Leave US failings out of the local debate

There is Chalerm Yoobamrung’s shameless drive to secure a triumphal return for his boss, and ex-wife Pojaman’s reported role as key power broker and shot-caller in Pheu Thai. This ranges back to the ownership of vast stocks by the pair’s offspring, and the avoidance of tax payments, and an illegal shell game in lieu of required asset declarations by political-office holders.

Some choose instead to consistently turn aside efforts to scrutinise such massive failures of clean, honest, transparent and responsible government and constantly refocus attention to the perceived failings of the US political system. Therefore, being “patriotic” according to some includes constant and nearly endless bashing of your home country’s failures, political or otherwise, while appearing to fail to see or acknowledge the obviously crooked trees in the forest directly in front of us.

This skewing of the dynamics of the debate on hot issues relevant to the Thai people by constantly shifting it back to a seemingly irrefutably decadent American political system is what irks so many. Hollow and repetitive tunnel vision seem to repeatedly show up among the letters to the editor. Yawn.

Readers of the mainstream media here are sure to be fed a regular dash of tedium with consistent reminders of how terrible America’s so-called undemocratic government is. This comes along with other vital viewpoints of the unalienable veracity of the effects of global warming, veganism as an undeniably superior health model, and the gospel of animal rights. All of this takes precedence over the democratic future of an entire generation of Thais and the country’s inability to assume a more vital role not only in Asean but the world as a whole. The blame goes to its internal political crises, lack of unified and moral leadership, strategic incoherence and potentially dangerous myopic, self-serving interests.

Siam Man

Bangkok