Ireland, as it heads hurtling into the 21st century has learned little since it hurtled into the dawn of the 20th century. But the one thing that it has learnt better than most is to admit nothing, say nothing and in time it will all go away. At least that's the theory. For the most part it has worked in full or in part where at least the passing of time would hopefully have slightly diminished the horror of its crimes. We have to look no further than the Magdalene laundries and the Industrial/institutions that were were seeded and birthed from the collusion of the Catholic Church and the Irish government to see how this might have worked. And work it did: for 75 years of its 93 year history as a republic.
Then 800 babies and several unmarried mothers turned up in just one abandoned mass grave in Tuam County Galway, that had lain there unmourned, unmarked, unloved and almost undiscovered and began to tell their tale. Even this did not move the government in this year one teary eyed bit. It took the rest of the world to do that: to shed those tears, to give voice to the voiceless and give shame to the otherwise shameless. Yet Ireland had been telling the world for years that it lived in a democracy. Everyone believed them way back then except the Irish, and now it is the other way round. We live only in the shadow of democracy here today.
The lessons learned in the halcyon days of Church power and the craven kneeling electorate is to hold the imagined moral ground, to repeat a lie often enough that it can feed easily the needy masses. From those lessons, as the Church ebbed back into the background, the new political players came into focus wearing different robes. The rules though remained the same.
This year is not revealing in any way except for the question what is anyone going to do about it. They tell us things are getting better. Yes they are, for a chosen few.
For most of the rest of us, mortgage repossessions are up, migration of our young is barely down from last year, the massaged figures for the unemployed tells its own lie. We have a government elected on the promise of reform and change that changed nothing as we squirm under the payload of the debt that incurred because of its institutional corruption. That institutional corruption is more firmly entrenched than ever.
The police write their own rules now, encouraged by the fact that no one has been held accountable yet, so it is nothing to see here, move on. So much for whistleblowers stripped of their whistle. The Gardai are effectively above the law, for now.
Unless you live on a mountain in a cabin without electricity and surrounded only by sheep, then this week of the ‘usual passing of the buck’ entrenched with its natural unaccountability, will leave you jaded and cynical and bury your optimism for any person of moral character to step up to the plate. Time, and its healing and fading memories is what this government is shopping for. And they may just get it.
As we move ever closer to an election, to the few minutes when you think might have a choice, step back for a long minute before you cast your vote. Ask yourself how much more can you take and will your children have a future here. Are the tumbleweeds gathering on the edge of your village, your world. Just as all life is local, when a locality cannot even field a football team because most of them have already left these shores is a good hint that all is not well in the garden. Keep this in mind and this recent past for without these reminders we will have little hope there is a future starting with our families.
Barry Clifford
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