Among all the sociopolitical babble we are constantly faced with is the steady hum of logic – apparently, however, unheard. Hidden in this unsettling background noise is the issue of opportunity and readiness to avail ourselves of it.

Thai society, and those who observe but may fail to observe, or certainly fail to perceive and understand, is the issue of where corruption begins, or exists at all, and what to do about it. Corruption is bad, it’s in the police and army and politics and educational funds and state projects. It’s in groups of people who wear uniforms and carry guns.

But for some reason it’s not in our schools, our temples, our offices and our homes, our social circles and our friends.

Or is it not there, not just as well, but first and foremost?

Are these early stages of social development not where we learn to be dishonest, uncaring, malicious, hateful and clever lest we be caught?

Are these places not where we really become corrupt and our personal proclivity toward corruption in all forms – including dismissive and arbitrary decisions against criminal defendants – but from which we most conveniently point to obvious people like police and shout against their unparalleled corruption?

In a manner of speaking, police are not corrupt per se – in the sense that their corruption certainly did not start with donning a uniform or getting a gun to dispatch others legally or even illegally but being privy to witnesses who lose confidence in what they remember.

Police and politicians (the latter which the PAD amazingly advocates getting rid of in a childish display of mindless utopian wishful thinking that totally ignores uniquely conservative Thai rationale about the root cause of the problem) and military and teachers and other civil servants and even, yes, even religious leaders are corrupt because they and their society encourage corruption and dishonesty, encourage malice and hatred and corrupting influences that undermine the great promises that Thai society might otherwise be able to fulfill.

Ah Kong’s sentence was a crime, just as was the so-called legal process that killed him in the end. Like the son of a politician who openly murdered a decorated police officer, the people who killed Ah Kong will likely remain aloof and untouchable for some time to come. Their consciences are vacuous and their hearts hardened, and yet they call themselves Buddhists. These are the ilk that force more and more people to opt for either the Red Shirt cause or at least to start questioning “the way things are” in Thailand.

If this kind of Thai culture is the culture under threat by new ideas and internal challenges and international denunciations, then shall we not say “It’s good shall be interred with its bones?”