In fact I'm not sure it's a Thai-Thai thing. The banality of evil has no nationality or culture. I'm saying all of this not as a Western critic whose Orientalist fantasy has crumbled. I'm saying it as a Western critic whose Orientalist fantasy has crumbled. I'm saying it as a Thai-Thai person, born, raised and schooled (and who'll eventually die, devoured by mosquitoes in a remote barracks) in this beloved Fatherland, wandering the melancholic ruins of our imaginary glory, a splendid past that never was. I'm saying this with a laugh, a Thai-Thai way of saying something, or everything, a heartbroken laugh on the day we're stuck together in quicksand with a single hope, a rope that looks vaguely like a noose.