Land of Smigh

Italophile asks about my views on the Thai situation.

Esquiver asks why on earth Italophile appears to be showing up in the visitor logs on the opposite side of the continent from where he announced he was heading.

But as for Thailand: I'm still undecided.

My first thought was that it was a "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest"-type situation. The king is deliberately and notoriously cryptic, to avoid the appearance that he's trying to influence politics -- with the result that Thai public policy has been known to swing dramatically on politicians' meticulous parsing of royal texts. It's entirely possible that Sonthi (mis?)interpreted some royal mutterings about Thaksin as a mandate for action.

If true, it seems relatively benign to me. Given the number of constitutions Thailand has had
since its modern incarnation as a state in 1932 (sixteen), and the number of kings it's had in the same time period (three), it's always seemed to me that there was heavier emphasis on the "monarchy" part of "constitutional monarchy," with democracy as a kind of an afterthought or epiphenomenon emerging out of some very well-functioning enlightened despotism. (American-style democracy, built around egalitarianism, just doesn't fly in the East, but that's a whole different topic.)

I'm a little disturbed by recent reports of, well, junta-like behavior on the part of the junta. That leaves me in the less comfortable state of worrying who's puppet and who's puppeteer (or, I guess, who's Brooke Astor, and who's Anthony Dryden Marshall). The monarch, after all, has been somewhat frail of late.

Even in the best scenario, in which His Majesty is firmly in control, if he passes away before elections are held next year, Thailand is doomed.

This is indecision on an intellectual level, not a practical one. I'd been thinking of swinging by Chiang Mai in November for the Loy Krathong festival, and still am. In fact, the other night at a party, I conferred with a colleague who was also planning Thailand travel, and we both had the same immediate reaction: yay, hotels should be much easier to book now (and then had a giggle at what world-weary badasses we were).

But seriously: I am concerned. I also think not all coups are created equal, though, and that despots can bring about democracy just as easily as democracy can usher in despotism (cough, cough).

And the digression of the day, in this case a titular one: why do countries' tourism boards so frequently zero in on precisely the wrong slogan for their land? I mean, Thailand's "Land of Smiles" isn't intrinsically that bad, except that the phonemes "/u/-/l/-/z/" can never occur in that sequence in the Thai language, and "Land of Smigh" sounds pretty damn silly. I noticed the phenomenon again during my recent trip to Chhatisgarh, land of Maoist insurgency, where it's unsafe to be out at night because armed rebels might be lurking behind every tree and farmhouse. Their slogan? "Full of surprises." Kind of takes you back to the reigning catchphrase in Hong Kong when SARS struck: "Takes your breath away."