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An interesting take, from SE Asian perspective, on “liberalism.”<br class="">
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New post on<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong class="">Smoke and Mirrors</strong></h2>
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<a href="https://mjw51.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/the-lonely-planet-guide-to-democratic-retreat-part-one/" style="text-decoration: none !important; color: rgb(37, 133, 178);" class="">The Lonely Planet Guide to Democratic Retreat: Part One</a></h2>
<span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);" class="">by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://mjw51.wordpress.com/author/mjw51/" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(136, 136, 136) !important;" class="">mjw51</a></span></td>
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These days, when the intrepid journalists and NGO press release writers (is there a difference?) who "cover" SE Asia talk about the "Retreat of Democracy" hereabouts, they almost always mean the retreat and/or failure of liberalism.</p>
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But that doesn't matter to these people because, in the western chauvinist view, any regime that isn't liberal is, by definition, not democratic-- no matter how much support it has from its people-- because what makes a regime in the old colonial world "democratic"
is the support of western journalists and NGOs.</p>
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And they say we live in a post-colonial world!</p>
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Thailand, which as anyone will tell you was once a “beacon of democracy” in the region, is sliding down the league tables for everything from democracy to freedom of the press to simple all-round freedom. If there is anything a western liberal hates more than
a military junta it's hard to say what that might be. And while they tend not to like populists, even when elected with significant majorities, and even when they remain popular with majorities of their electorates, military juntas are really really really
bad.</p>
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The paragons of liberal evangelizing do, however, always seem to avoid discussion of Egypt when going on and on about the evils of military governments, perhaps because the Obama State Department was loath to label the coup there as a coup (because Muslims?)
and because the EU has mysteriously maintained and supplemented its trade relations with Egypt, at the very same time as it has put all discussion of free trade with Thailand on hold until such time as what passes for democracy in Thailand has been restored.</p>
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It may be because the Thai junta has curtailed freedom of speech and expression and jailed some 100 people for violations of Lese Majeste and other laws limiting speech while the Sisi junta has only murdered some 800 protesters and jailed and tortured thousands.</p>
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Or could it just be that since al-Sisi has been elected with a landslide 97% of votes in a recent election, the Classics Illustrated definition of democracy has been adhered to and there is no need to wonder about what would otherwise be a glaring discrepancy?
Inquiring minds want to know.</p>
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We all need a sense of proportion I suppose.</p>
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Perhaps "'Tis a muddle, and that's aw" as Stephen Blackpool in Dickens' Hard Times might have said of this odd discrepancy, and it’s best to leave it at that. As anyone who has ever tried knows, asking difficult questions of liberals is often the quickest and
easiest way to find yourself accused of racism and/or being a cast member of “Literally Hitler”, since not holding the approved opinions is obviously an indication of holding the evil ones.</p>
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And Myanmar, which just a couple of years ago was the journalist's and NGO's emerging “beacon of democracy”for the region, is mired in tragedy with 700 thousand Rohingya having been forcibly relocated to Bangladesh and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi having had her portrait
removed from the foyer of some building in some college in the UK. Sometimes it’s hard to know which of those things strikes western people as more ‘significant’, but that’s pretty much par for the course.</p>
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The British colonization of Burma rarely if ever comes up in journalistic accounts of the ethnic conflict in Myanmar, regardless of the fact that it’s plainly a case of the British colonial policy of ethnic mixing for the purpose of creating division and weakness
having foisted on the Burmese an intractable problem that most of these journalists and all of the NGO folks probably believe GOOGLE could solve with a Diversity Memo, as long as people like James Damore are kept out of the loop. Why won’t these “Burman supremacists”
just recognize that diversity is strength and that decade after decade of endless inter-ethnic war is not evidence to the contrary?</p>
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We are not, after all, dealing with intellectuals when we talk about journalists and NGO people. They are more like a species of the (usually) male backpackers who, having read and reread their Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, sit in cafes and guesthouse restaurants
throughout the region holding forth to the less literate members of the fraternity on the exotic wonders of the cultures of SE Asia. Given half a chance, these westsplainers will even launch into lecturing the locals on what their cultures really are all about.
At that point, said backpacker is half way to a career in NGO finger-wagging or journalism.</p>
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And this is how the rest of the world comes to understand SE Asia.</p>
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