A Good Country For Whiny White Men

One of the most noticeable changes about the United States since September 11, 2001, is the emergence of the Whiny White Man.

Despite being born into the most privileged class of human being that has ever existed, these Whiny White Men are claiming now to have been robbed of their rights by vaguely described “minorities.” This despite the fact that 80% of the US Senate is white and male, 80% of the US House of Representatives is white and male, 100% of American presidents have been males, and 99% of them white.

For some reason these Whiny White Men never mention that 100% of rapists are male, almost all serial killers are white males, the people who tanked the economy in 2008 (and then profited from that) were almost all old white males, and the idiots who launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were old white males.

But still, according to the Whiny White Men, this almost exclusively white male government is creating laws and regulations that keep older white males from thinking independently, so some of these delicate snowflakes seek a safe space where nobody will hurt their feelings. It seems that some of these Whiny White Men have found their safe space in Thailand.

That strikes me as odd. Thailand has always been a place where white men are universally considered morons, and for good reason. But I guess it makes some kind of twisted sense, since Thailand is also a place where, if you have money, some locals will support a man’s delusions of grandeur and feed his fragile ego with smiles, compliments and sex.

It’s also a place where things like the internet, air conditioning and Uber are common, so if you’re the kind of person willing to settle for the commonplace I guess that can make Thailand attractive.

Ask one of these cringing daffodils what else thrills him about Thailand and he might mention his maid. For some reason all these guys think that paying a woman to pick up his socks off the floor is a big deal. “She washes and irons clothes, cleans the bathrooms, dusts furniture, sweeps and mops the floors. She washes any dishes I’ve left in the sink and, yes, she does windows,” these Whiny White Men might say. “If she were asked about ‘sexual harassment’ she would have no concept of that at all.”

Apparently, neither do you, Buddy. Cleaning a man’s house for pay has nothing to do with sexual harassment. Now, maybe if you spoke a few words of your maid’s language, and you were able to gain her trust, she might share with you stories of how she’s been sexually harassed in her life. Every woman has those stories, and they share them with each other. In America now, they can share them with a lawyer, and that’s a good thing.   Women anywhere don’t share stories of sexual harassment with the idiot who pays them to move his dishes from the sink to the dishwasher.

These Whiny White Men will go on to tell you that medical care is great in The Kingdom, because a white man with money will be seen the same day. They won’t mention that the old white man will be charged three times what an old Thai man would be charged, and they won’t mention that an old man of any race without money will be stopped at the hospital’s front door.

But they will tell you how pretty the nurses are in Thailand. They’ll even describe a nurse giving directions with a smile as “care” unavailable in the US.   Well, I’ve had a lot of urological procedures, and I can tell you that it matters not one bit how attractive a nurse is if she’s shoving a catheter up your dick. What matters is how deftly she handles the tool, and that only comes with experience. When your prostate is blocked and you’ve got 1000 ml of urine in your bladder you want the oldest, wisest, steadiest nurse on the floor gripping your Johnson.

The cute little things can just wait out in the hall with the lunch tray.

These Whiny White Men might claim that Bangkok feels safe to them because they see local women out walking alone, ignoring the fact that an old white man has an attraction to criminals that single local women do not: money. A girl may be raped, although with pussy being sold for pennies on every street corner the threat of rape is probably less for a woman walking in Bangkok than it is for a woman walking in Omaha. But an old man walking alone at night, particularly a rich old foreign man who will receive virtually no support from the local cops or courts, a rich old white man who exudes an air of entitlement, is a target that would tempt anybody.

Even one of those single ladies might think about knocking him down and grabbing his wallet.

These Whiny White Men might tell you that they feel no government persecution in Thailand, and they might offer a few bits of anecdotal evidence from their brief stay to support their idea that Thai people also feel no burden of government persecution. Well, in my seven years in Thailand I was pulled over and robbed by police many times. They’d pull the keys out of my motorcycle and not give them back until I handed over a couple hundred baht. All with a smile. I had to give my local immigration officer a new typewriter as a gift to get my work permit extended. I had to bribe a guy at the telephone exchange to get a line installed, I had to bribe a guy at customs to get goods into the country, I had to bribe the guy at the post office to get a mail box. Again, all these karachagan accepted their bribes with a smile. Once I was taken into a windowless room by the Crime Suppression Division and held there without warrant or lawyer for two hours. Those guys were not smiling.

My crime was writing something in the newspaper that these cops didn’t like.

YouTube is chock full of videos of Thai cops shaking down taxi drivers and bus drivers. Ask any bar owner what he pays the cops for “protection.” Ask somebody who was alive in 1976 about the government massacre of students on the Thammasat campus. More anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But Amnesty International looks at hard data, and they say that corruption and torture and even extrajudicial killings are rampant in Thailand.

These Whiny White Men might tell you that there is no concept of political correctness in Thailand. Well, I invite these Whiny White Men to make a public comment about the monarchy and see what it gets them. Maybe they should say something critical of The Buddha out loud next time they’re on the Skytrain and see if they make it home intact. Or go down to Yala and say something about Mohammad, and really find out about the norms of polite public discourse in the Land of Smiles.

I would also point out to the Whiny White Men that there are seven pronouns in the Thai language that mean “you,” and you better not use the wrong pronoun with the wrong person or “you” will get a beating. That’s why every Thai person you meet asks you a bunch of intrusive personal questions; he’s trying to fit you into the hierarchy so he knows how to act toward you.

These Whiny White Men might tell you that light-hearted flirting between the sexes disappeared in America long ago. In fact, it has not. It may have disappeared from the average Whiny White Man’s life, but that has more to do with nobody wanting to flirt with Whiny White Men. Anybody who’s ever seen a seventeen-year-old girl’s twitter feed knows that American women are flirting much more boldly now than they ever did before.

But far be it from me to discourage any Whiny White Men from moving to Thailand. Since I still live in America I’d be happy to see the backs of all the men for whom winning the trifecta of race, gender and nationality still wasn’t enough to compensate for their inadequacies. I’d love it if they all moved away, and took with them their monster trucks and golf clubs and guns and misogyny and veiled racism and half-baked libertarianism.

For those sad, lonely, permanently petulant babies the choice appears to be either move off the grid and into the Unabomber’s cabin, or move to an air conditioned condo in a soi off Sukhumvit. Either one would be fine with me.

A Whiny White Man may tell you that Voltaire wrote, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” In fact, Voltaire never wrote that. But it sounds like something he might write, so sure, let’s go with it. Fake scholarship is better than no scholarship at all. You would assume that Whiny White Men who embrace that erroneous quote would be accepting of, and even welcome, criticism of themselves. But in America right now, there’s a certain Whiny White Man in a position of power who doesn’t like criticism.   In fact, he spends much of his time responding to critics, instead of running the organization he was elected to run. He, and a lot of Whiny White Men like him, threaten the country I love.

I wish they’d all move to Bangkok.

The author can be contacted at : shavethemonkeys@gmail.com