FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Diverting attention from essential question: Democracy or dictatorship?

Diverting attention from essential question: Democracy or dictatorship?

The Nation’s Letters column is occasionally stained by cynical, literary gymnastics unfurled by writers championing dark autocratic regimes rather than de facto democracies.

The latest example is Prasan Stianrapapongs’ solipsistic missive, best summed up by the following sentence of cheeky mendacity: “The British navy crossed the oceans to ransack ‘hundreds’ of countries.” Nonsense. Stianrapapongs’ now serial manipulation of facts and truth emphatically extends to wilful or misleading ignorance of geography, too. “Hundreds” suggests, by definition, several hundred. There aren’t that many sovereign states in the world as matters stand. The UN currently recognises 193, plus two “observer” states and two self-governing territories. However one interprets this data, there are certainly not the numbers the writer in question claims. 
Presumably this cherry-picking contributor, attempting to divert attention from his support for brutish autocracy, refers to the time when the UK had imperial global reach, and when there were considerably fewer nation-states than there are now. Moreover, quite how the Royal Navy can “ransack” certain countries with no coastline defies logic. His claim, such as it is, diminishes by the minute.
In any event, demonising representative democracies is de rigueur for despots and their lickspittle cheerleaders, and is well documented here and elsewhere. Moreover, Stianrapapongs compounds his creative fiction by calling on Robin Grant to use “fair and realistic thinking”, while accusing him, incredibly, of “narcissistic bias”. 
There is a word for this straitjacket mentality. Indeed, it says it all for me. Think about it. 
Dr Frank
Bangkok

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