My piece for Thai Enquirer:
On July 19, in one corner of Thai Twitter, a question was posed. “Do your family members have differing political perspectives? And if so, how do you live together?”
Never mention politics at the Thanksgiving dinner; so goes the timeless American wisdom.
It appears that many young Thais follow the same advice. “All my family members are salim,” one complained, “except for me and my sibling. We don’t talk about politics because we don’t want to fight.”
Another said, “I tried to explain my political views to my parents until they understood, but it didn’t work as we just ended up fighting. They said, ‘what would children know’?”
Families refusing to talk about politics is likely a widespread phenomenon. The political generational gap is not just a figment of the imagination, or a hasty conclusion drawn from too small a sample size. Indeed, age may not be, to an even deeper extent than region or class, a dividing political factor.
Ken Mathis Lohatepanont 
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