What has happened and is currently happening in Thailand can be described as an enslavement of the population through the imposition of old-fashioned tyranny. The people are treated like sheep, a herd animal. Individuality and rights are constantly trampled upon.
All this is true, and it deserves our constant attention. But let’s shift the focus to the other side of the equation. In order to work, tyranny needs not only to cultivate the sheep. It also needs to foster a population of controlling bureaucrats, the shepherds of the system. And this brings us to an entitlement mentality that threatens true democracy in Thailand: A class of people which feels entitled to rule over everybody else.
They are the true enemies of democracy. They believe that they have a natural right to decide the fate of the country and its people it does not matter what the majority of the people want or not. Basically, they believe that there are some people who have a higher value and more rights than others. Their thinking shows resemblance to royalist/fascists theories of some kind of superior people that have the right and even the duty to be rulers and to defend their rule by all means, even if it means the death of more than 90 people and 2000 people being injured as what happened 2 years ago.
This mentality is not solely a Thai Democrat trait, although it is mostly prevalent in that party. It also affects — or infects — “Thailand’s political leaders of all parties,” hence the intractability of the problem. While most voters view an unresponsive government as the problem, those who feel entitled to rule over everybody else see the voters as the problem. And that’s the real crisis facing Thailand today. The elitist class wants to govern like it’s the European Dark Ages, a time when kings were kings, they did what they pleased, ignoring the plight of the citizens, because consent of the governed didn’t matter.”
Our job is to remind them, as vividly as possible, that it matters quite a lot.
And just to remind us all what the European Dark Ages were like…
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