Cashing in on superstition

re: "Maybe Armageddon!" (BP, PostBag, March 13, 2013)  and "Cashing in on superstition" (BP, March 13, 2023)

Dear editor,

Miro King, the lotus eater, be of good cheer. Today's Bangkok Post reports the solution to your own and all such petty earthly concerns in "Cashing in on superstition". The new faith-based tourism targetting the truly faithful for the purest or motives will drive away all evils. Religious tourism is but the latest fruit borne and nurtured by the absolute efficacy of prayer, and by the proven powers of magical amulets produced by mystical temples under the guidance of venerated figures oozing pure holiness. These spiritual gifts indubitably solve all problems, whether health, business or otherwise. If greater spiritual force is needed to bring about a miraculous cure, to rid the land of encroaching PM2.5, or to eradicate corruption forever, the troops can be called on to volunteer for a mass ordination. Who would dare question that such serious merit making will solve all those mundane travails along with rising debt, unemployment, and inflation, let alone lesser matters such as your faithless concern of an excess of eager tourists swamping us all like a flood or other act of god? 

And if prayer, amulets, and mass ordination inexplicably fail for the first time ever to deliver the promised goods, that is plainly because not enough praying was done, not enough offerings were made to a large enough collection of amulets, or not enough men freely volunteered to ordain. What other explanation could be considered? More faith, purer faith, is all that is needed. 

 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 March 18, 2023, under the title "Cashing in on superstition" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2530829/pm2-5-nightmares