Yahweh v. Christ in Trumpland

re: "‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump" (The New York Times, December 30, 2019) 

The Trumpian "Christians" are really Old Testament commandants in love with the first of those infamous Ten Commandments that dictate absolute intolerance of other views, beliefs, lifestyles and ways of existing as a morally aware person in a liberal democracy.

The example of Christ, in stark contrast, is that followed by evangelicals who oppose immigration restrictions, who accept their LGBTQ friends and family, who accept that people be allowed to make decisions, even bad or foolish ones, about the best way to live their lives under the circumstances in which they find themselves. These real Christians are the compassionate and merciful, who abhor the unChristian acts, attitudes and policies of Trump.

If a democracy is not liberal, then it is not a democracy.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/us/politics/trump-2020-trumpstock.html#commentsContainer&permid=104357188:104357188

  

All they need is love

re: "Parliamentarians' nicknames reflect turbulent times" (BP, December 28, 2019)

Dear editor,

Parliament is a sacred and honourable place, so sacred that even love is deemed unworthy of sullying its pure halls. It is, therefore, most impertinent of the press to apply derogatory nicknames to the noble occupants of that revered institution beloved of the Thai people. That the nicknames are honest, apt and state appropriately mocking truths cannot excuse such rudeness, which is likely in breach of several laws made up to protect that which is officially revered by the Thai nation.

To besmirch parliament's denizens in government, those esteemed pillars of the nation, towards whom public opinion shows universal admiration, is plainly unpatriotic. It is clearly another Illuminati plot that the army chief must rail against before the nation's security is irrevocably breached. If love in a kiss is officially unfit for parliament's august corridors, why would mere truth be deemed worthy of expression?

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 30, 2019, under the title "All they need is love" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1825964/all-they-need-is-love
  

Army needs overhaul

re: "Relatives of slain men get payouts" (BP, December 23, 2019)

At least in this case, as the compensation, miserly though it be, paid to the slain men's families attests, there is some admission of error. Perhaps there would be less of these killings of Thai citizens by the errant Thai military if the Kingdom had a smaller, professional army of well-trained, well-equipped, and professionally supported women and men who had chosen to serve their nation, rather than forced conscripts badly trained, badly equipped and poorly supported by the excess of army generals of dubious usefulness busily plotting political careers without the inconvenience of elections.

Which political party is it that has pushed for such desperately needed reform for the sake of the Thai nation?

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 25, 2019, under the title "Army needs overhaul" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1823634/army-needs-overhaul
  

God wills it

re: "That Christianity Today Editorial Won’t Change Anything" (December 24, 2019)

White evangelicals worship at the altar of Donald Trump because he preaches intolerance.

And that intolerance is at the heart of the message from the three great Abrahamic religions that spewed out of the despotic Middle East. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share the Ten Commandments, the first and foremost of which, as explicitly written according to their gods' commands in Exodus 20, is absolute intolerance of other beliefs or attitudes.

And that intolerance embedded at the core of the Abrahamic religions rejects reason as much as it does facts. There is nothing miraculous in the love his Christian fans have for the moral corruption that is Donald Trump and his messages of intolerance.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/opinion/christianity-today-trump.html#commentsContainer&permid=104292061:104292061

  

Time to listen to the nation

re: "Is return of political violence inevitable?" (BP, Opinion, December 21, 2019)

Dear editor,

No. Chairith Yonpiam. The return of political violence is not inevitable. Despite the example of violence set by repeated coups, the Thai people still prefer peace. Nor are Thai people fools; they increasingly realize that the major problems besetting their nation today, from the retarded social and political growth, to the gross economic inequality where the greedy 1% own 67% of the nation thanks to blatant injustice under the law, to the moral corruption that pervades Thai society, are largely attributable to the repeated coups against democracy that have consistently aided and abetted the injustice and inequality that have for many decades characterized Thai society, politics and law. 

The impressive popularity of Future Forward when they burst onto the political scene only  a year ago shows that Thais increasingly understand how cherished myths of nationalistic deceit have been abused to enable the repeated assault on democracy's beneficial morals. They know that their nation's problems, festering under veils of censorship condoned by a long series of permanent constitutions, have made modern Thailand what it is today. Thailand could be and should be a beacon of peace, justice and democracy to Southeast Asia. Thailand could be an economically developed nation where all share in the wealth. Thailand should have a well-educated people with respected universities driving international standard research. Under the morally stunted status quo clinging to past injustice, the Thai people have been robbed of their nation's great potential.

Despite the promises of the PDRC and coupists, there has been neither reform nor reconciliation since 2014; on the contrary, the law is now being used to harass Thai citizens calling for healthy reform.

Set apart from the old ways, Future Forward repeatedly proves itself the party of peace-driven principle. Most recently, it has taken the wholly unThai step of expelling elected MPs who did not uphold the party's commitment to agreed principles. Can anyone imagine the likes of the prime minister's Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) taking such a step, of PPRP's impressively credentialed monkey feeder, as he so aptly describes himself, in the PM's cabinet actually asking MPs to leave the party for breach of a core principle?

Peaceful protest is a legitimate means of voicing ideas. A Thai government that was committed to reform would listen to the Thai nation. It would amend repressive law so as to allow more speech on more topics, thus enabling the Thai people to better know and understand the Thai people, Thai society, Thai history and Thai politics. What kind of people, after all, prefer less informed to better informed? A government of good people would not hide behind unspeakable tradition protected by unjust law; it would work to peacefully move the Thai nation forward to what it could long have been to the great benefit of all Thais.

The choice that now lies with the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is between repressive business as usual or peaceful progress forward to a great future for all Thais.

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 22, 2019, under the title "Time to listen to the nation" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1821559/time-to-listen-to-the-nation
  

Christians for Trump: Christian?

re: Evangelical Leaders Close Ranks With Trump After Scathing Editorial (December 21, 2019)

Sadly, the Christian right in the US epitomizes all that is worst in every despotic ideology, from Mammonism to communism, from nationalistic Hinduism to communism.

The dictatorial Old Testament of the Bible sets the standard with its infamous Ten Commandments, openly calling them commands from a vengeful dictator god. As everyone who has read Exodus knows, the first of the Ten Commandments dictate absolute intolerance of other beliefs, opinions, attitudes or ways of living. This core principle commanding intolerance has since characterized all three of the great Abrahamic faiths from the Middle East: Judaism, whose leaders coerced Rome to kill Jesus; Christianity, whose record of pogroms, inquisitions, blasphemy trials, torture and burnings of heretics, and vicious holy wars against infidels is well-known throughout Western history ever since the Christian bishops gained political power and set about destroying the core principles of Western civilization; and more recently in Islam, whose brutish violence against freedom-loving people is well known and easily seen in nations where it still holds sway.

We might have thought that US Christians would have learned moral decency from the example Christ, but clearly not. That they support Trump precisely because he embodies the Old Testament precept of absolute intolerance based on faith that is willfully blind to reason, to facts and to good morals is a compelling indictment of the moral poverty of American Christianity. 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/us/politics/christianity-today-trump-evangelicals.html#commentsContainer&permid=104260713:104260713 

  

Old at heart

re: "I stand with Greta" (PostBag, December 17, 2019) & "Will the Empire strike back at the Skywalkers?" (BP, Opinion, December 17, 2019)

Dear editor,

A Reader ("I stand with Greta", PostBag, Dec. 17), in his apt identification of the failing in some leaders of the Western world's response to Greta Thunberg identifies perfectly a major cause of the endemic rot in Thai society and politics, as seen in the old men's reaction to the bright young hope for a better Thai nation that is Future Forward: "A child should be seen, but not heard", which is plainly the preferred option of the ruling PM's government of the sort of people who support tenacious clinging against all reason to the bad old ways of the past that brought about the state of today.

Thankfully, Thailand's "brats" also sense the urgency, demonstrating moral courage as they take a patriotic stand for their nation whilst respecting the corruption-ridden old men with the polite disdain that they deserve for having mired the Thai nation, the Thai people, in a cesspit of greed-driven inequality and injustice that is in ever more urgent need of reform.

Worth noting here, as Atiya Achakulwisut reminds us in "Will the Empire strike back at the Skywalkers?" (BP, Opinion, Dec. 17) is that the PDRC street mobs of Suthep, whose willfully disruptive acts conveniently paved the way to the latest coup against the Kingdom of Thailand's form of democratic government with a constitutional monarchy as they boasted of striving to "Shut down Bangkok", insisted that they wanted reform. The reality could not have proved more different to the PDRC's false claims. "The 2014 coup, led by the current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, was supposed to end the rabble-rousing and put the country on the path towards reforms." The obvious truth is that it is Future Forward who propose actual reform that is long overdue. When presented with the possibility of actual reform to move the Thai nation forward, the party of the old proves that it clearly fears and hates such reform.

But at least the deep fault lines dividing Thai society are coming into sharper focus for all Thais to see. That will help them to decide on which side to take a stand for the sake of their nation's future, just as Greta and those belittling her help to clarify what is at stake for our species on the planetary scale.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 19, 2019, under the title "Old at heart" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1819449/old-at-heart
  

No right to a voice

re: "Charter amendment 'necessary'" (BP, December 15, 2019) 

Dear editor,

Who would not welcome a constitution founding their nation on a broad consensus of the Thai people? But for the latest permanent constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand to be amended with everyone's consent, all citizens must be accorded an equal right to a voice in forming the finally agreed upon legal foundation of their nation.

A good place to start the amendment process would, therefore, be to enable the necessary discussion by amending the current section 34, which fails to give strong legal protection to the fundamental right to free speech. The needed amendment to enable Thais a just voice in Thai affairs could be done by adding the word "equal" and deleting a few words so that the amended section 34 read: "A person shall enjoy the liberty to express opinions, make speeches, write, print, publicise and express by other means. The restriction of such liberty shall not be imposed, except by virtue of the provisions of law specifically enacted for the purpose of protecting the equal rights or liberties of other persons."

Such amendment to respect the rights of all Thai citizens as equally entitled to a voice in forming their nation's government and society has the virtue of recognizing democracy as fundamental to a just society that works for consent in forming the laws that govern it.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 16, 2019, under the title "No right to a voice" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag
  

Immoral tradition

re: "Challenges to human rights in Asia" (BP, Opinion, December 12, 2019)

Dear editor,

Another thoughtful piece by Vitit Muntarbhorn. It remains too true in Thai classrooms that "there is a need to promote participation and and (sic) critical analysis among learners. However, classrooms are often undemocratic  and student participation is limited by lectures and learning-by-rote." The consistently low grades of Thailand's extravagantly expensive public education attest to its failure to actually educate Thai youth.


Thailand will be making clear progress towards overcoming the traditional moral failures of conservative Thai culture enforced by those hiding behind bad tradition when there is healthy debate on both sides of such topics as the role of the military in Thai society, which surely deserves the respect of being critically assessed and known for its true worth. As it stands these many decades, the suppression of free speech by unjust law ensures that the Thai people often have no idea what the Thai people even think on matters claimed, with zero supporting evidence, to be of supreme importance to the nation.


 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 13, 2019, under the title "Immoral tradition" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1814904/immoral-tradition
  

Bring it on...

re: "A critical lack of thinking" (BP, Editorial, December 7, 2019) 

Dear editor,

Whilst it was a joy to hear that Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan believes that "Every MP should instead contribute to promoting education," I was a little perplexed that he thinks open debate might interfere with promoting education, debating long being known to contribute to a range of skills desirable in any sound education.

In fact, I would propose that the Education Minister take this opportunity to encourage formal debates within and between schools on topical, controversial issues. Formal debating is a powerful way to practice the critical thinking skills that are essential to modern life, helping debaters on both sides to better understand the issues under discussion, deepening their awareness of complexity and learning to sort out real from fake claims, all of which are valuable life skills for students to learn.

By choosing topical issues to debate, students will be genuinely motivated to study not only the specific subject, such as conscription, but related issues, such as what national defence truly requires. Such engaged interest on issues which concern them and their nation is surely a proper aim of any decent education. In addition to instilling awareness of national issues, debates on such topics as conscription will encourage students to study the related history, thereby enhancing their awareness of how their nation came to be the state it is today. Moreover, such motivated research will practice students' reading skills, notoriously weak in traditional Thai education as regularly shown in PISA tests. This improved historical awareness of their nation's evolution allied to stronger reading skills are surely additional desirable educational outcomes.

Finally, debating the pros and cons of truly controversial issues will not only give the engaged students the ability to make better decisions when they come to exercise their rights to vote, but will also deepen their understanding of ethics, of justice and of a good life, of what makes an act or an existing state morally right or wrong. Again, it is hard to see how the Education Minister could object to such strengthening of the moral foundations that are an important aspect of an education preparing Thai youth to be active, informed citizens of their nation, to be engaged Thai citizens not easily swayed by dubious claims unsupported by solid evidence and sound reasoning.

The Education Minister should thank Future Forward's Chirat Thongsuwan for bringing such productive debate to Thai education.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 9, 2019, under the title "Bring it on..." at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1811449/bring-it-on-
  

Transparency vital

re: "Defending the indefensible?" (BP, Editorial, December 4, 2019) 

Dear editor,

The Thai military sometimes seems to forget that it is the paid servant of the Thai nation, that is, of the Thai people. As the owners who pay for it, the Thai people have every right to not only determine the makeup and functions of their nation's defence forces, but also to know that their money is being spent to serve genuine defence needs as determined by the nation.

As the people's loyal servant, it is the patriotic duty of the armed forces to serve and protect the nation, which requires not only that the military uphold and honour the supreme rule of civil law as determined by the Thai people, but that they also be open to whatever inspection the people deem appropriate. No one doubts that there are genuine matters of national security that should be kept confidential, but it is for the nation, through their civil representatives in parliament under Thailand's democratic form of government with a constitutional monarchy, to dictate the appropriate level of transparency.

As Section 3 of the latest permanent constitution of Thailand explicitly says, "Sovereign power belongs to the Thai people."

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on December 5, 2019, under the title "Transparency vital" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1808964/patriot-games