isn't it funny, and sad too?

“Isn’t it funny and sad too?”

“Romantic Ireland is dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave” – W.B. Yeats, “September 1913.”

“The valiant effort and the martyrdoms that followed it finally awoke the sleeping spirit of Ireland” – Michael Collins, on the 1916 rising.

Lots of things are funny, and sad too if you think about it.
Like here’s a good one, isn’t it funny, and sad too? How a small nation fought for 800 years against British imperialism and then finally bankrupted itself and sold itself to the EU and IMF… Well when Patrick Pearse, Éamon De Valera, James Connolly and the other national hero’s of the failed 1916 “blood sacrifice” (revolt) attempted to end British rule in the 32 counties and declare a republic in Easter week of 1916, I’m sure that was the last thing they thought Ireland would end up doing if and when it liberated itself, sadly they were to be proven wrong.


Ireland for years before the British conquest and plantations and Cromwell and the famine of the 1840’s was actually moderately advanced for a state. It was an absolute monarch system; Ireland grew to be romantic with fairy tales and an interesting and complex mythological culture. Skip forward to the 6th of December 1921, Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and other Irish republican nationalists sign the “Anglo-Irish treaty” which makes 26 counties out of the 32 in Ireland a free-state. Now fast-forward to 1937, Éamon De Valera, An Taoiseach of Ireland gives Ireland it’s own constitution renaming “The Irish Free-state” simply “Ireland.” Skip forward now to 2nd of December 1939, Éamon De Valera calls an emergency meeting of the Dail, to declare that Ireland will remain neutral in the impending war (WWII) virtually assuring that Ireland becomes a 26 county sovereign state free from outside standards. ast-forward again to 1949, the first interparty government headed by John Costello declares Ireland an “official” “Republic” under the “Republic of Ireland act.” And finally skip forward to November of 2010, Ireland (virtually) sells it’s economy to the EU, IMF and partly to our old friend Great Britain, speaking in the vernacular of our new Lords and Ladies from London “one must wonder why it all went so terribly wrong.”


Would W.B. Yeats, Michael Collins, Grace O’Malley or any other Irish persona recognize the land we call “Ireland” today? Or would they see a state who was so desperate to save a failed economic philosophy that it would make a Faustian like deal with the IMF and Co? The truth is how much of a Bourgarie class have we become who are only interested in saving just like Yeats warns off in “September 1913.”



The truth is, they would not recognize the Republic as it stands presently in time.
We have become ghosts of a nation. We have sold ourselves to foreign donors long before the “IMF crisis” No we killed our Republic when we granted the EU parliament full control over us or at least the opportunity to gain full control over us with the “Lisbon treaty.” After it was declared that Ireland was officially in a resection in late 2008, a wave of terror gripped the country, we forgot about Ireland, Cathleen Ni Holien herself, forgot that other countries in parts of Africa were much worse off then us, panicked and in despair turned to Fianna Fail’s shallow promises that all would get better if we granted the EU parliament greater powers. Which we did when we were tricked into voting “yes” to Lisbon after rejecting it the first time.

Sense then Fianna Fail has created “NAMA” which has been a complete disaster and the Irish taxpayer now owes at least 40 billion altogether to the failed banks of AIB and BOI who got us into this collapse. In the last week Finna Fail have tried to have both sides of the cake they’ve insisted we are still a sovereign nation and yet Brian Lenihan later said every time you go for a lone, you lose a little bit of your independence.” Isn’t that funny? And I guess if you want to stretch it a little sad too… Sad that Finna Fail feel they have to desperately lie about any basic policy they make.

Things came to ahead on Monday when John Gormelly’s “Green party” did something healthy for once and announced their withdrawal from government although it appears they also want the other side of the cake as they say they will support Finna Fail’s passing of the budget on 7th of December 2010. – A budget which deputies Éamon Gilmore and Enda Kenney have made perfectly clear they can’t accept because both their respective parties have not been permitted to discuss it or view any of its content, which raises the question how will Finna Fail gain enough support to pass it with at least two independents so far saying they will not support it and they’ll hardly find sullus in Sinn Féin as an ally. Today on the 25th of November, the ‘November criminal’s’ got it wrong again as Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív (a descendent of Éamon De Valera) has admitted that his Department overpaid customers by at least €65 million last year. – In a time when Ireland apparently has “no money” we can at least play detectives now and find out where the money has gone, most of it to an elite of bankers and paying 65 million in social-protection is a farce which surely has made the country greener (and by that I mean sick).

But there is another problem which is eating Ireland, it’s not the politicians, nor the IMF nor the budget that British chancellor George Osborn knows more about then the average Irish citizen. The problem is the system itself, when the tiger was slinking around with plenty of milk to feed it people only wanted the milk, they simply craved more and more until inevitably the milk spilled. Capitalism was a drug for many Irish families during the “boom” but drugs usually have a very negative defect to them (e.g. they kill you!)
And the drug of free-market, (or at least relatively free here) capitalism is beginning to kill us. Yes that’s right; greed and the free-market system have driven Cathleen Ni Houllen from her four green fields or at least three which she won after 1921. I’m not advocating a Marxist revolution or a socialist burrocray (because that would be just as bad as the failed free-marketing we’ve been trying) but something ‘new’ has to come along before we forget that we are Irish, or more correctly speaking, fully forget that we are Irish.


Isn’t it funny, but sad too? How 53% of the population still want Ireland to be ruled by the politicians (that includes opposition leaders), or is this sad? The 53% who indicated according to Pat Kenney’s the “frontline” they’d still like to be ruled by Irish politicians instead of the IMF these 53% still it seems have some national sentiment left over, while the 47% who want the IMF to take us over obviously belong to those described above in the years of the eye of the tiger when they still felt like kings of the fight, the type who want the money and all the milk, and who don’t care who rules Ireland or yet alone what Ireland is as long as it goes back to having full nonstop free market glory times.
They’re the ones who are slowly forgetting the cultural revival attempts of Yeats and the sacrifice Pearse, Connolly and the other 1916 leaders had to valiantly make. They along with the government of this nation, despise the nation, they are seemingly indifferent or against the republic. I’m not trying to suggest that we should declare war on the 47% who want the IMF to rule us, but I do feel a ‘second republic’ should be declared based on Pearce’s declaration of Easter Monday, 1916…Except this time it should be brought about through perhaps peaceful legislation not terror campaign like we saw in the North, when Irish nationalists degraded themselves by hiding behind the pseudo-nationalist “provisional IRA.”

Should we not as a nation, focus more on the positive things about Irish literature, cinema, history etc, etc, we have had writers like Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Bram Stoker and yet today, it seems more about the people you know and the standard you are at financially in the constantly globalist economy. Our culture bends more towards America now and even to England, while I respect their cultures, the fact that a majority of programs on TV are American says a lot.
Isn’t it sad, and funny too that for a lot of Irish people the name J.F.K means more then Hugh O’Neill, Robert Emmet or Grace O’Malley?

To reiterate what was said earlier isn’t it funny and sad too? That after 800 years of poverty at the hands of a foreign government we are now subjecting ourselves to poverty, we’ve let globalism take the country for a ride, a very long ride in which it is essay to crash while riding. Isn’t it funny, and also sad? That after the good Friday agreement of 1998 there was a (small) possibility of a united Ireland, but now thanks to our apathy towards the North, that small window is gone forever, because we shunned the North after the agreement, we had become to rich ourselves to care for it and now we are back at the doorstep of the UK begging for a loan to help bailout two banks who represent the degraded capitalist system in Ireland.


Isn’t it funny, and sad too? That America the country with the least respect for other countries independence or pride encourages large bursts of nationalism (or almost racial-nationalism in some parts of the country) in it’s populace, and yet a small much more modest state like Ireland has shot it’s national identity and economy in the foot. It does not matter now if Brian Cowen goes and dissolves the Dail and a new Fine Gael/Labour government is swarm in. Even Sinn Féin at this stage would be forced, if they were in the front seat, to sell Ireland to the IMF, to abandon any identity we had and to make us a shell of a nation….My question is will we ever be in the words of Winston Churchill “ a nation once again” ?

And finally closing I want to point out, that we as a nation are not better, but we are no worse then any other nation on earth. When I attacked America above, I did not mean to insinuate that Irish people are superior to Americans but it was more an attack on their government – however that is a different story. Globalism has a positive side, that we are respecting eachother as human begins and understanding that other countries aren’t u unbelievably different, but is it not also important to keep a nations culture and pride to at least some extent? Surely the way forward is not a fully integrated world nor a fully divided world but, a world with sovereign governments and cultures who live in peaceful and respectful tolerance of eachother. We can appreciate and even participate in each other’s cultures and should not sink to the level of nationalism displayed by the Nazis, however let’s keep our own nation alive, let’s again to quote Churchill be “a nation once again.”