The Committed (The Sympathizer #2)

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

We wanted benevolent leaders who represented the people, by which we meant us and not them, whoever they were.

Some of us ignored the insults, wanting only for our masters to love us. Some of us could not forget the insults and wanted to slay our masters. And some of us—me and myself most of all—loved and hated our masters at the same time.

I, who could sympathize with anyone, wanted more than anything for someone to sympathize with me.

Whoever said the road to Hell was paved with good intentions had gotten it all wrong. If you looked more closely, you could see that the road to Hell was paved with excuses.

They were all looking at me as if I had said something deeply problematic like “I love America,” which one should never do among French intellectuals. One should confess to that only in private, as with a liking for pornography.

Like Jesus Christ, I had died and been resurrected, and I had learned that fearing death was unnecessary, so long as one had lived a full, meaningful life.

Imagine always having to live with a hyphen dividing you! Here, anyone can be French. But you must want to be French. You must look in the mirror and see a French person, not an Asian person or some kind of color. Do you want to be French?

Nothing was sexier than sharing the same convictions in a world where few people did.