Thailand is suffering from electoral dysfunction syndrome; it's a hard problem, and it's hard to talk about. There's no cure-all pill for it either; the only dependable cure is the restoration of health of the whole body politic.
To an impartial observer, it should be obvious the so-called democratic process is broken; it's a rigged system that has been gummed up and gamed by a wily political clan. It consistently produces undemocratic results; enriching the rich, and strengthening the hands of strongmen. The sad reality of the torn and twisted status quo is that every vote cast brings Thailand closer to dictatorship than democracy.
Doesn't it make sense to want less rather than more of something that's bad for you?
Doesn't it make sense to fix things now for the future of the country in the long run?
Maybe so, but don't tell the Western media about that. The West has a thing for elections; if the votes don't ring, it doesn't swing.
Look at it this way. Every society has its piety, every nation its fascination.
The Hindus taught the world that eating meat is offensive; it's not something they are in any position to enforce or impose on others, but, please, respect it when and where you can.
Needless to say, Islam has its pieties too, and not eating pork is one of them. Forcing soldiers to handle the fat of pork used as coating bullets led to the Sepoy mutiny.
Christians have the highest respect for Jesus and the saints. If you don't agree, do so tactfully. Ditto for Judaism. If you unfairly single out or generalise about Jews, you risk running foul of heartfelt sensitivities finely-honed by centuries of anti-Semitism, brought to a horrible conclusion in the Holocaust.
Buddhism is arguably the most tolerant of the major religions, but peaceful coexistence with Buddhists is bettered by observing simple signs of decorum, taking shoes off in temples and treating Buddha statues with respect. The perfidious blast that took down the giant stone Buddhas in Bamiyam will not soon be forgotten.
The secular West is rightly proud of the advances it has made in science, and generally the march of science and growth of individualism has served to reduce dependence on mass-held superstition.
However, while some societies may be more impious than others, there's no such thing as a value-neutral society. Americans, for example are not only not free of petty pieties, but they are full of them, left, middle and centre.
If I refer to the hapless individual who was thrown into the brig and incarcerated for downloading US State Department cables on a military computer and sharing the eye-opening results with the world via Wikileaks as ''Bradley Manning'' gender-bending leftists will scream, ''How dare you say that, he is not Bradley, she is Chelsea!'' Wikipedia has had to wrestle with that.
The point is that political correctness comes at a price. If you focus on the secondary issue of gender, you miss the real miscarriage of justice that was meted out on, dare I say it, a man called Bradley Manning.
The American right has its hard-core pieties about gun rights and oil exploitation rights and other toxic tea party stuff; too much of a headache to go into here.
But what unites almost all Americans; man, woman and transgender alike is a shared piety about democracy. It's more than a system of government, it's a religion for a secular nation. It's a matter of identity. It helps justify all the unjustifiable things done around the world in the name of the US people.
It's what makes Americans American.
So should you come to the conclusion, as has Noam Chomsky in his sublime political isolation, that US democracy is a sham, don't broadcast it too loudly to red-blooded Americans, for they're liable to lose it. And you ought be careful with the British, too, junior partners in America's crusade (nope, strike that word) America's programme to make the world safe for democracy.
It's one thing to be quietly ''undemocratic'' like Saudi Arabia, which suits US and UK interests just fine, as do various tyrannies that fall under the rubric "special relationship". But to be noisily ''anti-democratic'' riles the political correctness police from the Potomac to the Thames.
That's why, when it comes to Thailand, you can depend on the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC and CNN and other US and UK media outlets to continue getting it wrong, just as they have been consistently getting it wrong all along.
They can't report on Thailand for one minute without seeing a reflection of their narcissistic democracy-loving selves.
In conclusion, if you stumble upon the insight that democracy is a flawed system, and you want to fix it, do so quietly, otherwise you are going to irk John Bull and Uncle Sam. Western critics can dish it out, criticising Thailand's sacred cows, but they get all bent out of shape when Thais criticise elections and democracy, the secular religion of populist imperialism.
Philip J Cunningham is a media researcher covering Asian politics.