Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

We are the world: Victorious Thai PM renews vow to build border wall post election. https://archive.ph/21hQm “I will still have to build the wall. I must keep strengthening the military's capabilities. I believe Thai soldiers can win against anyone. And I still believe we need to keep the border checkpoints closed, not open them.” — Anutin Charnvirakul His party Bhumjaithai unexpectedly beat the left to come in first. This on the tail of the Japanese election, which saw an unprecedented supermajority for center-right LDP, and gains for radical nationalist Sanseito. We are building a walled world! I have felt reticent about world political news lately, because focused on culture, and because it is hard to see where we are going, what the initiatives of many leaders and their faithful adds up to. But it does seem like we are entering a new era, a New New World Order. Even the recent policies marked as betrayals by patriots of the USA and Japan, among others, like accepting more foreign workers from a given country, are the result of bilateral deals between leaders, not a state unilaterally opening borders to all comers. An alter-globalism of the Right? The movement of goods and peoples across borders isn’t slowing to the levels we’d prefer, but is also no longer seen as a “right” by our leaders, but rather as something that can be shamelessly negotiated as part of an interests-based exchange. This, I find a highly promising development. Maybe if you based your expectations on political rhetoric, rather than experience of how much that really translates into policy, you could feel betrayed or dissatisfied, but it’s like how you have to tare a scale before weighing something in a container: if you don’t tare your expectations, your judgments will always be off-base. Confession: had never listened until right before posting this. Not bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3wNuru4U0I #Thailand #Japan #AnutinCharnvirakul #Bhumjaithai #SanaeTakaichi #LDP #Sanseito #nationalism #alterglobalism #statism #statist #borderwall #wall #WeAreTheWorld #news