Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Clowns to the left of Thailand, Jokers to the Right". I have always loved that song: "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with You" and I was just examining this from just the overall however you want to call it, the situation the world seems to be in with just all of these restrictions being imposed on people; discussion of all of these really Draconian rules regarding basically "papers please"; we have discussed the COVID Pass, documentation to go into public spaces.

I look very positively on Thailand. I love Thai history. I find Thailand to be a fascinating place. I love it because as a country she has always gone her own way; she has held her own path. Even amid serious adversity, Thailand has charted her own course and it has been a precarious predicament in some periods. Getting through the colonialism period without being colonized in my opinion shows the tremendous capabilities of Thai people and the regime here. Everything about that era, when you see how Thailand navigated that, it is not only fascinating it is amazing, frankly. Meanwhile, the Cold War is another thing. Thailand had to navigate all these different sides and maintain her own position and maintain alliances with what the country's ideology was all about. All of this is amazing stuff and it is one of the reasons I became Thai.

I really, truly do love this country and it is for this reason I am making this video because the rest of the world just has gone nuts, I mean utterly crazy. The stuff that we are seeing out of Europe is just, I mean what are we doing? This is comical some of this. I mean I was watching Casablanca the other night and there was: "Oh, your papers please" and "oh well these papers are expired, you are going to need to come with us" and the guy runs off and gets shot. That is like the first scene in Casablanca. I mean and you are hearing about similar stuff in Europe, it just it is really concerning. Meanwhile, you have got these kind of more authoritarian places out here in Asia, places like China, even Russia that take a way more authoritarian approach.

I know Thailand has kind of a communitarian mindset. Everybody, you know "Thai Rak Thai", "Thais love Thais", everybody sort of in it together; I enjoy that too. I like that. It is a very cohesive society but I think right now we really need to be looking at our own situation and trying to figure out how to deal with this as best it works for Thailand and not trying to look at anybody else as an example because to me it looks like everybody has just pretty much, most countries I am looking at around the world USA included; China, Russia, USA, Europe. It just looks to me like they have lost their collective minds. For this reason, I just really hope that cooler heads prevail in Thailand and we start to use some more reason and just get through this and put this behind us.