Like a nightmarish deja vu, we customers were told to immediately leave the True Coffee shop at Siam Square at 3.25pm yesterday.

It was an unusual closing time but a staffer told me that the government had ordered them to shut down because "a [military] dispersal of the [red-shirt] crowd will soon" take place.

For those of us and foreigners who still cling to the myth that Thais are non-violent - cling no further.

The gruesome killing of 25 people on April 10 as a result of a night-time military crackdown on the red-shirt protesters says a lot about how we value life and how peaceful we are. This was followed by two more skirmishes and a few more deaths.

The red shirts did not appear to be disturbed by the deaths of soldiers, and the government, the prime minister included, did not seem to be remorseful about the deaths of red-shirt protesters.

Now, as I type these words, violence is threatening to engulf downtown Bangkok anew after the latest "reconciliation plan" appeared to sink.

For violence to become acceptable, people have to project a sense of "otherness" onto the identity of their opponents. Once they are no longer "one of us", they became fair game for dehumanisation, abuse, violence and even killing.

Over the past two months, I have listened to many dehumanising speeches from both sides. "The government is tyrannical", they are the "other", the so-called corrupt old bureaucratic-aristocratic elite who must be overthrown and defeated.

On the other hand, the red shirts are accused by their opponents of being "terrorists", "anti-monarchists", "a paid mob", "Thaksin's minions" who must be crushed by force. Some mainstream media have no qualms calling for the "killing" of red-shirt protesters by military means, claiming it is "necessary" and "just".

Mutual trust, if there was any, has been broken a long time ago, through years of mutual propaganda and demonisation. Many red shirts think Abhisit is a serial liar - as well as a serial killer. The government thinks ordinary red shirts are "victims", shuts down their media and keeps sending SMS messages urging them to return home.

Killings have been sanitised by the government's newly coined euphemism of "requesting for a return of [public] space", which means nothing but the use of excessive force to crack down on protesters even at night - with armoured vehicles rolling out and heavy artillery flaunted and real bullets used.

The so-called "men in black" who joined the melee, believed by some red shirts to be on their side, engaged in unlicensed killings of soldiers - and some red shirts have no problem with that and laud them as their "protectors".

Now, both sides don't appear to be bothered about more bloodshed.

Thais may superficially appear to be "non-violent" but their education and culture does not equip them well to deal with stark differences in perspectives. To think differently on some issue is to commit a crime and become an enemy. This dichotomy in thinking manifests itself in many ways - you are either with the reds or with the other camp, you are either royalist or anti-monarchist, and so on.

When the veneer and myth of Thai smiles and non-violent nature are corroded by virulent disagreement, then violence and even killings creep in. Observe our daily tabloids' reports on a gruesome killing by a jealous husband or wife, or those who ended up killed as a result of an accidental quarrel stemming from a minor and otherwise inconsequential issue at a pub, and the many more ways that differences are settled violently in Thailand, then think again about the myth of Thais being peaceful and full of smiles.

No solution is possible until Thais start introspecting their violence-prone nature and debunk the very myth that makes us think that we are peaceful by nature.