By David Simmons
Normally around this time I write a year-end letter and e-mail it to everyone I can think of who might take some interest. This year, however, I simply have nothing to report. Nothing happened in 2011.
That might sound like a dismal admission, but anyone who actually read my 2010 letter will know that it is a big improvement. And any improvement is quite an accomplishment considering that Time magazine has named The Protester its Person of the Year.
History has proved that the only revolutions that have made any meaningful, positive difference to the human project have taken a lot longer than a few months. But it does seem pretty clear that some of the remarkable events we have witnessed in 2011, from the “Arab Spring” to the Occupy movement, will have lasting effects; it’s just too early to know what those effects will be. Already the hope we had for Egypt seems headed for the trash bin.
Meanwhile, though Occupy likes to portray itself as a “global” movement, it has not taken root in Asia, other than a quiet spurt in Hong Kong. But even in Thailand, where I have made my home for most of the past decade, a revolution of sorts is taking place; ordinary people are waking up, and no longer see any reason for the few to be privileged while the many are not. Unlike last year, when the “red shirt” movement descended into chaos and bloodshed, the revolution this year took place at the ballot box. Not for the first time, of course; that was a decade ago, when the elitist Bangkok-based Democrat Party was trounced by Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (“Thais Love Thais”) party. He gave the majority a share in the country’s wealth for the first time and introduced modern social-welfare programs such as universal health care. The monarchists and the military put up with this until 2006, when a more normal manifestation of Thai politics occurred: a coup d’état. Convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison, Thaksin fled to foreign countries that were happy to host him and his billions.
But the genie was out of the bottle. Populist movements, both legitimate and illicit, took hold of the political agenda, and a succession of pro-Thaksin parties were elected, only to be ousted by the corrupt judiciary. The Democrats were reinstalled, this time with a charismatic, handsome and articulate leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, at the helm. But he was surrounded by the usual gang of corrupt and incompetent politicians in his cabinet, and despite a “wag the dog” border conflict with Cambodia to shore up their popularity in Thaksin’s support base, the populous rural areas, the Democrats were trounced again this July in one of the fairest and best-run elections Thailand has ever seen. Promising a series of programs to deal with the country’s huge wealth gap, Thaksin’s beautiful younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, became the nation’s first female prime minister.
So far, the latest Shinawatra regime is still in place; even the military, which holds the real power, seems reluctant to instigate yet another coup given the overwhelming support Yingluck still enjoys in the heartland despite her alleged mishandling of the flood disaster this autumn. Legal attempts to discredit the government through impeachments have also failed, though the business class is going all out to sabotage such measures as raising the minimum wage to C$10 a day. While these efforts are predictably supported enthusiastically by US-based multinationals and to a slightly lesser extent by the Europeans, many of the Japanese and Korean firms have said they support improving the standard of living of the working (and consuming) class, and are well able to absorb the cost. The Chinese too, who are quietly taking over the entire Southeast Asian economy, have refused to be distracted by Western-based neoliberal race-to-the-bottom propaganda.
As a journalist, I am often amazed at the failure of the Western media to see what is happening in the world. Massive greed has all but destroyed Europe; by at least one analysis, nearly half the population of the formerly great United States of America is living in some form of poverty. Western democracy appears to be finished; the balance of power is shifting to the BRIC countries, only one of which – Brazil – is a reasonably well-functioning democracy, and the most powerful of the four – China – does not even pretend to be democratic, as do India and Russia. The media largely ignore this huge economic and geopolitical shift, even misunderstanding – or deliberately misinterpreting – the popular anger in their own neighbourhoods, shrugging off the corporate-backed coups in Greece and Italy, and failing yet again to take an active stance against military aggression.
Even the Occupy movement is a side-effect of the Western decline. What exactly does the “99 per cent” want? It wants what it briefly had in the past, a good standard of living, hope for a decent pension in old age, affordable education and rewarding careers for their offspring. But those benefits were only enjoyed in Europe, North America and Oceania, then latterly in a few Asian enclaves such as Japan and South Korea. Elsewhere, every year millions starved or perished from preventable diseases. The West never used its power, when it still had it, to repair global inequities; on the contrary, the US and the main European governments fuelled them, even resorting to terrorism, sabotage and war when the imbalance came under threat.
The Occupiers blame corporations, and the media and politicians they have bought, for the decline in the Western standard of living. But who gave the villains their power? In a democracy, the buck stops not with the king or the dictator, but with the demos, the people themselves, who can and usually do choose to squander their democratic rights and, ultimately, their personal well-being and their children’s futures, through blindness, laziness or greed.
But I digress. For the Simmons family, 2011 was a good year, at least compared with 2010. Nearly half of that unloved year was spent in a foreign country, away from my wife, kid and cat, in the first journalism job I have actually despised. Those frustrations were aggravated, and caused to some extent, by a latent blood ailment that was sapping my energy and finally landed me in hospital for a transfusion of O-negative.
By the end of 2010, my health had returned, I was back with my family, and things were looking up again.
That trend has continued in 2011. My health is still good; we live in comfort, with various sources of income to support a lifestyle we enjoy. I don’t travel much any more; my sense of adventure is passing with the years, and when I have managed to get some time off work over the past year, I have been content to enjoy the tropical and affordable charms right here in Thailand, easily and conveniently accessible without the hassle of airports, visas or foreign-exchange ripoffs.
And what of 2012? Will the frauds and felons who run the world succeed in destroying it, as the Maya predicted? There are ominous signs; the financial system in the West is being exposed as a gigantic Ponzi scheme, as the Chinese and their Asian allies wait patiently to lap up the dregs of a half-century booze-up in Europe and North America. And for the first time since World War II (and no, I haven’t forgotten the Cold War, which was nothing more than a game by boys with toys, albeit one that kept hundreds of millions of people in misery for decades), the possibility of a global conflagration brought about by sheer stupidity – military aggression against Iran – looms.
Difficult to see, the future; always in motion it is. I’m a survivor, of this year’s Southeast Asian flood disaster, earthquakes, tsunamis, desert sandstorms, a 30-year journalism career, my wife’s driving lessons, and myriad mistakes for which I alone was to blame.
So there is no reason yet to suspect that I won’t survive 2012. And as always at this time of year, my lovely and patient wife Pong (นวัลนอย), my spoiled but still delightful daughter LukYi (นัทนิชา), my often annoying but generally amusing cat Onet (โอเนส) and I wish all of our friends and family a happy and prosperous twelvemonth.
