Bangkok streets erupt in violence – is nowhere safe?

It’s hard to imagine violence on the streets of Bangkok. Like Tokyo, New York and so many other civilized world cities, Bangkok usually enjoys a steady stream of normalcy. As a tourist, I felt as comfortable in Thailand as I do walking down my hometown street in Minneapolis. Maybe even more so.

So I was rather shocked to hear about what is going down in that vibrant Asian city, a place where one-dollar street pad thai tastes better than 20 dollar restaurant pad thai, where you can get a tour guide and ride around the city for less than 10 dollars (scam artists notwithstanding) and walk down the streets so completely unnoticed that you almost wish for a lewd cat-call. Violence in Bangkok? Nuh uh…

Of course I shouldn’t be surprised. Not when in America, the country of my birth (and which I claim is such a civilized nation), people can be shot down in the middle of their daily day at immigration centers, retirement homes, schools and even churches. Is absolutely nothing sacred anymore? America, the world… I’m disgusted.

Is it the media’s fault or our fault? I’d side with the latter – that the human race has created a monster: itself. The worst part is, I can’t think of an era of calm, a time when there wasn’t violence, war, death and destruction going on somewhere on Earth. Even with our big complex brains, are humans just destined to mess it all up?