Ancient Grudge
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I The English language is a rented tool; this could be viewed as a problem, as the Irish elite know that they can be well understood if anyone elsewhere is paying any attention. In fact they have turned this situation into an opportunity, acting at all times to appease the imagined observer in London, New…
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IV The differences between Irish and Scottish attitudes to the Union are evident in many ways, but it is a source of constant disappointment to the present writer that Scottish politics has rejected any and every means available to an anticolonial movement to succeed in its aims. Why not take the Irish case as a…
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I One of the greatest idiocies of the Late Capitalist democratic-imperialist state is that there can be such a thing as an illegal referendum, when it comes to nations within the state wanting to leave it. It seems to the present correspondent that even in an authoritarian state, it would be foolish for such a…
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Let us listen in, learn something of Imperialism, since the language allows it. The cleverest people in London discuss the world amongst themselves. Of course I don’t like nationalism, she says, in reference to Scotland; the concept of Britain, England’s drag name, allows her to live as if she is happily of no nation at…
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Macdara’s readers can look forward to future letters that touch on Sceilg Mhichíl and the Giant’s Causeway. Add in Brú na Bóinne and that is our three World Heritage Sites listed out. Three. No Glendalough, no Georgian Dublin, no Burren, no Rock of Cashel. These are all on the Tentative list, with others, and have…
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We witnessed in 2016 a commemoration of the Easter Rising and the Proclamation of the Republic; other terms were used, certain old wars being continued into the Present with words in place of arms. An extraordinary poster in a prominent site in Dublin commemorated four people for the occasion, Henry Grattan, Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart…
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Macdara assumes that everyone litigates repeatedly certain arguments that they may once have had, or that they wish to have had. Now that he has his own small corner of the Internet within which to hold forth, Macdara asks the reader to bear with him while he returns to a repugnant episode from the Brexit…
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A young man from Birmingham presents a podcast about Conspiracy and Racism in his city. There is a little too much about the young man included, for Macdara’s tastes; the present writer has less appetite for impulsive twenty-something Brummies than Serial’s American producers do. But Hamza Syed is certainly likeable, and on the right side;…
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With this, your correspondent introduces a new category: Ancient Grudge, whereby he complains about something from the past that has pissed him off enough that he has had to write about it to get it out of his system. Macdara has long been fascinated by the functioning of groups, and in particular the tendency of…