Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, and the thumbnail, I want to be clear. I thought of the thumbnail after thinking of American Werewolf in Paris and I will put a link in the description below to the preview to that movie. It just the sort of phraseology an American politician at Bangkok and I'll get to, that's being facetious, I'm sort of being, sarcastic or satirical. Obviously, we know Mr. Pita isn't an American politician, but I will explain why I am sort of saying that and again, I also want to be clear, this is not a pejorative. This is not me being even critical really of Mr. Pita. It's simply an observation of what all has gone on since roughly whatever it was, early Quarter two of 2023 moving into now and just to provide some insight especially to foreigners is some of the nuances to what's going on here.

So I originally thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Pita apologizes to frontline soldiers over past remarks. So, in the prior election campaign, apparently he made some comments, and I'm not going to go into that. I urge those who are watching this video, read the Bangkok Post article, you can get all of the salient data points on this. But basically, he seems to have made some kind of flippant remarks, sort of being dismissive of the military. Now it seems he was making those in the context of the politicalization if you will in certain instances of certain aspects of the military, and I'm not going to go any further into that analysis. Again, read the Bangkok Post article to get into that. 

That said, quoting directly: "Pita Limjaroenrat, former leader of the now-dissolved Move Forward party, has apologized to Frontline soldiers over past remarks, saying they were not intended to show disrespect towards those serving in conflict zones." And Mr. Pita, again you can read that article and you can see what he said. Frankly his remarks were in my opinion reasonable enough, considering the circumstances. He basically it seems like, he said look I was being kind of flippant; it's politics. But that said, we have now, in the intervening days or years now, had the situation arising at the border where we have seen that the troops of Thailand have not only put themselves in harm's way, but comported themselves with a great deal of efficiency, effectiveness, and valour. So again politically some of this stuff is kind of coming back to bite Mr. Pita if you will, as well as probably his entire political movement; it's having a bit of blowback. So again, I urge you to read that article in the Bangkok Post. 

It brought me to this, however. This came at the end of the article, quote: "However, there are many other ways to compete. Political parties should be competing through the creative presentation of policies rather than attacking one another." And that's well put, and I would even add on an observation there which, can we stop having personality politics so much in the Thai political arena. It didn't work. We saw the aftermath of that in 2025, or the effects of that in 2025 with the fallout from the Paetongtarn - Hun Sen phone call which I think could arguably directly be attributed albeit through a few steps, to again this personality politics because she was Thaksin's daughter and notwithstanding the fact there were serious questions about her competency, she was allowed to become PM anyway. And then we saw the deleterious effects of that in the aftermath of the leaked phone call and all of that. And there are strong arguments to be made that what was said in that call may have led, it may have led to the events that later transpired, and to the benefit of not really much of anybody, especially not the boys and men and women and civilians that died along the Thai-Cambodian border over the course of the past six or seven months now. So again I would say this personality politics it would be a good thing to see that diminished a lot. I like some of the other parties now because it does seem like that's a little bit more toned down. The point of the video, and the point of the thumbnail - not the soul point of the video - I think the quote brings up a good point. Let's start talking policies here. I'm tired of this, “I'm on his team." I want to hear about some policies. That's kind of where I'm at.

The other thing is an observation, and this is the reason for the American politician in Bangkok is I have heard a lot of people over the years talking about Pita and I think on one level, what happened, it just fell the way it did. The Constitution was written how it was, and it came out the way that it did. But I think he could have avoided certain problems in that campaign season that he ended up having in the aftermath or during August of 2023 or I should say the legacy Party now, People's Party legacy Move Forward is the fact that in many ways it's my understanding he went to MIT for a Business Degree, he got like a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard;  he went to Thammasat for Undergrad. I just remember watching it in the summer of ‘23 leading into August when the new Government was ultimately formed, and just thinking to myself, this guy would be a great politician in the States, but he thinks like an American politician in many ways and that's my reason for bringing this up. This isn't a critique of him in any way; I'm not saying it's a negative. There is nothing morally wrong with him but again he's been heavily influenced by thinking along the lines of US political thinking and some of the things he did were very effective in the last campaign, and probably for the reason that he was adopting certain techniques that had never been used before in Thai campaigns, but I think one of the stumbling blocks that he had, and that may have had an effect on the Party and the outcome of how everything played out in ‘23 was for lack of a better term, thinking if you will too much like an American politician. And that's the only point I'm trying to bring up here is when people bring him up specifically, that's my main observation is he didn't do anything wrong; I think he seems to be an upright individual all things considered. Now he and I are going to have fundamental disagreements on certain aspects of how we think about Thai Politics, but again reasonable people can mostly disagree on these things. 

That said my observation regarding him specifically is one, just for the record, after reading that article, I was kind of like it's kind of a harsh criticism to bring up remarks he made years ago sort of out of context regarding the military now. Things have changed fundamentally. It's hard to sort of hang if you will blame around his neck for talking negatively or something, especially in retrospect; I don't think that it's fair to do that. But that being said, if there is a critique that I look at him and I sort of say "Hey maybe there's something you could improve in terms of your own personal political prowess, it would be maybe start thinking more like a Thai politician and less like an American one.