Archives for posts with tag: voting

Anticipating the aftermath

November 8, 2016 //

This election has been the most amazing one in my lifetime. From day one, the Trump campaign has been extraordinary, with regular candidates tossed aside like bowling pegs, one after the other. I do not yet know the outcome of today’s election, but I’m hoping fervently that Hillary makes it across the finish line today – finally stopping this runaway dumpster truck from seizing the highest office in America.

Normally, the dissection of a political battle involves picking through what the winning candidate did right and what the losing candidate did wrong. Should Clinton win, the story should be about how she fought an effective media battle, how she decisively won the debates, how she courted celebrities and rock stars, fought a well-financed ground war and made effective use of analytics. It should be about the long succession of Trump scandals, fiascos and unforced errors, from the Khans to Pussygate, to his atrocious debate performances; his alienation of Latinos, African Americans, women and Muslims; his unedifying spats with his fellow Republican politicians. In ordinary times, you could write a story of these last few months in terms of what was done right by Hillary and wrong by Trump. But these are not ordinary times. The real story of this campaign is how, despite all the errors and disasters, Trump remained in contention and how seemingly smaller setbacks and mistakes sent Clinton’s campaign into a nosedive. Trump survived a video laying his misogyny bare for all to see. He survived a leak which suggested that he paid no tax for decades.  He survived, despite being called out on lie, after lie, after lie. Any one of these should have been enough to put paid to his political aspirations. And yet, when Clinton suffered a bout of pneumonia, or called his supporters ‘deplorable’, or had the FBI resurrect the email investigation, she quickly found herself on the back foot, fighting a desperate battle to maintain her lead.

The story of this election was how, among a large number of supporters, Trump was treated like a demigod, while Clinton was treated with extreme scepticism, bordering on disgust. Trump effectively used hatred, anger and his charisma to marshall powerful forces in his favour, sending out a clear signal that America is extremely vulnerable to demagoguery. How the country recovers from this frightening state of affairs will be a whole other story.

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Categories opinions, politics

A note to the next generation.

November 27, 2015 //

I had a brief chat with my son this evening. He told me that there was some kind of initiative going on where kids were going to learn politics as part of their final year exams. At first I thought it was a dumb idea. Surely, kids could learn about that by picking up a newspaper or watching the news on TV?

But when I thought about it some more, I changed my mind. And it’s not just because of the obvious question: I mean, what kid reads newspapers or watches TV news these days?

Here’s the real problem: our generation and the generation before us have made a complete balls of looking after the world. We have all these really serious issues, like climate change, poverty, inequality, radicalisation, racism, sexism, terrorism, access to medicines and drinking water, overuse of antibiotics, biodiversity decline and ocean acidification, to name but a few. Huge problems. And who have we chosen to solve these problems for us? In the main, a bunch of space cadets.

Our generations, when given a chance, have blown it, choosing instead to elect populist dickheads again and again and again and yet again. Instead of electing someone who might know a thing or two about managing complex problems, we’ve gone repeatedly for the political equivalent of the drug pusher. Yeah man, Pop this Pill and All your Worries will be Gone. The Problem is Not You; It’s Them.

I despair for the future if our kids grow up with no interest in politics, because we’ve left their generation in the invidious position of having to clean up after us. They are the ones who’ll be left with no fish in the seas. They are the people who’ll need to deal with all the carbon dioxide in the air and the oceans. They are the ones who will need to tackle youth unemployment and unrest and desperate social inequality. And all because the incompetents we elected did precisely nothing about it when they had the chance to. In fact, they did worse than nothing: they made these bad situations even more abysmal than they were.

If the next generation grow up in our footsteps, apathetic about the world they live in, they won’t even have the language to tackle the problems we’ve left them with. Instead, if they vote at all, they’ll be left voting for blowhards in the footsteps of Berlusconi and Trump, only because nobody in their right minds would enter politics in a fit. Imagine this: George W Bush is now considered by many commentators to be a moderate. A moderate. My god.

I have one caveat about giving the next generation a sense of political awareness. If they ever realise what our lot did on our watch, they’ll immediately have us all locked up. But then again, it’s nothing more than we deserve.

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Categories opinions, politics

Why I am voting Yes.

May 12, 2015 //

It all comes down to this. Do I want to live in a country that is accepting of people at a fundamental level, or would I prefer a place that is happy to continue a historical tradition of intolerance for those people who don’t quite fit?

For decades, Ireland was a country blemished by unhealthy attitudes towards those who couldn’t live up to standards that a comfortable majority had set for themselves. For those who did not conform, or could not do so, the realities of life were quite incredible. Wider society treated them with contempt – the orphaned, the unmarried mothers, the mentally ill, the sexual misfits – for them, our country was a barely more than a prison. Little wonder that many took the boat as soon as they had half a chance. Maybe it was the Famine that made us like this, or the Catholic Church, or the excessive nationalism of our country’s early years – whatever the reason, our recent history is obscured by shadows and skeletons.

This is not the Ireland I see around me today. Despite the trauma of our past, my gut tells me that we have grown as a nation. I like to think that our country has gone a long way to accept difference, whether that be religious, cultural, national, mental, racial or sexual. There is much humour, much love and much intelligence in our culture. We aspire to a fairer society that treats everyone as equals. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a sense that I should be proud of this little nation. Hopefully, this impression can be copper-fastened on May 22nd.

If the country votes Yes, we will be the first country on the planet to give gay people the right to marry by popular mandate. It will send a message to the world that is much wider than the issue at hand. It will tell everyone that we really are a nation of a hundred thousand welcomes, and that’s no bad thing.

In opposition to this notion are people whose idea of a future Ireland is also much wider than the issue at hand. To them, extending marriage to gay people is just one more step in the secularisation of Irish society. Sure, they use fancy words and nuanced rhetoric, but I remember well the divorce and abortion referendums of the 1980’s and 1990’s, and I can tell you that their approach is always the same. It’s all just a big smokescreen, designed primarily to inject fear and suspicion into middle Ireland. It’s progress they are against and they will fight with tooth and nail every attempt to introduce positive changes to our society. Why else would they mount such implacable opposition to a legal change that will affect such a small number of people in our country?

I want Ireland to be open, accepting society that embraces change and difference. A positive outcome will be a massive step along the way. I am voting Yes.

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Categories opinions

The Real Marriage Referendum Challenge

February 28, 2015 //
via GraphJam

via GraphJam

Over the past month, media of all hues has been awash with commentary on the upcoming Marriage Referendum. By and large, it’s been a one sided debate. Most commentators I have seen are firmly pro-marriage equality. They are facing off against a much smaller No campaign dominated, in the main, by oddballs.

The rhetoric of the No campaigners is dominated by conservative religious doctrines and anti-gay fear mongering that would seem more at home in the 1970’s. With their talk of cancer rates, marrying your granny and allowing homosexuals to marry (so long as it’s the opposite sex) the only good they are doing is to expose themselves as bigots. They do no justice to their cause. Ironically, they may even be recruiting sergeants to the Yes camp – forcing people who would not ordinarily vote to cast their ballots.

In my opinion, the crank commentators are not the problem. I expect that the referendum outcome will be a solid Yes, however I also suspect that somewhere between 25% and 35% of the population will vote No – a depressingly high statistic given the paucity of charisma and rational arguments from the anti-amendment side.

No, the real battle is not against the extremists. The group the Yes campaign need to pay most attention to is the unaffected, the smug and the unconcerned.

Put it this way: there are still a lot of people in Ireland who are not knowingly familiar with LGBT people. Where they have gay friends, they may not be aware they are gay. To them, homosexual issues have no real relevance to their lives. Their views on homosexuality will, of course, depend on the person, but in many cases I suspect it may be informed by nothing more than lazy prejudices – that two men kissing is ‘yucky’, or that homosexual sex is gross, or we didn’t have any of that when we were growing up, or something of that ilk. And that’s about as much thought as they will have put into these issues. Because of the lives they lead and the friendship networks they have, marriage equality is a non-issue.

I suspect this is quite a large cohort of people. They will go to the polls and vote No, not because the Catholic bishops told them to, or because the Iona Institute had some fantastically compelling arguments, but because they would prefer their world to stay the same.

The real battle is against the smug. It will be a difficult job to change many of these mindsets in the run up to the vote, but appealing towards greater acceptance of different walks of life will help. A positive approach that promotes tolerance and common justice may be more persuasive than constantly chasing the extremists around the pages of social media.

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Categories opinions

Today is voting day

February 25, 2011 //

If you would like to vote someone in, vote for them.

If you would not like someone in, vote for anybody but them.

If you don’t want any of them in, and you are not considering voting at all, why didn’t you run for parliament yourself then?

Just remember, if you don’t vote, then you don’t get to complain about the next government because you, by your inaction, helped to put them there.

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Categories Uncategorized
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