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 closed groups to accept the worst, most entropic characteristics from those of long standing within the group. It is hard to think of a better example of this occurrence than what we see daily from the media, wherein the permanent imperative to generate content provides nice dry kindling to the bonfire of Idiocy that is the newsroom.
To choose a single example: in 2012, a rightwing extremist standing for election in Greece appeared on television alongside two leftist women, whom he attacked; a hack at the Irish Times after the election took place referred disapprovingly to the “three protagonists from the dreadful television punch-up which marred the Greek election campaign [who] are now sitting in parliament together”. Now since these women are part of the “worrying number of extremists of all hues”, this horrible man feels comfortable referring to them—the victims, remember, of assault—as protagonists in the punch-up. Remember, women, if you are attacked, and you fulfil certain criteria, such as being from outside the neoliberal right, then you are a protagonist together with your attacker: a single category for you both—equality at last!
Ireland, this man writes, “is in a much stronger position to resist the blandishments of extremists who blame foreigners for our woes and promise instant solutions”. This may be an attempt at distinguishing between the Right (anti-foreigner) and the Left (people who want solutions, and want to move quickly). But these different groups have been put into a single category of extremists who want both of those things (see the heavy lifting accomplished by that “and”). This man’s foray into Greece is of course entirely driven by a need to urge the rightwing Irish government to stick to its plans, not to mention the urge to tell the people to shut the fuck up. The dreadful headline seems like something Macdara would write as satire, combining a lazy Yeats quote with something too distracting in its disciplinary purpose to be described accurately as Orwellian: “Things fall apart but Coalition has the centre to hold”. Something something Yeats, FALL IN LINE PLEBS.
This article annoyed the present writer enough that he can recall his disgust more than a decade later. We read of: moral authority, fundamental developments, careful pondering, salutary examples (which is what Greece is for Ireland), crisis of confidence, passionate intensity (of those opposed to the centre; another lazy Yeats reference), critical phase, overwhelming mandate, (a surprisingly) long honeymoon, path to recovery, confident and upbeat leader, denigrators reemerge, old mantras, unpalatable decisions, reasonable support, continued protection (of secure workers) leading to public indignation, serious reform (of social welfare, naturally, plus the “introduction of labour activation measures that have been so successful in Germany and Scandinavia”—was it obvious in 2012 what this meant?), moral authority (still, or again), nerve, morass, pensions, centre ground, road to recovery, Cuts. All this in one article. You can tell how desperate the situation was in the country that this furious man was forced to squeeze so many hackneyed slogans into a single article the length of this piece. The present writer imagines that the hack was pleading to be allowed an article every day at the time and was assured by his editors that one powerful article a week would get the job done. Give it everything, Stephen, kick them all down.
One sentence will suffice to finish off with this muck: “While huge errors were made during the Celtic Tiger years, and the political system could certainly do with some reform, it is not systemically corrupt, even if some critics try to portray it that way for their own ends.”
What do people like this clown imagine they are doing? Macdara very much gets the impression that he sees himself as an Unacknowledged Legislator despairing of the will of the rightwingers around him, gone soft from listening to the begrudgers. What amount of class warfare would keep a man like this happy? Is there any crime against the people that he would not say is necessary, even if regrettable? It would not be a surprise to see him complain about restive natives; he may hope for the return of colonial rule, after all they were the chaps who really knew how to do what needed to be done. Come back, Trevelyan!
It seems this man was born to a newspaper editor, with a brother who is the editor of another paper. Macdara imagines that it is with pride that this despicable character would agree with the present writer’s supposition that it is hard to think of a better representative than him of Official Ireland.