Ireland Will Rise from the Ashes

This post is going to make a hypocrite of me. Last night I didn’t just watch the news, I watched Prime Time. The sheer scale of the nation’s financial crisis drew me in the way spinach does Popeye. With one exception: the news’s effect on my physical state was more shock than strength-enhancing. Wow, as Harry said to Marv in Home Alone when the ceiling fell through, what a hole.

I won’t go into how the presence of the IMF and the European Central Bank is going to erode our sovereignty. Or how debt forgiveness laws in our country are archaic, or how the next budget will likely reveal a plan that trumpets bleeding money into flailing banks over encouraging economic growth. I won’t go into it because everyone everywhere is going into it more than most of us can stomach. And personally, I feel that economists are really the only people who are qualified to gauge the outcome. Not politicians with dubious credentials or journalists with egos, and certainly not me - however accurate I may think my ill-supported guesstulations are.

Why, oh why, I ask myself, isn’t there a system in place that sees to it that only the most qualified - and not the most charming and manipulative - sit in positions of major importance? Doesn’t it seem like a no-brainer? How did we not see the importance of brainpower? There is a difference - a major one - between intelligence and cunning, the latter being the prized quality of the modern-day politician. The good news: we now clearly see the Emperor is naked.

Anyway, I digress. I’ll give my positive twist; my entirely subjective, if flaky, opinion on how the situation may actually turn in our favour.

For one thing: the truth is about to out. No longer will the Irish people be lured by false promises. No longer will we be hoodwinked by cunning spin. The bamboozling is over. The game is up. There is going to be major systemic change in this country. We may even veer towards total social equality, which was, let us remember, the dream of the patriots who began again our country's journey to independence in 1916. Funny that it was Fianna Fail that quashed their dreams, too.


 How could we not change to socially conscious government now we’ve seen what money-obsessed neo-liberal ideologues are capable of? Possibly, and this is wildly optimistic, we may even change our views on how Government itself is structured. Maybe we'll see through the whole power myth and realize that we alone are our masters. These are exciting times, no doubting it.

We’re at a crossroads. We have decisions to make - even though it may take a few years before we’re totally free to implement them. I believe in evolution and I believe in Ireland. Mostly, though, I believe in the people of Ireland.

We will rise again. We don't need to wear ourselves down with anger or violence or upheaval. We need to get wise. 

Henry Ford said: “Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.”

I agree. I am in no way undermining the stress families are under when I say that. Our system has failed us spectacularly and I have nothing but compassion for those who have been forced to bear the brunt of it.

Let us never let it happen to us again.There is no greater teacher than suffering.