Just about every election, I hear from someone this ironic somewhat proudly detached comment, “I don’t vote, and that’s good because I really don’t know enough” — this after a check-through of positions on the issues and candidates where the answer is invariably “Don’t know enough”…<\/p>\n
At the same time, every election season I see commentary from partisans bemoaning the other side on the issue of “Democracy”.<\/p>\n
In that light<\/a>…\u00c2\u00a0 Thailand Demonstrators Demand More Monarchical Rule!<\/p>\n That Thailand is being convulsed by an antidemocracy movement is somewhat surprising. The country was one of the earliest in Asia to adopt democracy, and both women and men were allowed to vote in local elections in 1897, more than two decades before the 19th Amendment in the United States banned voting rights discrimination on the basis of sex.<\/em> […]<\/p>\n A crucial component of protesters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 grievances is a feeling that the king and the monarchy have been undermined and threatened by the popularity of Ms. Yingluck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister and patriarch of the Shinawatra clan, Thailand\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most powerful political family.<\/em> Maybe they could enact the laws of Great Britain … no defacing the Queen. There’s an interesting article in the latest New Yorker on two sides battling it out with problems with the Constitution<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 One wanting more democracy — the Damned Senate and all that — and the other… well, Mark Levin has a book out calling for a Constitutional Convention to ratify a Plutocrat’s Dreamboat of a government — or, the best one since floating in and out of JFK Conspiracy Theories H L Hunt’s Utopian Dreamscape<\/a>.<\/p>\n And back to my first point on an opinion of voting I hear occasionally:<\/p>\n Some speakers at the protests in recent days have labeled the abandonment of the absolute monarchy in 1932 a mistake; protest leaders have called for the king to appoint a prime minister.<\/em> Hm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just about every election, I hear from someone this ironic somewhat proudly detached comment, “I don’t vote, and that’s good because I really don’t know enough” — this after a check-through of positions on the issues and candidates where the answer is invariably “Don’t know enough”… At the same time, every election season I see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13564,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13563\/revisions\/13564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe antidemocracy protests, which have been some of the largest in Thai history, call into question the commonly held belief that a rising tide of wealth in a society will naturally be followed by greater demands for democracy. Thailand today is much richer than it was two decades ago, but it is also much more divided.<\/em>
\nTo outsiders, and many Thais, some of the protesters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rhetoric seems to come from a different era.<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe we are now arguing about suffrage. Is this 2013 or 1913?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wrote a Thai Twitter user who goes by the handle Kaewmala.<\/em>
\nThe antidemocratic ideas put forward by protest leaders are a jarring contrast with the image of Thailand as a cosmopolitan country open to the world<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is a war between Thaksin and the king,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said a 64-year-old corn farmer from central Thailand who gave her name only as Muai and was among the thousands of protesters in the streets on Thursday. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thaksin has been insulting the king for far too long.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n
\nAnyway, what they don’t like is that the democratic representatives are a bunch of vote grubbing politicians.\u00c2\u00a0 The grease is showing, as always.\u00c2\u00a0 Reflects badly on the Demos.<\/p>\n
\nAnuchyd Sapanphong, a Thai soap opera star, recently posted on his Facebook page that he disliked corrupt politicians so much he wished he had been born during the time of the absolute monarchy.<\/em>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think we are suited for democracy right now,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said on his page. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand it that well \u00e2\u20ac\u201d including me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n