Getting along.

Bangkok finally blew up again today. We're here, and fine. Life seems normal on the streets outside our hotel (except for pickups full of flag-waving redshirts rolling by, cheering as if they won something today). And I thought Shutter Island (watched today while "stuck" in a high-end mall after the redshirt protestors forced the closure of the Skytrain) was pretty decent.

But 21 (and climbing) protestors, police and soldiers died, including one Reuters journalist, and another 900 were treated in hospitals for injuries. Both sides are firing live rounds, and it seems like it will get worse before better. And it's all just sickeningly unnecessary.

I've actually been able to follow the day-to-day aspects of the protests pretty closely (thanks to Twitter and Google Maps, I've realized it's remarkably easy to keep a close eye on where protestors or police are gathering at any specific moment, allowing us to blithely gallivant around town). And, as result, I've gotten steady translations of the rhetoric coming from the leaders of both sides.

So beyond a government willing to use live rounds on its own people, the maddening dynamic—from my limited scope—boils down to this:

It's a lot of people with legitimate fears/grievances (the redshirts have a history of getting democratically screwed), and self-serving idiots with microphones on the protest stages exploiting those fears/grievances with willful distortions of the truth, oversimplified, frenzy-whipping rhetoric, and demonization of those of disagree. Don't educate; inflame. Don't think; yell. For this, they solidify their own statuses as political heroes, media kings (many have talk radio and cable news shows), and reliable minions for the real powers duking it out behind the scenes. The yellowshirt protests a year and a half ago had very much the same drumbeat.

Sound familiar?

Update—Here's some footage: