Thai It: You Won’t Like It.

If you’ve been watching the news as of late, you probably are starting to think, “Jeez even Asia’s getting scary.”  Well between North and South Korea continuing to play a 60-year-old game of grab ass, people stabbing kindergartners in China, and Chuck Norris possibly heading back into Vietnam for “Missing in Action 4: Still Missing,” you’d be right.  But what’s really crazy is what’s happening in Thailand and some of the parallels that it has to America. 

Now, I’m no political scientist, but, from what I’ve read and seen, people are pissed off in Thailand.  Well the whole thing is messy, but here’s the basic rundown.  There’s this guy named Thaksin Shinawatra, he’s the Prime Minister, and he goes out of town.  While he’s gone the military takes over in a coup.  Well in the next election, all of Shinawatra’s buddies get elected and some people are pissed!  So they call themselves “Yellow Shirts” take over an airport or two and generally run amok.  And this was all back in 2008! 

Well it turns out that our boy Shinawatra may have committed some major voter fraud and he’s replaced by the parliament with Abhisit Vejjajiva.  Now the other side is pissed because they like Shinawatra and they call themselves “Red Shirts” and go out and burn down a mall, take over a street, and generally fuck shit up since March. 

Why did North and South Korea Split? One started dating Chuck Norris.Generally, I’m all for fucking shit up.  I love nothing more than the chaos after a cancelled Guns N’ Roses show.  Or the melee of drunken college kids after a good hockey tourney.  Gosh, even I once threw a table out a window just because I made a really good taco salad for dinner.  And I love a good uniform for fucking shit up in!  I’ve got both Red and Yellow shirts in my closet and I’m sure if I could have gone out and crapped in a plate of Pad Thai Medium Four Spice – I would have done it in a heartbeat. 

But things have gotten out of control in Thailand.  Approximately 55 people have been killed, and some where in the thousands have injured – there’s nothing to joke about there. 

So why did this happen?  Because of a polarized political system.  Any democracy that is worth it’s salt, runs on, and necessitates, the idea of diversity of thought, opinion, and belief in order to benefit it’s population.  A democracy is founded on the ideas of participation, representation, and justice.  But often people are all too unwilling to even look at the other side in search of compromise, too unwilling to participate in the process – sluggish under the ponderous weight of it’s own bureaucracy, too unwilling to seek justice.  People just want to chuck a brick at the establishment.  Vejjajiva has said that Thailand would hold new elections if the protest would stop – protestors are just beginning to concede.   

Wisconsin Badgers defeat the Sioux coming up next in SportsIn America, we are beginning to divide into camps – and these camps could be our greatest downfall.  When groups choose to work outside the political process, we really suffer because they give up what it means to be a democracy.  The whole then begins cave to the demands of the squeaky wheel, the cry bigotry and favoritism, the whine of “what about me?”  Tea-baggers, despite having possibly the worst name possible, I applaud your ground-swelling effort to make your voice heard.  Anti-War protestors, you’ve got my honks as I drive by your encamped bridges.  Republicans and Democrats you may argue bitterly in on the Senate floor, or in the coffee shop, but I know we can find middle-ground.  Our hyper-charged political atmosphere only further polarizes with filibusters or narrowly-passing voting margin, and as the poles spread where each side refuses to acknowledge the other – what’s to stop that side from quitting the process and going out to fuck shit up? 

America you are nothing like Thailand.  Let’s try to keep it that way. 

 

The Future King of Upper Michigan.