YASOTHON – Long-time Thailand resident and chronic pessimist Robert Arnold celebrated his 10th consecutive year of portending the imminent doom of the country with a long, dissembling rant to no one in particular on Sunday night at his Yasothon bar. The 56-year old expatriate and owner of multiple failed small business ventures spent 45 minutes telling seven different uninterested people his various conclusions encompassing themes such as “This whole place is falling apart,” “These people have no clue how to run a country,” and “I should write a fucking book.” For the 482nd consecutive time he concluded that the nation was destined for complete economic ruin as a direct result of its citizens not heeding his freely dispensed and infallible advice.
Arnold, whose own entrepreneurial history includes three bankruptcies and a disastrous foray into the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2001, has plenty of advice for the Kingdom’s financial captains. “The taxes are way too high,” he insists, despite having avoided paying 40% of his legal obligation through the clumsy laundering and under-reporting of his own meager profits. “They make it impossible to run a business with all their dumb rules and regulations.” Arnold also criticizes the government for having allowing the baht to appreciate in 2007, which severely devalued his cash reserve of US$15,000 which he bought with baht in 2005 at the exchange rate of 41.5/1, citing at the time “next year’s collapse of this worthless currency” and “the rock-solid safety of the almighty dollar.”
Sunday’s tirade, which was alternatively directed towards two unresponsive Israeli backpackers at the bar, Arnold’s third wife Pun, a newly recruited non-English speaking bar waitress named Nong, and an unconscious Vietnam War veteran whose name could not be verified at press time, marks exactly ten entire years in which Arnold has been offering his sage observations to an unappreciative public, including 539 letters to the Bangkok Post, 129 of which have been published. Having previously blamed society’s ills on corrupt politicians, clueless bureaucrats, inferior Western culture, inferior Eastern culture, the IMF, Warren Buffett, liberal media bias, rabid soi dogs, Islamist fascism, Thaksin Shinawatra, and all Caucasian women, Arnold is proud of his role as a watchdog and seer.
“I’ve been around a long time,” he explains, “and I’ve learned a lot,” possibly referring to his associate’s degree from the Community College of Akron in 1972. “I got common sense, which these (Thai) people could use, and I make the connections that no one else sees.” The twice-divorced, bitterly unhappy American with deeply repressed maternal hostility also notes: “I really understand human nature.” The herpes-infected, serial-philandering, borderline alcoholic tax-evader also loves to quote famous authors whose books he has not actually read to illustrate his points. “Live not by lies,” he says often. “Solzhenitsyn. Goddamn right.”
Despite having been wrong about everything Thai-related since 1999, including predicting a drop in tourist arrivals following new visa restrictions, a major terrorist bombing in Nana Plaza “by the end of 2005,” an assassination within the Royal family, the “impossibility” of a coup in September 2006, and the total mechanical failure of Suvarnabhumi Airport’s runways, Arnold remains convinced in his own insight and powers of prophecy. “The economy is going to collapse,” he insisted, this time caused by “the housing bubble in Bangkok, Chinese-engineered biological warfare, and Obama’s tax plan.” Regarding previous failed predictions of economic meltdown to be caused by corruption, the coup, the 2006 election, the 2007 election, the enforcement of 2am closing times, two-tier pricing, the indoor smoking ban, and the ridiculous price of TRUEvisions cable TV, Arnold simply said, “You’ll see.”
