How will we mend a broken nation?

People are taking their grievances to the streets because there is no other way to stop growing and widespread corruption, along with personal problems and a vendetta that have been made national issues. People increasingly see no way to bring change for the better through normal and institutionalised channels.
To muffle the unexpected and sudden roar of the silent majority, a huge sum of money is being distributed to mobilise groups who once terrorised innocent citizens for months and senselessly burned down parts of the city. Their presence on the streets brings the threat of civil war. The traffic snarl-up is nothing compared to the psychological gridlock at the national level that has no exit in sight.
We are becoming the Egypt of Southeast Asia, the laughing stock of our neighboring countries. We are walking backwards as time and others are moving forward. It is simply excruciating to see the Land of Smiles turn into a land of absurdity, fury and hopelessness. In this land, thugs and thieves are called noble men.
At the centre of all this is one wrecking ball that will not stop destroying until all its terms and conditions are met, no matter where that leaves the country. There are parallels with United States during the era of McCarthyism, when one man managed to push the whole country into chaos over the “red scare” and his witch-hunt for communists.
Can anything be done to halt the divisions and the political free-fall that plague Thailand today? Anything short of requiring the wrecking ball to stop first?
Psychologist Diane Halpern of Claremont McKenna College, in her James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award address in Washington in May of this year, offered some suggestions to stop hyper-partisanship in the United States that is becoming America’s “new racism”.
One solution is to make friends with someone whose political beliefs differ from your own. “Discuss points of disagreement and remain open to different ideas and interpretations of ideas,” said Halpern.
Another solution was to actively seek out and listen to diverse perspectives from new sources.
“You can do something about the calcification of your brain,” Halpern offered. “If you have a liberal bias, watch Fox News … It is an important step toward understanding why we are so divided.”
Halpern also proposed political solutions, such as replacing the gerrymandering that manipulates congressional district boundaries with a neutral objective system. She called for actions to reward lawmakers who voted on the basis of evidence, rather than the party line. “We need to reward nay-sayers who disagree with the dominant view in any group,” she said.
While Halpern’s points are valid, they are difficult to put into practice for the average individual. And they would only work in a country like the US, where political institutions and forums are readily available for citizens to vent their opinions and have their voice heard.
In Thailand, democracy is a premature baby, without the nurturing treatment needed to grow into a relatively functional political system. Instead, it has been fed with sugar-coated pills of poison bought with pilfered money. Ours is a democracy where the people don’t count much, if at all.
So, people from time to time have come out on the streets to bring about change. And they have often paid with their blood and tears, while governance returned to its bad old ways.
The notion of public protest that American philosopher Henry David Thoreau articulated in his renowned essay “Civil Disobedience or Resistance to Civil Government” (1849) is now being called for in Thailand. Members of our resistance have come from all walks of life, united by the realisation that passive cooperation with a government that insults good sense and morality is as evil as being a member of that government. They are realising that their non-cooperation is a moral obligation as much as a political one. As Thoreau argued, individuals should not allow governments to silence or atrophy their consciences, for such acquiescence turns them into agents of injustice. India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi and America’s civil rights leader Martin Luther King both acknowledged the influence of Thoreau. Gandhi said Thoreau’s writing marked the beginning of the end of slavery in America.
Many argue that civil disobedience can only work when there is some civility left in the government. They claim Gandhi’s independence movement only succeeded because it came up against a relatively civilised British government. Martin Luther King paid with his life for his civil rights leadership in 1960s in America. However, history has proved more than once that meaningful change in a country can take place only if someone has the courage to stand up against the wrong, and people join hands in voicing and acting on their conscience.
When this happens in Thailand, maybe we can start mending our broken country and give our children a better future.