General Debate 24 May 2025
Was out to dinner with some ex-pats here in Thailand.
One of the couple was from Seattle and they said they'd sold everything and just moved here. One of the couple had very masculine features and though I didn't ask assumed they were trans. I asked what the imperative was and they said they were LGB and they were afraid of their lives. I thought that was a bit OTT so asked what was happening. The example they used was people renewing their passports (for the USA Real ID I think that's coming in strongly now) but the government was confiscating their paperwork. Why would they do that, I asked. Turns out people are applying for passports as Josephine Bloggs but their birth certificate says Joeseph Bloggs.
Now I didn't want to get thrown out right from the get go, so I kind of stopped there but FFS. You can't have your passport and birth certificate being different. That's fraud. If you want to be a trans woman then commit to it. Change your birth certificate, change your name by deed poll, and get a new passport. And get a bit of surgery. Don't moan about how the identity system doesn't just let you do anything you want!
Then the conversation moved onto the line of 'the government is rounding up residents and deporting them'. A la Bruce Springsteen's comments at a recent concert. So I said from what I've read, it's not a wholesale scoop up of people, it's Tren de Aragua and MS-13. Why would you want to keep them? 'Oh, no, residents who have done nothing wrong'. Which I took to mean people like Khalil.
So I said 'what do you think about the situation in South Africa where the politician is chanting 'kill the Boer, kill the farmer'? 'Terrible, that's terrible'. 'Don't you think someone organising a group to chant 'kill the Jews' is just as bad?
'err, umm, err, ummm well they're grabbing innocent people. They just don't report it'.
I stopped. A bit disconnected from reality I thought. But then again, I'm there to scope the place out in case the Greens and the Mazi Party get back into power so maybe I'm just as crazy.
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And even more tragically that those accusations are blunting criticisms of Israel that could help bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end.
