I would note the reverence isn’t as strong today as it was under the prior king. Most homes you’ll still find king Rama ix hung on the wall and I rarely see the current king. Indeed it’s a bit of a surprise when I do and it makes me wonder about their associations.
Thai people generally love the idea of democracy. But they’ve been under so many dictators for so long they’ve become jaded. Every Thai person has a strong political view more or less and people absolutely criticize the government, military, and even gossip about the royal family extensively - behind closed doors and with friends. Graft is rampant though, and the powerful with big last names can literally do anything they want and get away with it, the police don’t serve the people, and the individual is generally disenfranchised.
There however have been and continue to be powerful democracy movements and political dissent - see the yellow shirt / red shirt riots, the democracy protests and mass killings by the military over the last 60 years, add in it the king Rama the ix personally advocating against the power of the government over its people and the importance of basic human rights.
I’d note that human rights isn’t an American concept but a basis in liberal humanism, which has been a conceptual framework evolved over thousands of years. Most my experience talking to people about liberal humanism and the status quo in South and Southeast Asia is “yes of course it’s self evident, but” where the but is effectively a powerlessness over the social structure of society. I’d note further that Theravada Buddhism is at its core liberal humanist as well, which is specifically relevant in Thailand. This is why ultimately with the Thai people the liberal humanist movement is quite popular and there continues to be considerable internal political problems - because the eightfold path dictates a liberal humanist philosophy and the people in power prefer the prior slavery based society before Chulalongkorn.
Thai people generally love the idea of democracy. But they’ve been under so many dictators for so long they’ve become jaded. Every Thai person has a strong political view more or less and people absolutely criticize the government, military, and even gossip about the royal family extensively - behind closed doors and with friends. Graft is rampant though, and the powerful with big last names can literally do anything they want and get away with it, the police don’t serve the people, and the individual is generally disenfranchised.
There however have been and continue to be powerful democracy movements and political dissent - see the yellow shirt / red shirt riots, the democracy protests and mass killings by the military over the last 60 years, add in it the king Rama the ix personally advocating against the power of the government over its people and the importance of basic human rights.
I’d note that human rights isn’t an American concept but a basis in liberal humanism, which has been a conceptual framework evolved over thousands of years. Most my experience talking to people about liberal humanism and the status quo in South and Southeast Asia is “yes of course it’s self evident, but” where the but is effectively a powerlessness over the social structure of society. I’d note further that Theravada Buddhism is at its core liberal humanist as well, which is specifically relevant in Thailand. This is why ultimately with the Thai people the liberal humanist movement is quite popular and there continues to be considerable internal political problems - because the eightfold path dictates a liberal humanist philosophy and the people in power prefer the prior slavery based society before Chulalongkorn.