I'm American and there are people from all over the world casually weighing in about America on HN. That's totally OK. Let's not have a double standard and let's be free to have opinions about other peoples' royals.
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To frame things in a UK context, which seems more similar to the Thailand situation then the USA.
The monarchy is (almost) completely separate from the political system. While many people might debate the pros and cons of the Conservatives versus Labour, UKIP or liberal democrats, very few question the role of Queen Elizabeth II.
In the UK, the monarch has the the right to veto legislation passed through the parliament but this right is rarely exercised. This is quite different to the US system where the president is ultimately in charge and has to fight for re-election every few years.
It sounds like the monarchy in Thailand has strived to maintain stability for the people in spite of an unstable political environment. This might explain why the people continue to believe in the monarchy in Thailand in a way which seems alien to anyone in the USA.
False equivalence. The Thai monarchy and lèse-majesté have far less impact on the global scene than most of the things about the US about which people are weighing in. Someone being prosecuted for stepping on Thai currency is small potatoes compared to ... say, a Trump White House. Or, you know, invasions under false pretenses.
You slaughtered the equivalences no one made but failed to demonstrate your ostensible point entirely.
Please do both of us a favor and never reply to me again. Given every exchange we've ever had, it's clear we see the world from such fundamentally incompatible premises that dialog is not possible. That being the case, any further engagement is clearly meant to antagonize.
I'm not overfond of ill-considered opinions about the US expressed by those who know little of our country. But I also recognize the reality that the actions of the US are a matter of considerable concern for people who live elsewhere, because we tend to act in ways that reverberate across the planet. The same isn't really true of Thailand, so I don't think the concept of "double standard" applies here.
Why do the actions of the country in question have anything to do with it? Do we truly need affirmative action for royalty now?
No. We need to mind our business and not everyone else's. Part of that is not talking nonsense about the system of rule employed by a sovereign nation other than our own - a system of rule with which we have no experience, of which we have no understanding, and against which our national mythos gives us by default to hold a certain degree of prejudice which hampers understanding instead of aiding it.
I don't disagree but it must be noted that most HN have high level of English while I doubt all but a few that are not Thai have Thai language skills.
There are a ton of US news sources while there is less reporting on Thailand and it is hard to get nuance when you don't speak the language.
Even people who are native English speakers but are not from the US don't understand politics in the US.
No one is curtailing your right to say what you want. My original point was to educate people about how deeply Thai people feel about their King. It's not just the threat of prison time at work--it's serious business in that part of the world and if you're not a troll, you may want to play nice with people.