Chapter 2
Thais Tied in an Ineluctable Knot, the Fate of Democracy, and Other Conundrums Metaphysical
And Otherwise
I hear it: from the open balcony there is more of the ongoing cacophony conjoined with wafting acrid smells of gunfire around Rajamangala stadium and Ramkamhaeng University, Siamese twin monstrosities, strident misconfigurations, that pummel like cluster headaches. Life fights life defectively like the immune system fighting innocuous tissue, and one is reminded that all these minute and incremental parts of symbiotic society, like everything else, evolved from disorder most unteleologically, and in returning to their smaller pieces, disorder these shards will be once again. There is more gunfire in these skirmishes between Red Shirts, Pheu Thai dogged by their more militant faction, The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (both formerly, most incredulously in name, Thai Ruk [love] Thai and perhaps other names as well given their chameleon appellations and my faulty mutable memory, obtuse nature, and cavalier ennui concerning the whole subject), and, presumably, in altercations with southern students, a few who might even be my students, who for perhaps no other ratiocination than patriotic fervor toward the regionally born party as conditioned onto them by their parents, as their parents before them, support the bourgeoisie Yellow Shirts or Democracy Party which has been commandeered and enveloped by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee in these unrelenting street demonstrations against the prime minister, whose elongated strings stretch to a fugitive sibling and former prime minister in exile. The city has already become a fortress of cordoned roads, blockaded government buildings, and an arrogation of streets and parks for speeches and tent bivouacs, but then that is no different than when the Reds howled through the streets years earlier. It is here that these organizations are wont to form for themselves ever changing nomenclature due to earlier pronouncements of court judgments declaring these red and yellow camps illegal for endemic corruption and violent crackdowns against demonstrators in the past. To really stop these corrupt, monstrous phoenixes from resurfacing and there would be the end of democracy here as there are only these two insipid colors in the land of the Thais.
Here, the less educated pawns, these more downtrodden of all the self-interested beasts that make up a democracy, or what we call modern democracy, this representational distortion of voting for voters as though those voted in, the wealthy and influential who have access to the gilded, palatial edifices of power and can vie with others of their vaunted ilk to represent some portion of the masses as though maintaining interests other than their own aggrandizement of fortune and power, if not entirely gullible and lured by the promises vouchsafed onto them, wistfully pray for at least a portion of their fulfillment nonetheless, not that comely figures, favored with good materialistic karma, and in office by public mandate from vote tallies of the poor masses, should ever be doubted, for how can one doubt the masses who wield the ultimate power sanctioned by easily shredded constitutions?
If, in ingesting the sweet fodder of sound-bites, one is blissfully unaware of any aspect of a platform to the favored party, and is merely voting for the widest and whitest of smiles and wiles from a candidate-cognate with a common touch (George Bush, now brandishing rifle in hand, take a bow), or merely the color of a man’s silk tie if not the texture of a beautiful lady’s dress (Miss Yingluck, prithee, do a curtsy), one still has this most lauded vote in what Tocqueville calls the tyranny of the majority6 but that which hereafter shall be called non-consequential tyrantas non grata. Here, in the body of the reds, like in any democracy, it is headed by multi-millionaire leaders. And the poor like all poor, find their lives only marginally improved in social programs of Pheu Thai, and less improved but more employable in stronger economies under the democrats when thrust to power by court edicts, but in both, always and forever exploited in industry. Not all that different than the Roman Senate of yore,7these industries are often owned by politicians to take care of the pleasures of the rich, but here, and in the age of democracy when wealth aggrandizement consists of selling products and services to the middle class and the rich, the middle class only briefly engages, in some nominal way, in the pretenses of the rich before becoming poor once again.
Hearing Voice of America streamed on the Internet, ironically, indubitably, cravenly perhaps, I learn about where I am from half way across the world: blocks away from me a bus and two vans are reported as being ablaze, and, I learn, also, that several students have been killed. I now hear the eerie sirens. To die for an idea that has been around for thousands of years, and no doubt, for an infinitely much longer time stayed mutely but palpably in one form or another on the tongues of Ancient Egyptians, for example, as they lowered the stone relics constructed under Ramses the Great at Piramesse and dragged them to Tanis to be reassembled there8, is altogether preposterous. In a world awash in democracies, these ideas will not disappear from the planet even if in a given country they go underground for a time so that corrupt parties might be disbanded and an assembly of more civic minded individuals recruited for a provisional government that might influence an elected one. Student soldiers are not needed to protect democracy. The idea of empowerment has never been eradicated even when having to burrow away like a mole. After the posts of tribunes were abolished, much later, Sulla and Caesar were needed to eradicate the corruption of the assemblies, and then, emperors were proclaimed in Ancient Rome; and of these emperors, none of them ceased worrying about what would happen if they were to follow their natural wishes to cease the allocation of free grain entitlements to the poor, which were always given begrudgingly.9 In that respect government does, as John Locke indicates, emanate from the people.10 Whether it should is entirely a different question.
Given the fact that individuals are solipsistic and, in their more intelligent responses, cast votes based upon personal considerations from the straightjackets of their social economic statuses even when education disenthralls them from ignorance, in a world in which the super-rich are acquiring most of the wealth and the industries from which to procure it, and the poor are becoming more pervasive the result of capitalism awry and, in part, antithetical to how Adam Smith envisaged it (workers in the division of labor being paid by each piece of their production instead of monthly salaries and from this need to mass produce and do it well to earn greater sums of money, perfecting a task, and then investing their savings in a company of their own ; no monopolies of any kind permitted, which means no Amazon.com warehouses and web page stores with no overhead expenses buying in bulk and being staffed by part time employees who receive no benefits, all which allow for much cheaper products and services that destroy mom and pop businesses, and, with their proposed use of drones for delivery, will make deliverymen and postal carriers obsolete, no taxes and tariffs of any kind, no licensing of any product, service, or occupation, and a man allowed to go anywhere on the planet where his services are needed),11 at best, more and more political gridlock will arise to the point where a given democratic nation becomes dysfunctional, and at worst there will be corruption in every corner of government, and the dark web of corruption will be allowed to continue as vital industries will become attached to it like parasites. Is there to be nothing better than that so called paragon of capitalistic democracies in America? It is a system in which presidents are voted into power and kept hand tied by an opposition of congressmen elected for that requisition; it is a country awash in guns and gun violence that is enshrined in constitutional liberties that have no chance of ever being amended; it is a society in which the hubris to be God-commissioned, global police officers has altered it, even more than its entitlements, into a debtor nation, and wealth is siphoned so fully into one class that eventually the majority will become so poor that they will no longer be able to buy their services, and industry will collapse altogether. I must admit that I have always been mystified that capitalism, charging more than a product and service is worth, has been able to prolif
erate for so long without stripping a currency of all value, and bankrupting the poor and the middle class in the process.
Does it take so much imagination to envisage a realm outside of democracy or to see that it is all in reverse from what it should be? Manual laborers, lacking education, are conceptually limited as materialists12, so if given higher salaries than any cerebral laborers from which to procure more goods, they who are the foundation of it in agriculture and construction will be more assiduous and proud of their places in society; and those content in ideas and pleased to be in the seats of power and discernment should be paid somewhat less. Altogether, this fosters a society of equity which is built from the bottom up instead of inverted like an easily toppled pyramid. And to further this more harmonious society, half the shares of any given business should be owned by the state, which will mandate it to hire maximum, albeit not superfluous, workers. From its shares in company wealth, the government will then pay stipends to unemployed and underemployed workers if these individuals engage themselves in volunteer work for charitable institutions and, from what is left over (and as stipends, of course), to its rulers conscripted for the task of governing the country. Education, which shall reside in the hands of government (full scholarships provided to, dare I say it, those deemed, in any nominal way, as having potential as philosophical rulers13), will deliberately look at any given subject in multiple perspectives with universities inculcating students that all individuals have innate value, that compassion and kindness trump over cleverness, and that ideas are more palpable than money and material objects. Then, in osmosis, goodness will be more pervasive than what it is now. Realistic, and not idealistic, this will be a society of achievable perfection; and although in any society there will be those individuals who go against the norm—educated and exceptional individuals of bright intelligence with inordinate materialistic strivings, and those with no yearning to further their educational levels who also have no real desire for material acquisitions, and being indolent, are of no major pragmatic value that would even encourage society to give them stipends—it will be as perfect as is possible. It only guarantees to cure society of 80 percent of its woes. If nothing else, an unelected ruler with full fiat, educated in the humanities, who comes to the position as a conscript, can irradiate the scourge of the right to bear arms, and with a pen, can also raise the standard of living for the masses while ensuring steady growth in the economy. Such a system would also reduce this state of affairs in which democracy engendered capitalism provides a sense of false security as though money can rejuvenate youth and stave off death, and foremost, it delivers a country from political stalemate and inaction which is the death of any state—or, at least, this is what I think.