Me again. It seems Thailand is having its own little Apocalypse, back there where you folks are now. What with the Red Shirts, and the Yellow Shirts and the Multi-colors and one thing and another. The past few days have seen the hopes of all right-thinking people taking a roller-coaster ride. Meanwhile, it’s plain to see some other people believe it’s to their advantage to have civil society explode into real strife, and to heck with the good of the nation and so on. But, hey. Money and power and gosh-darned revenge trump democratic and economic development any day.
I get a privileged POV, here in the year 2055—the question of where “here” might be is something we can’t get into right now—so I know things are going to sort of work out in the short term. But the emotional ups and downs and the political this-ways and thats are going to feature in the local landscape for years to come. Real social and political changes are always slow to come.
Some of you reckon the times, they’re getting pretty bad. And so they are, for some. But things could be a lot worse. And they will get to be. That’s nearly a law of nature.