EVERY
SOCIETY HAS ITS PIETY,
EVERY NATION HAS ITS FASCINATION
by Philip J Cunningham
Thailand
is suffering from electoral dysfunction syndrome; it’s a hard problem, and it’s
hard to talk about. There’s no cure-all pill for it either; the only dependable
cure is the restoration of health of the whole body politic.
To
an impartial observer, it should be obvious the so-called democratic process is
broken; it’s a rigged system that has been gummed up and gamed by a wily
political clan. It consistently produces undemocratic results; enriching the
rich, and strengthening the hands of strongmen. The sad reality of the torn and
twisted status quo is that every vote cast brings Thailand closer to
dictatorship than democracy.
Doesn’t
it make sense to want less rather than more of something that’s bad for you?
Doesn’t
it make sense to fix things now for the future of the country in the long run?
Maybe
so, but don’t tell the Western media about that. The West has a thing for
elections; if the votes don’t ring, it doesn’t swing.
Look
at it this way. Every society has its piety, every nation its fascination
The
Hindus taught the world that eating meat is offensive; it’s not something they
are in any position to enforce or impose on others, but, please, respect it
when and where you can.
Needless
to say, Islam has its pieties too, and not eating pork is one of them. Forcing
Indian soldiers to handle the fat of pork used as coating bullets led to the
Sepoy mutiny.
Christians
have the highest respect for Jesus and the saints. If you don’t agree, do so
tactfully. Ditto for Judaism. If you unfairly single out or generalize about
Jews, you risk running foul of heartfelt sensitivities finely-honed by
centuries of anti-Semitism, brought to a horrible conclusion in the Holocaust.
Buddhism
is arguably the most tolerant of the major religions, but peaceful coexistence
with Buddhists is bettered by observing simple signs of decorum, taking shoes
off in temples and treating Buddha statues with respect. The perfidious blast that
took down the giant stone Buddhas in Bamiyam will not soon be forgotten.
The
secular West is rightly proud of the advances it has made in science, and
generally the march of science and growth of individualism has served to reduce
dependence on mass-held superstition.
However,
while some societies may be more impious than others, there’s no such thing as
a value-neutral society. Americans, for example are not only not free of petty
pieties, but they are full of them, left, right and center.
If
I refer to the hapless individual who was thrown in the brig and incarcerated
for downloading US State Department cables on a military computer and sharing
the eye-opening results with the world via Wikileaks as, “Bradley Manning,”
gender-bending leftists will scream, “How dare you say that, he is not Bradley,
she is Chelsea!” Wikipedia has had to wrestle with that.
The
point is that political correctness comes at a price. If you focus on the
secondary issue of gender, you miss the real miscarriage of justice was meted
out on, dare I say it, a man called Bradley Manning.
The
American right has its hard-core pieties about gun rights and oil exploitation
rights and other toxic tea party stuff; too much of a headache to go into here.
But
what unites almost all Americans; man, woman and transgender alike
is
a shared piety about democracy. It’s more than a system of government, it’s a
religion for a secular nation. It’s a matter of identity. It helps justify all
the unjustifiable things done around the world in the name of the US people.
It’s
what makes Americans American.
So
should you come to the conclusion, as has Noam Chomsky in his sublime political
isolation, that US democracy is a sham, don’t broadcast it too loudly to
red-blooded Americans, for they’re liable to lose it. And you ought be careful
with the British, too, junior partners in America’s crusade (nope, strike that
word) America’s program to make the world safe for democracy.
It's
one thing to be quietly "undemocratic" like Saudi Arabia, which suits
US and UK interests just fine, as do various tyrannies that fall under the
rubric "special relationship." But to be noisily
"anti-democratic" riles the political correctness police all the way
from the Potomac to the Thames.
That’s
why, when it comes to Thailand, you can depend on the New York Times,
Washington Post, BBC and CNN and other US and UK media outlets to continue
getting it wrong, just as they have been consistently getting it wrong all
along.
They
can’t report on Thailand for one minute without seeing a reflection of their
narcissistic democracy-loving selves.
In conclusion, if you
stumble upon the insight that democracy is a flawed system, and you want to fix
it, do so quietly, otherwise you are going to irk John Bull and Uncle Sam. Western
critics can dish it out, criticizing Thailand's sacred cows, but they get all
bent out of shape when Thais criticize elections and democracy, the secular
religion of populist imperialism.
Philip J Cunningham
is a media researcher covering Asian politics