When your main tool is a hammer, the cliche notes well, then after a while, every problem looks like a nail. The general prime minister has wielded a totally personal, custom-made, gold-plated hammer for the past four years, and even has given it a cute nickname.
His "Section Forty-Four Hammer" is so powerful that it can be used for good or for evil.
Last week, the general prime minister saw nails sticking up all over the place. He saw a plea by Titus Suksaard, head of the Rubber Authority of Thailand, to please use Section 44 for good and help raise the price that the subsidy pays for rubber.
When Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha perceives a problem, his first reaction now is to reach for the much-used Section 44, and is being accused of acting first, and asking questions never.
So Gen Prayut used Section 44 and Bam! problem solved. He fired Mr Titus and that stopped requests for money.
He heard that a gaggle of important, failing businessmen were about to go broke over their daft decisions to buy digital TV licences at impossible-to-pay prices so Bam! no problem. Take 120 billion baht or so from taxpayers (and rubber farmers' subsidies) and give it to the wealthy and respected business operators. People don't need it, especially when businesses need subsidies.
And Bam! while you're at it, subsidise two of the three biggest mobile phone companies who also made poor business decisions to buy 4G licences they knew at the time they couldn't, and now can't, pay for.
This double Bam! is exquisitely useful. Not only do VIBs owe massive favours to the general prime minister for his extra-legal money toss, the Very Important Businessmen happen to own media companies that can (and will) influence public opinion.
Remember when Voldemort controlled government, albeit with votes instead of a golden hammer? And reduced the licence fees of his excellent iTV news station and turned it into a Thai Rak Thai propaganda agency as his popularity faded?
Of course the benevolent Minister of Truth would not do that now. Would he? Nah, probably just a scary conspiracy theory. Still, having 24 TV stations and two of the three phone companies owing you favours is not a bad thing.
Then, because bad things always come in threes, Bam! and the eternal human smiley, Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, is sledge-hammered from the Election Commission. Said the hammer-wielding Gen Prayut, "He was creating confusion" over the date of the 2015 election. Responsible officials shouldn't cause confusion over an election date like that. The public might misunderstand when the election will be held.
Mr Somchai is one of The Disillusioned. From May 22, 2014, he was an unabashed friend and bouncy booster of the coup, the regime, Section 44 and all of it. One cannot be neutral over political issues, he said honestly.
Everything began to change when the junta announced that new slogan, "set-zero", previewing the firing of all EC members. Suddenly Mr Somchai was a crippled canvasback, a duck lamer than a Carrot Top joke.
Mr Somchai's bias shifted. He applied to be the next head of the EC. He openly predicted election dates and ever-so-gently mocked the general prime minister's never-ending, confusing delays. And now he has gone full anti-junta.
On Friday he noted that
1. The government has no legal right to set an election date. (Analysis: True. The constitution clearly states this.) A prime minister, elected or from behind guns, can call an election, but only the Election Commission has the right to set the date of the vote.
2. This particular general prime minister has acted irrationally by sticking his nose into the affairs of a constitutionally independent body. Now, foreigners won't respect any election conducted while the NCPO is in power, and foreign governments could withhold their congratulations.
To his everlasting credit and claim of honesty, the general prime minister never promised to wield the Section 44 hammer sparingly or even carefully - or even thoughtfully. Like a carpenter uses his hammer, say. And Gen Prayut most definitely never assured the country he would ever be accountable for his actions.
Being accountable means fearing public opinion. And also fearing, as Nitirat's outspoken Worachet Pakeerut stated, public action like Black May, 1992, a popular uprising against a single unpopular decision by unaccountable Gen Suchinda Krapayoon. As soon as he uttered that, the army told Mr Worachet to shut up about it.
Political science texts specify that the opposite of "rule of law" -- constitutional supremacy, with laws that apply to everyone equally -- is the "rule of power", where the executive branch fills in a blank cheque on which laws apply to whom, and when.
More simply, the opposite of the rule of law is the law of rules enforced capriciously, but at gunpoint.
Or under the face of a hammer.