We don’t need ya anymore

We sent the state into a spasm, its still not quite sure what is it that just happened and the political class is still trying to figure out if its safe to stop hiding yet. (It’s not lads.)
We did that, you did that, ‘ordinary’ people, the disorganized left, community groups, social media spread the word and the education, we did the rest. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary people an there turned out to be quite a few of us.
An we did that all by ourselves no rhetoric the struggle didn’t have to be explained back to us using a fat ass lexicon. The herd mentality our great social commentators fretted about was busy evolving into a hive mind with people educating themselves and each other. The pace at which a massive section of the population became economically, politically and most importantly media literate was euphorically fast. And terrifying to power structures all sides of the political divides, the proles, the foot soldiers are supposed to get bored and wander off. Not still be digging. So c’mon join in, being a citizen is sexy again.

We want you to stand with us, we’d be proud for anyone to stand behind a community banner. An I’m not claiming to speak for anybody but myself, that is said safe in the knowledge, that, Yes, we’d really, really like it if you joined the protest.

There’s no ‘Us’, no ‘Them’, just lots and lots of fragile, frightened an flawed human beings, ‘Tethering bulbs of dread and dream’ who know deep down in between snackin’ on gluten free, organic chocolate and apricot flavoured monetized anxiety, (the rest of us snack on silicon based anxiety), and projecting all the evils of the world onto the workin’ class or seagulls depending on the weather. Deep down we all know we can’t keep going down this path, not on an island. We already did that.

Things need to change we know this, we all know this. To meet da oul fiscal responsibilities, forget about increased spending, the state has agreed not to do that. Signed, sealed, delivered. No more money for health, education, all those homeless families, forget about them. Forget about them in the same way you forgot about those kids in a septic tank, still sealed, waiting for the people of their land to claim them, still waiting there, for justice. But forget about them kids. And the Magdalen women forget about them, or the children burnt to death because the nuns didn’t want the firemen to see the girls in their nighties and instead locked the door from the outside. People watched that happen. But don’t dwell on the past, under the carpet with you, its the Irish way. Maybe its how our national psyche can allow our political class to make blood sacrifices of the Irish people in the name of being the good child of Austerity. Or to offer ourselves up as a weapons testing zone while pleading with multinationals to provide us with jobs in exchange for our dignity.Low paid, temp and competitive so competitive we’ll even work for our dole. Dunno bout you but my national pride in this matter has been grossly overestimated.
But don’t think about that, worry about welfare fraud while the central bank burns billions, or let yourself be soothed as Enda whispers sweet unemployment statistics in your ear.Although if you include Jobsbridge and other state sponsored labour unemployment is at 21%. That’s without touching on the highest emigration rates since the famine, but then the stable Irish state has never found it difficult to find a profit in its unwanted children. Sure don’t let that lil psychosis bother ya until the hospitals start closing down and we are about to be the best little country in the world, overtaking America at spending the lowest %GDP on public services, don’t dwell on the implications, delude yourself into believing that debt burden is bearable.
Nobody tells us not to speak about these things, but old habits die hard. We are a people less than 30 years out of a theocracy prior to that it was mainly abject poverty and oppression. Italia ’90 then 18 years until 2008 when we bailed out the European banking system

Maybe if ya stopped and thought on it for a while, sat down an had a cup of tea, one of those still quiet moments. Maybe you’d start to think about who it is taking all the hits and why the state seems perfectly capable and confident in both its ability to do so without fear of reprisal from our great watchdogs of morality, the great fourth estate, if not them, then the academics, the students, the left. The left who have had since 2008 to articulate an alternative, to my untrained eye it seems maybe people are tired of waiting.The state doesn’t seem to mind bout them and it doesn’t seem to think, if it does think, it doesn’t think much of the collective moral outrage of the citizenry. Who as citizens have a collective responsibility towards each other, working together is kinda what got us this far as a species. I think this has a lot more to do with democracy and evolution than socialist day dreams.
We ain’t talking collectives here lads, we just need to change the economic model. To do that we need guts, we need the guts to trust each other, we need the guts to not let ourselves be distracted by yogurt with chocolate flakes or the latest craft beer, and just stop. Where are we going with this? Economists openly call the austerity model, and that’s all it is a way of distributing money, they openly call austerity the road to Bangladesh. It takes about 15 years but that’s where you end up. No more middle class.
Best case scenario you don’t live in the slums, not too precariously employed but that’s a whole lot of suffering to try justify that lifestyle to yourself. Particularly if it was one of those days where you stepped over people in sleeping bags and dodged beggars. That only works on an island if we agree to allow horrific things happen to our weakest members, again.

See that’s kinda part of the social contract, we have more fun and less respect and when push comes to shove you have our backs, when the final lines are being crossed you shout ‘ENOUGH!’, but there isn’t too much noise being made. Keep the head down, pay your taxes, vote, get radical an spice it up with a petition. But then Irish culture have never had much time for the person who stands up first, those person got notions, ideas above their station. Anyway the state knows best, sure hasn’t it kept us safe since 1932?

Well maybe its time to stop being so trusting of a state which has shown nothing but contempt for the citizenry. This is a state which inherited a society controlled by social shame and secrecy. A state which uses its weakest members as a form of social control, this is not confined to the working class. How many stories are there of families hanging onto their car just to keep up the image. There is some serious shame in poverty and in being Irish. Apparently its a typical post-colonial reaction, the oppressed become the oppressors, not so long ago I read an article in the Irish Times which feigned shock at ‘sounding Irish’. Wouldn’t want that now would we? A friend of mine from Glasgow told me that lot of writers took the Indy Ref as a license to be Scottish again. To be proud of their dialect, I hope we are reaching a similar point here.

So back to single mothers, you my have missed the latest announcement from the Dept of social protection (Orwell didn’t predict the future, he just worked in a propaganda department), the latest ‘Labour activation measure’ force single mothers back into the workforce once their child is seven. Seven. Sure they practically rear themselves at that age, and if they can’t they better learn coz childcare ain’t on most budgets. I wonder what kind of social problems will emerge from separating children from their wayward mothers.

The father figure of the multinational, even aping the church with the use of psychological geography, the IFSC, Tesco, they bigger dan u.

Obscenely taking over communities, massive monolithic temples to the power of the market, the ease at which all you worries can be temporarily relieved, monetized and sold back. Like sins confessed and coins in coffers singing.
Tescos or Dunnes sit at the top of our communities, sucking all the local businesses dry. Hiring large sections of the community to work for poverty wages which they have to spend in the same places who paid them the shitty wage in the first place.
These multinationals offer a clear path,to redemption, membership of the workforce, being a mother isn’t profitable and single mothers are probably a bad influence on their children.

The father figures on the other hand, wealth creators and job creators. Perfect examples in this brave new world. What is the best way to earn money in these situations? Those scamps getting into ‘lucrative’ careers in drug dealing are just doing exactly what their economic model tells them to. But you’ll still judge em an write them off as anti-social, when they are following each and every rule. Just not the respectable ones.

This government has been waging an economic war on single mothers, over 30% of children live in food poverty as in they go to bed hungry, hunger should not be a stressor in a 21st century society. Back to school allowance being cut means a lot of mothers go hungry, but they probably deserve it, fallen women that they are. You kill with economic policy, we all understand that, right? we all understand that some things just are not morally negotiable? Like a minister for social protection who opens food banks for a photo op, haven’t seen her at the closing of any. It would also have contributed to her reception in Jobstown, the centre she visited serves as a food bank during the week.

Why is this cool? As a society where is our collective moral outrage? Outrage at the constant economic attacks on the weakest members, where is the breaking point for religious scandal after religious scandal while their private hospitals enjoy a ‘parasitic relationship’ with our public hospitals? How are we not at the reparations part yet? Why are we still looking for grown ups to show us the way? Ya know we have a term for that, we call that, House Irish.

Ireland cannot pay 42% of the European banking bailout, its utter delusion.
We swapped Kings for Bishops and Bishops for Bankers.
2016 Colony2CapturedState in near century of self imposed horror.
Just don’t talk about it and don’t talk about direct provision, or that maybe being an illegitimate child of a single mother doesn’t limit you to being a shelf stacker or young offender.The state tormenting single mothers, leaving septic tanks sealed without a peep from the citizenry. Maybe that’s a sign that our thought process with some matters isn’t the healthiest.
Or we could keep the head down, just in case, the neighbours might look at us funny probably best to continue on and pretend nothing happened, keep the delusion up another few years as our island is sold off.

Or stop othering each other a lil faith in our fellow human beings, some pride in the Irish people and what we are capable of. We’ve given sitting around on this rock resenting each other a good go. If we can start seeing each other as people and equals there is very little this nation cannot achieve.
We’ve come this far and the old guard has had their fun, but their time is over now and they know it.
If we’re going to go into 2016, a century as a republic, lets celebrate because we broke down social barriers, because we ended poverty and housed the homeless. Be broke because we took in every person in need of shelter.
Lets go broke for those reasons, not to be the good child of austerity, coz yup we call dat house Irish.