Teledummies

re: "Fox News chuckles" (BP, PostBag, July 27, 2022)  

Dear editor,

Tarquin Chufflebottom, well said regarding Fox News, a reliable source of fervent entertainers presented as news reporters. TV news in inherently useless if you want to be informed about anything save live sports events or other live action unfolding, such as the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. People who want to be informed on any issue do not watch TV news; they read.

The more disturbing thing is that apparently a substantial number of American's do share Mr. Jellison's opinions of Fox News, just as a significant number continue to believe Trump's whopper that the last election was stolen. Many Americans among the Fox fan base also believe that their chosen god is anti-abortion and pro-life, at least until that life becomes an actual person, at which point it can be neglected, abused, and left to care for itself, or suffer whatever it has brought on itself by lacking moral grit as defined by YAHWEH's divinely intolerant devotees in the modern US.

The whole American situation is most disturbing. Let us hope they soon wake from their Fox News nightmares. 

 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 July 31, 2022, under the title "Teledummies" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2357954/no-incentive

Uniformly servile

re: "The dress code conundrum" (BP, Life, July 26, 2022) 

Dear editor,

The students that way inclined at Chiangmai and Chulalongkorn Universities are right to be proud of their pretty uniforms. Who, after all, would not delight in dressing up in something so cute that publicly boasts of their impressive status? They are very fitting for good children. The proudly uniform wearers are also right that their neatly uniform attire harks back to the glory days of past values to which their dress marks deep obeisance.

But is something that is arguably suitable for school children really fit for those who aspire to mature reflection on issues of importance? The role of any decent university is to foster critical thinking, the questioning of received wisdom, to detect and correct errors, to build on past insights to gain deeper insights. That is what science does if it is to make progress. That is what history does, or must do if it is to better understand our past that made us what we are today. That is what economics and philosophy do, if they are to be more than a rehash of old ways of thinking: we do not read Plato, Kant and Hume merely to learn how insightful thinkers saw things centuries and millennia ago. The CU and CMU students who question the value and the values enshrined in uniforms and all they represent are maturing adults who seek understanding to become better at the business of learning and living well. They demonstrate the academic values that mark a decent university education and the institution itself.

The antique values the sedately coloured uniforms shout out are questioned because they are of questionable value. Sedatively nice and polite, the uniforms impose uniform childishness, and very pretty it is, consistent with retarding the critical questioning essential to identifying and correcting errors. It is perhaps time for Thai universities like CU and CMU to grow up and stop the childishness inherited from past antiquities. 

If they cannot do better than their founders and society a century or more ago, that says something terribly sad about those institutions, and about their values deliberately stuck in a bygone era that should have passed long ago.

 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 MonthDate, 2022, under the title "Uniformly servile" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2357546/uniformly-servile

No better, no worse

re: "Thailand should legalise prostitution" (BP, July 20, 2022) 

Dear editor,

As with so much other bad law, the criminal status of prostitution in Thailand reveals the hollow shallowness and echoing unreason of officially prescribed public morals and social norms that have too well characterized Thailand, among many similarly blighted nations, for many decades.

At best, the objections to prostitution are founded on nothing more substantive than dubious devotion to the mystical ideologies of some religion or other. Religion is an excellent reason for its true believers to follow the teachings claimed to have been handed down from their devotedly worshipped idols. It is no reason whatsoever to impose those principles and precepts on others in society, who might rationally prefer other religious beliefs, or none. Religion has never been a reliable guide either to objective reality or to moral right and wrong. The Earth was never at the centre of the universe, nor did humankind ever come to exist save through nature's mindless evolution on Earth over the course of 3.5 or so billion years, merely because a sacred text insists it be so. Burning witches or same-sex lovers was never morally right, however much some postulated god was said to condemn those human persons slaughtered in his or her name, nor was religiously endorsed slavery ever a morally right social institution merely because some god's sacred texts said it was so.

Religious belief is and should be a strictly personal matter, preferably indulged in private among consenting adults of like faith.

Thailand Development Research Institute's (TDRI) are right in their cogently argued call for Thailand to legalize prostitution. Humans choose their occupations according to their skills and demand. Paid-for sex is clearly in strong demand in Thai society, as are medical expertise, cooking skills, lawyering, teaching, cleaning, pop singing, and computer engineering. There is no obvious reason, save the mystical claims of religion, to support the claim that any of these work choices is morally better or worse than any other, so there can be no defensible grounds for criminalizing any of them merely because of the personal objections of some part of the population, even were it a large majority. Nothing is ever made right or wrong merely because is has majority support.

Ideologues, intolerant fanatics, and bigots think their personal prejudices must be imposed on all.

Good people, in contrast, accept that others will and do hold different values and beliefs to them, and that they will according make different life choices. The latter make for a healthy, flourishing society where all may freely, confidently live honest, open, productive lives. The former inherently retard freedom, confidence, honesty, creativity and productivity, today's Thailand being evidence. 

 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 July 23, 2022, under the title "No better, no worse" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2352297/between-the-lines

Rotten fruit

re: "Prayut focuses on 'prosperity'" (BP, July 9, 2022) 

Dear editor,

A wise man once said, "For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush" (Luke, 6:43-44, KJV). These words spoken 2,000 years ago are worth bearing in mind as we yet again hear Prime Minister Prayut Chan-cha preaching of "his administration's ambitious plan to drive Thailand into the heart of the 21st century" as he yet again "urged Thais to unite as one." Both the claim and the call are contradicted by the odour of fruits never edible, now seriously beyond ripe. Thailand aspires to the soft power eminence that South Korea, whose achievements of the past four decades have made it the envy of many admiring Thais, has come to enjoy under the liberal democracy that in 1980 replaced years of tradition uniformly retarding that nation's development.

Up to 1980, Thailand and South Korea had much in common. Both were developing ever so slowly, wracked by regular, persistent political setbacks that retarded the political, social and moral foundations needed to drive economic and cultural flourishing. In 1973 and 1976, Thailand failed to grasp its South Korea moment. Thanks to the sacrifice of protestors now honoured as true patriots of the nation, South Korea, in contrast, took the opportunity to rid itself of retarding traditions in 1980. South Korea has since had no shortage of rotten politicians of remarkable corruption, as every democracy must, but in South Korea, the old ways did not use that deceitful excuse to stamp out democracy itself. Rather, democracy was permitted to meet the challenge, and South Korea grew into the modern cultural and economic powerhouse that it is today. Such are the fruits of liberal democracy. Thailand, in contrast, has continued for decade after decade, including almost a decade of PM Prayut, to suffer submission to traditions of bountiful benevolence and righteousness, as alleged by those sowing those seeds. The fruits of all that dictated prostration to allegedly sacred tradition is plain to see.  

Perhaps instead of unjustly imprisoning its internationally honoured recipients of South Korea's Gwangju Prize for human rights, Thailand should learn to respect them as the true patriots that they are. But then, that same wise man from the Bible teaches another apt lesson, as Mark recounts in his chapter 6, verse 4: "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” 

 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 July 14, 2022, under the title "Rotten fruit" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2345808/superpower-secrets

Relying on law

re: "City protest plan needs a few tweaks" (BP, Opinion, July 4, 2022)  

Dear editor,

So indisputably true is it, Paritta Wangkiat's observation that the central government's "ongoing crackdown on protest leaders and participants as well as the use of excessive force to disperse street protests do not encourage public debates" seems a bit of an understatement. The ruling Thai government, aided by law made up solely for that reason, loyally suppresses peaceful protest, imprisoning many patriotic Thais for no just reason. Among the hundreds so unjustly imprisoned in strict accord with the law are Thailand's internationally honoured human rights advocates, its recipients in 2017 and 2021 of the Gwangju Memorial Prize, which annual award honours South Korea's patriots who in 1980 freed their nation of military interference in civil society and politics.

Those patriotic South Korean protestors thereby enabled South Korea to move forward after decades of stagnation to thrive economically, to take an respected place in the international community, and to becomes a soft power megastar, things which Thailand will continue to fail to attain whilst under the pervasive influence of those who plot, commit, collude in, enable, sign off on, or otherwise support coups against the Thai people's aspirations to become a democratic nation of free people ruled by just law created by a government that reflects a society in which all share equally in basic human rights, paramount being the right to a voice in their society, whence comes the government that makes the laws that all are expected to obey.

The grant by Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sitthhipunt of somewhat sequestered spaces for only approved protest is a small step in the right direction, but what Thailand more desperately needs if the alternating excesses of the likes  of Thaksin and coup committers is to be consigned to history is just law. Law, that is, that rather than suppressing democratic principle enshrines it in the place of highest honour, as justice and democratic principle should be, over all other things in the political realm.

It is more than passing strange, or perhaps merely telling, that those who committed coups allegedly to eradicate the sins of Thaksin and his proxies yet refuse to make the legal reforms that have always been the single best antidote to abuses of the political and legal system by self-serving Thakins. It appears by their acts, by which we must know them, that the self-alleged opponents of Thaksin hate and fear free speech, openness, accountability and other democratic virtues far more than they do Thaksin and his. How is so weird a conundrum to be compassed? 

 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 July 5, 2022, under the title "Relying on law" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2339762/relying-on-law

All in the family

re: "No more nepotism" (BP, Editorial, June 23, 2022)

Dear editor,

It must be conceded that Senate Speaker Pornpetch Wichitcholchai is perfectly correct that "there are no laws prohibiting senators from hiring next-of-kin." Neither can it be denied that such practices are alleged to have comported with Thai social norms for many generations. 

It does not, however, follow from this legality and claimed social acceptance that Thailand's august Senate Speaker is right to therefore defend the blatant nepotism. As always, the facts that something has been traditional for generations and is blessed by the law are irrelevant to its moral worth. The systemic nepotism sufficiently lauded by the unelected speaker of the senate is but another pillar of the legalized corruption practiced by Thai political players making up law to preserve corrupt moral practices and their alleged social norms. As such, it is but one more example of an allegedly venerated practice of many generations that should be smashed in accord with democratic principle consistent with moral decency. 

 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 July 3, 2022, under the title "All in the family" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2338702/scouts-dishonour

Moral hazards

re: "All for pride, pride for all" (BP, Life, June 27, 2022) 

Dear editor,

That the sacred text of a religion commands that "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus, 22:18), was never a just reason for burning wise women at the stake. No more was traditional religious endorsement of that evil ever a sound justification for slavery throughout the US and elsewhere. 

Equally, just as the recent debacle of the religiously inspired forcing their bad morals on others in society as seen in the overthrow of legal abortion throughout the United States, the same is true of the cited objections of some to marriage equality for all Thais. Good morals require equality of rights before the law. It therefore follows that were it true as claimed by some opponents of Move Forward's Marriage Equality Bill now before parliament, that "such a bill , if passed, would violate religious beliefs", then those religious beliefs contradict good morals. The followers of a religion are of course entitled to hold whatever beliefs they wish and freely practice the associated rituals. There are, however, limitations on what religious freedom allows its devotees to do. Their rituals may not directly harm or threaten to harm others, for example by creating excessive noise that disrupts daily life in the area, nor should such beliefs be allowed to trump good morals. 

 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 July 2, 2022, under the title "Moral hazards" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2338338/moral-hazards