Johnson from joining his decision-making level. On the other hand, he assigned Vice President Johnson many insignificant but glorious small tasks, which kept him busy and often appeared in news photos.

　In the words of President Kennedy, "I can't let my vice president have too much free time. He knows every reporter in Washington, and I can't let him go around saying bad things about us, so I have to keep him happy."

　Although President Kennedy was wary of Johnson, he didn't dare to offend him because he still had to rely on him to win over the conservative Democratic Party in the South.

　(During Kennedy's presidency, the Republican and Democratic parties had not yet switched sides, and the current red states were basically blue states at that time.)

　Therefore, during the Kennedy era, Vice President Johnson always played a role with a strong presence but not much actual power.

　For example, since President Kennedy satisfied the clamor of hard-line conservatives at home and sent a large army into the Vietnam War, the task of rescuing and resettling Vietnam War refugees naturally fell to Vice President Johnson, a staunch advocate of war.

　——It was you who clamored to send troops to participate in the Vietnam War and support the Vietnamese allies. Now that the US military has been dispatched, you have to help with the aftermath, right?

　Although Vice President Lyndon Johnson harbored some lingering racist tendencies and was hostile to the Vietnamese refugees—much like many militarists who professed militarism and were unwilling to pay the soldiers salaries and pensions—he was unable to shirk his responsibilities, so he reluctantly went to California to coordinate.

　I have to say that Vice President Johnson's social skills are really amazing, and his title of vice president also allows him to control people in small matters.

　Originally, Fieri believed that wrangling with the state government for land, supporting policies, and various resources would be a cumbersome and potentially lengthy process. However, Vice President Johnson simply visited Sacramento and chatted with the governor, easily securing two plots of land for refugee camps, raising funds and supplies, and even mobilizing engineering corps from the California National Guard to oversee the camp's construction.

　In addition to the original Sonoran Desert refugee camp, the other two refugee camps are located in Westminster and Irvine in Orange County, Los Angeles... Well, one is Little Saigon where the remnants of South Vietnam will live in the future, and the other is the "Tech Coast" where Chinese middle-class immigrants will flock to in the future.

　However, there seem to be few Asian faces in Westminster today, and the people living on both sides of Bolsa Avenue are all poor white people.

　Irvine is now more of a rural landscape, with not many decent villages and towns. The refugee camp can only use the Marine Corps’ base and training ground - the Marines originally stationed here were transferred to Vietnam to fight, and the barracks they left behind can be used as accommodation for the Vietnamese.

　Among them, the refugee camp in Irvine is farther away from the prosperous area, has a larger area and can accommodate more people. It mainly accommodates subsequent Hoa Hao refugees who have been unable to accommodate the Sonoran Desert refugee camp, as well as some Vietnamese Catholic immigrants. In fact, according to the US side, it hopes that these diehard elements who are most irreconcilable with the Viet Cong can stay on the battlefield in Vietnam and fight the Viet Cong to the end.

　If you Vietnamese Catholics were unwilling to be cannon fodder and stand in front of the Viet Cong's guns, why would the United States give you so much aid?

　However, everyone has their own agenda. Vietnamese Catholics knew they were irreconcilable with the Vietcong. Even if they surrendered, they would face no good, but would be reduced to pariah status for generations (due to their class background and family background). They had no choice but to persevere in their fight against the Hanoi authorities.

　However, on the other hand, due to the

　Admired by their superiors and disgusted by the war around them, these Vietnamese Catholics, while indeed quite stubborn in their resistance to the Vietcong, would still prefer to immigrate to the United States and seek refuge in the "paradise of freedom" if given the opportunity.

　Therefore, when the first batch of immigrant ships bound for the United States from ports in "Guangnan" such as Da Nang and Nha Trang set sail one after another, most of the people on board were not war refugees who had just been evacuated from the ethnic minority territories in the Central Highlands, but middle-class people, intellectuals, and officials' families from major coastal cities who had replaced their quotas by paying bribes to the customs, and of course, landless local tyrants who had been driven out of their rural hometowns by the Viet Cong guerrillas.

　Even if these people hire human traffickers to help them smuggle themselves into the United States, they still yearn to escape to the United States. What's more, there is a way to "legally immigrate"?

　Firi was helpless in this regard and had to accept the full amount, and just hoped that they would not quarrel with the Buddhist Hehao believers.

　Fortunately, these Vietnamese Catholics and Hoa Hao believers, despite their mutual dislike in their homeland, all understood the principles of "a man's worthlessness away from his homeland" and "one must bow his head under the eaves." To quickly obtain green cards and legally settle in the United States, they behaved very well in the refugee camps. Catholics watched their own Mass, while Hoa Hao believers prayed to a red cloth and a photo of their leader. Their primary goal was to ignore each other.

　In addition, the local Catholic Church in Los Angeles also sent people to help coordinate and manage the situation. Therefore, the situation in the Irvine refugee camp was generally acceptable.

　The Vietnamese refugee camp in Westminster, housed in an abandoned church school, was relatively small. Its main members were Cao Dai believers, who were quite flamboyant in their faith. Within days of landing, the refugees had already transformed the small chapel into their temple.

　When Ferry and his elder brother, Councillor Bernard, went to inspect, a middle-aged man in a blue Taoist robe was leading the believers in the chapel and organizing the Caodaist's daily worship ceremony. They sang the core doctrines copied from the Tao Te Ching and knelt down to worship devoutly.

　"All religions are one, all gods coexist—"

　"The crowds are bustling, as if enjoying a grand feast, as if on stage in spring—"

　Bernard, who did not understand Vietnamese, looked around and was shocked to see that the cross in the chapel had been removed and replaced with a triangular badge with an eye in the middle, and that the walls were covered with various portraits and big eyeballs.

　"Oh my God! The All-Seeing Eye?! Are these refugees members of the Vietnamese lodge of the Freemasons?"

　Raising his finger and pointing at the big eyeballs that replaced Jesus in the chapel, Bernard couldn't help but scream, his face full of surprise.

　"Uh, you're wrong, brother. This is a new religious group in Vietnam called Cao Dai."

　Fili looked around at the various colorful graffiti and illustrated posters. Especially the photo of President Kennedy, his mouth twitched, but he still explained, "That big eyeball is actually the Gaotai deity they believe in—although it does look a lot like the Masonic all-seeing eye..."

　-

　Cao Dai in Vietnam, a very interesting emerging local religion.

　On December 25, 1925, two indigenous Vietnamese civil servants in French Indochina, Ngo Van Trieu and Le Van Tong, claimed to have received revelations from the Supreme Being, Cao Dai, and planned to establish a religious sect. Because they themselves held government positions, their Cao Dai sect was successfully registered by the colonial authorities in 1926, becoming a legal religion.

　According to their concocted doctrine, Cao Dai is the supreme deity of the highest rank, the creator of everything in the universe. He has no form, though he sometimes observes the world with a single eye. Therefore, the Cao Dai logo is an eye set within a triangle.

　However, one of the symbols of Freemasonry is also the "all-seeing eye" embedded in a pyramid, and it is also printed on US dollar bills.

　Therefore, it is no wonder that when Bernard saw the big-eyed statue of Cao Dai, he mistakenly thought it was the Southeast Asian branch of Freemasonry.

　But in fact, even if the difference between Caodaism and Freemasonry is not as huge as heaven and earth, they are at least completely different things.

　——Below the large-eyed Gaotai deity, the second-order deities worshipped within the Caodai religion are three sages:

　Sun Yat-sen of China, Victor Hugo of France (the great writer who wrote "Les Miserables") and Nguyen Binh Khiem of Vietnam (the poet).

　The painting style of this group of "Three Sages" of Gaotai Sect is really mixed.

　——Also, even though Ferry was looking at the portrait of the great French writer Victor Hugo hanging on the wall, he couldn't help but think of a certain Victor Hugo army commander who led mutants, tomboys, and robot dogs to kill his way through the irradiated wasteland of North America...

　Below the Three Sages of Cao Dai, there are many other saints who can also share the worship and incense of Cao Dai believers.

　Therefore, this chapel, originally decorated in a simple and plain style, now looks like an art gallery. The walls on both sides are covered with portraits of various celebrities, including ancient figures such as Sakyamuni, Li Bai, Jesus, Jiang Ziya, Laozi, Confucius, Guanyin, Guan Yu, etc., as well as modern Western figures such as Newton and Shakespeare in Britain, Clemenceau in France, and Washington and Lincoln in the United States.

　Even, Firi saw a photo of President Kennedy...about

　To thank Kennedy for allowing them to immigrate to the United States?

　——The Caodaist school believes that famous people in history are all messengers of the god "Caoda", the embodiment of truth, and will be canonized after death.

　Of course, if necessary, even living celebrities can be enshrined on the wall in advance.

　It's probably just like how in the 21st century, photos of Liu Tao are commonly displayed in Mazu temples in rural Fujian, China.

　All East Asian peoples are very flexible in this regard.

　If we say that Christianity’s attitude towards believers is that you are only allowed to believe in God, and all other things are false gods and evil gods!

　Cao Dai's attitude towards believers is: We will enshrine whichever saint you like. Among the many saints in the temple, there is always one you like. If none of them suit your taste, we will add some new saints!

　Because Caodaism's painting style is eclectic, its core purpose is "all religions are one, all gods live together"!

　After listening to Ferry's explanation and looking at the colorful and gaudy portraits and graffiti around him, Bernard still felt a little bit unacceptable.

　In his opinion, can such a messy thing be considered a religion?

　After all, Christianity theoretically prohibits idolatry, while Caodaism is the epitome of Eastern and Western idolatry.

　This all-around cultural conflict is no less than asking a hypocritical old Confucian scholar from China to be an editor at Playboy magazine...

　Of course, as a congressman, Bernard is ultimately a shameless politician, not a fanatical charlatan.

　No matter how strange the doctrines of the Vietnamese Cao Dai religion are, it does not affect him and Firi's cheerful conversation with the Cao Dai blue-robed pastor Fan Qingren who led this group of believers to the United States. He also promised to help Cao Dai apply for legal religious registration in the United States, etc.

　In short, relying on the existing religious organizations of Catholicism, Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, the three Vietnamese refugee camps in California finally got started.

　However, it is still far from enough to simply allow the three refugee camps to maintain order, manage themselves, eat relief food peacefully and not cause trouble.

　A refugee camp is not a gathering place, but a temporary transitional place.

　Although food is cheap in the United States and Congress has allocated a lot of special funds, it is enough to feed these Vietnamese refugees for a long time.

　But normal people cannot stay in refugee camps for their entire lives. They must be able to find jobs in society to be considered successfully resettled.

　So, just after settling boatloads of newly arrived Vietnamese refugees in various refugee camps, Firi had to rack his brains to figure out how to get these Vietnamese out of the refugee camps.

　I wish there was a small shrine dedicated to her!

　However, while this employment guidance work is effective, it's not particularly effective for the Hoa Hao community, which makes up the largest proportion of the current Vietnamese refugee population. This is because their educational level is so low, they are generally illiterate, their minds untouched by knowledge, and they are generally older, making it difficult for them to learn new things.

　The only way to allow these farmers and fishermen, whose eyes reveal "clear stupidity," to settle down and build a career in the United States is to allocate fields and waters in the United States with an environment similar to that of Vietnam for them to farm and fish, just like the overseas Chinese farms set up in Red China to accommodate refugees.

　However, this requires the federal government to step in and wrestle with local forces in Texas and Louisiana...

　Lieutenant Colonel Ferry King had originally thought this would be a very troublesome matter. Especially since the rednecks in Texas were later known as racists and granite heads, not to mention the lingering poison of racism in American society.

　The federal government wants to ask the rednecks in the southern states to give up the land that their ancestors had seized by defeating the Mexicans and scalping the Indians, and to give it to a group of yellow monkeys from Vietnam... It seems that no matter how you look at it, it is quite difficult.

　However, what surprised Firi was that the matter was quickly settled with the personal involvement and consultation of Vice President Johnson.

　Not only did Louisiana allocate the crisscrossing land near the mouth of the Mississippi River Delta for Vietnamese immigrants to grow rice, or convert the original dry rice fields into paddy fields, but even Texas provided large tracts of land to the Vietnamese near the space city of Houston!

　As for the fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, agricultural machinery, etc. needed for farming, the government also allocates funds and provides free assistance to poor Vietnamese people.

　At the same time, in Arkansas, the southern KKK's base, another new large Vietnamese refugee camp was established using abandoned prisoner-of-war camps from World War II. The camp was intended to temporarily accommodate more than 3 Vietnamese and disperse them throughout the coastal areas of the South.

　Holy crap! Have the rednecks in the South gone insane this year? Why have they suddenly become so easygoing on racial issues?

　Could it be that Vice President Johnson’s negotiation skills are so strong that he can make the impossible possible with his words?

　"Vice President Johnson's negotiation and communication skills are indeed very strong. But the more crucial reason is that the black people have been making too much trouble recently."

　Fieri's elder brother, Congressman Bernard, explained it this way: "In the eyes of the redneck farmers in the South, Vietnamese with green cards seem to be more pleasing to the eye than black citizens who cause trouble all day long. Not to mention, now blacks dare to organize and kill white people..."

　"In other words, the riots and disturbances of black people, like catfish, have successfully stimulated the rednecks in the southern states, making them much more tolerant of the yellow race and believing that no matter how bad the yellow monkeys are, they are still better than the blacks, right?" Fili said thoughtfully.

　In the summer and fall of 1963, the African American civil rights movement in the United States did not subside with the victory of the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King. On the contrary, stimulated by this civil rights movement, the previously numb African Americans in the United States became energized, becoming increasingly unable to tolerate the various humiliations and injustices they faced in daily life, and began to bravely resist in various ways.

　Moreover, the center of African American resistance in the United States is shifting from the southern states to the northern states.

　According to the American news media at the time, the Black movement during these years can be divided into two phases. The first phase took place in the Southern states, with the core issues being "middle-class demands." These included equal access to buses, public restrooms, and restaurants with white people, and the ability for Black children to attend white schools—in short, issues concerning social status, primarily manifested in various demonstrations, rallies, and "performance art."

　In general, the black movement at this stage, under the guidance of Martin Luther King and others, was relatively mild, peaceful, and non-violent, similar to the various marches, rallies, and performance art activities that Gandhi organized in India when he played the role of an ascetic.

　The second phase, which is just beginning, is taking place in the northern states. It is very different from the first phase and is more realistic.

　Unlike Southern Blacks, who had long endured institutional discrimination and persecution, free Blacks in the North had enjoyed the same rights pursued by Southern Blacks since the Civil War. Yet, they still lived in poverty and humiliation, feeling they had no dignity in this country.

　Therefore, the focus of northern black people's concern is not the empty rights written in the legal provisions, but the fundamental question of "who the money should belong to."

　Unlike the "elegant" black movement in the South, the black movement in the North was filled with rebellious sentiments. They ignored Martin Luther King's call for non-violence and instead shouted a more intense battle cry: "Burn it, boys, burn it!"

　In late July, a white man in New York used a high-pressure water gun to attack three passing black students for no reason. The black students, who were drenched, angrily surrounded him to argue, but a passing New York police officer emptied his magazine in time and shot and killed one and injured two.

　Three days later, the entire black community in Hamlet, New York, became restless. Instigated by the "Congress for Racial Equality," a large number of black people

　They besieged the 29th Police Precinct where the police officer who shot the black student was employed, demanding that the murderer be immediately suspended.

　Because the above demands were rejected, black people in New York began to riot, throwing bottles and rocks at the police and even setting fires everywhere.

　A riot ensued, with zero-dollar shopping and violent clashes lasting five days and nights across New York City.

　During this period, the New York police also broke up a conspiracy group that attempted to blow up the Statue of Liberty. The group's membership was extremely complex, including Quebec independence activists in Canada, Hispanic left-wing revolutionary youth, radicals of the black civil rights movement and some inexplicable cultists.

　When the situation in New York City gradually calmed down, black people in New Jersey, Chicago and Philadelphia responded with unrest. As a result, within a week, hundreds of people were injured or killed, thousands of people were arrested, more than a thousand stores were looted, smashed and burned, and the direct economic losses amounted to tens of millions of dollars.

　Although the riots primarily occurred in the North, white people in the South felt even greater shock and anger. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has experienced more than thirty large-scale racial riots. But until the 1963 incident, white people had always been the provocateurs, while black people had always been passive victims, meekly enduring the persecution. They lacked the courage or the guts to retaliate.

　However, from this time on, the situation was reversed, and the initiative to cause trouble fell into the hands of the blacks.

　Now, black people actually dared to attack and kill white people! In the eyes of the southern rednecks, this was simply a rebellion as rebellious as leading beasts to eat people!

　Since the unrest was caused by the mutual hatred between blacks and white police officers, Attorney General Robert Kennedy managed to convene a coordination meeting, inviting black representatives from all over the North to try to restrain the black civil rights movement in the North and get them back on the path of peaceful petitioning.

　But none of the black representatives were willing to bow to the Attorney General. Instead, they started hysterically cursing and even launched an anti-war movement in front of him: some young black leaders declared that because of the unfair treatment they had suffered for a long time, they would never fight for the United States again!

　Well, these black people opposed the Vietnam War not because they had any sympathy for the Vietcong, but because they simply did not want to continue fighting for the United States.

　Thus, the meeting to try to reconcile the contradictions ended in disharmony. If a different Attorney General had taken over, he might have stopped caring about them from then on.

　But Robert Kennedy, the left-wing Attorney General, was not like that. Although he was indeed very angry at the meeting, after the meeting he kept repeating the words that black people refused to defend the country, and asked himself in deep confusion, "How could anyone say such a thing?"

　However, a week later, Attorney General Robert Kennedy changed his attitude and said, "I think if I were in his position, if I had his experience, my feelings about this country might be completely different." He also began to support the protest movement of black people in the North.

　He said the deep hatred of black people towards white people must have deep roots. If no effective action is taken to change this situation, and if it is simply suppressed or ignored, then "the next time there will be a big fire."

　Seeing how bold and reckless northern blacks had become, and the attorney general's insane support for these ignorant blacks, white people in the southern states felt the situation was increasingly dire, and worried that the southern blacks around them would become as violent as the northern blacks.

　The reason the Ku Klux Klan in the South dared to hunt down black people like rabbits, hanging and roasting them, was because they were sure the slaves were powerless to resist. But what if black people had the courage to resist with arms, or even formed their own militia and went to war with the whites?

　Even before that, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "nonviolent" civil rights movement had already sent the blood pressure of Southern white gentlemen soaring, leaving them utterly irritated. If Southern blacks were to become like Northern blacks, with militant groups replacing moderates... oh, my God, these blacks would now have the audacity to attack police stations armed with bottles and rocks. If they were to have machine guns and rockets in the future, it's terrifying to imagine what they would do!

　Of course, white Americans still have an absolute advantage in terms of military power. But even if they can be suppressed, these unruly blacks can no longer be dispatched with the same unyielding dedication and hard work as before: how can the resulting labor gap be filled?

　We can't let the white men go to the fields to harvest watermelons and cotton by themselves, right? If we do that, the rednecks will get tanned!

　Given the above concerns and considerations, Vietnamese refugees, who were once regarded as filthy shit by white gentlemen in the Southern states, suddenly became popular because they seemed to be able to temporarily replace black coolies. Visas, accommodation, work arrangements, and land allocations were all given the green light.

　Many white farmers and fishery owners began to fire black workers and instead use Vietnamese refugees, who were stupider but cheaper.

　At this point, Vietnamese immigrants finally gained a foothold in the United States. It was estimated that by 1963, more than 200,000 Vietnamese would settle in the United States.

　As the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees went more and more smoothly, Firi had more free time to plan his own wedding.

　Chapter 280: Malibu Beach Castle Mansion

　Malibu Beach, Los Angeles

　At the end of September in Los Angeles, the weather was still as hot as a furnace.