tag: President



3
Jun 2017

Nostalgic for Ronnie

When I was a boy, a disillusioned America, motivated by nostalgia, elected a faded Hollywood movie star.

Baby-boomers were a mess. Vietnam and Watergate had kicked the living crap out of them just when the 60s had got them all high and hopeful. It was one of the great cultural betrayals of this or any other era… the sheer size of the promise that was broken… but go read Burroughs or Pynchon or Thompson about that. Point is, by 1980 mainstream American culture was in crisis. After everything they’d been through, the boomers suddenly found themselves dealing with the weakness and mortality of their parents. The world wasn’t what they’d been led to believe, and the people to whom they once turned to make sense of things were themselves looking frail and terrifyingly uncertain — or worse, they were quietly abandoning them.

America wanted to be sipping soda at the diner on the way to the baseball game with their Pop while Elvis rocked the jailhouse on the jukebox in a 1957 that only existed in the grossly distorted shadow memories of their childhood. So they elected Reagan.

Freudian enough for ya?

Now, almost forty years later, the world has seen a disillusioned America elect a narcissistic Reality TV star. This time though, they were motivated by incoherent frustration, anger and a monumental amount of fuckwittery.

Golden Age of Hollywood Vs Fox & Friends. It shows.

1 comment  |  Posted in: Opinion


2
Jun 2017

President Trump and the Paris Accord

I watched Trump’s inauguration with a mixture of disbelief and dismay. It was a strange event and occasionally even a little alarming.

At one stage a TV evangelist (Cate Blanchett will play her in the movie) recited a prayer that wove biblical verse and US Manifest Destiny into a heady brew of Blessed Exceptionalism. I briefly toyed with the image of her stepping back from the podium as two flunkies wheeled the Ark of The Covenant on stage… retrieved from that big warehouse at the end of Raiders of The Lost Ark. She defied my expectations on that, but she was immediately followed by a choir that appeared to be deliberately alluding to The Omen movies.

OK, so I enjoy hyperbole as a rhetorical device perhaps a little too much for my own good, but in reality I tend to be a good deal less alarmist than the stuff on this blog might suggest. I see our civilisation as ultimately doomed of course. So there’s that. But I also see it for the leviathan it is. We’re like a supertanker, and our colossal momentum propels us forward even though the engines have been on fire for a few years. I kind of expected it to continue that way for a bit longer.

The Irish banking fiasco, Brexit, the Syrian crisis… some of these events may be symptoms of an ongoing collapse, others just episodes in history’s unfolding tapestry whose origins will be argued and speculated though perhaps never understood. But none of them are going to usher in the end times, right?

Which brings us back to President Trump. This is — to use the parlance of our times — not a good guy. He’s a bad guy. A Real Bad Guy. The worst. THE worst. Sad.

I promise that’ll be the last time I lampoon Trump’s oration in this post. It’s a little too easy. I confess, I’ve never read “Art of The Deal” (note to self: I really should). But I feel certain there’s a chapter in there discussing public speaking and it includes nuggets of wisdom like “Use short, simple words” and “Repetition can be effective”.

Anyway, here’s the thing. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on this, but I think we’re past the point where Trump is a weird joke, we’re past the point where he’s Americas’s problem, we’re even past the point where he is an annoyance or a hindrance on the world stage. The United States, under President Trump, has become a very serious and very pressing problem for the entire world. Pulling out of the Paris Accord is an act of such… gah!

… I want to use words like “existential threat” or “clear and present danger”… but those phrases pop up and people think you’re being unnecessarily hyperbolic.

And I’m not for a moment suggesting that the Paris Accord would have “fixed the problem”. Even if it was strictly adhered to — which it probably wouldn’t have been. It would not have averted Climate Change (a multi-century process already underway). But it formed a platform. A reminder that collective agreement could be reached, and a template for future attempts at it. It was a minimum point at which the entire planet could gather. A base-camp from which to forge forward. If the dude who owns most of the tents and the cooking gear decides to go home in a sulk? Well, you may as well cancel the expedition.

I have no idea how that metaphor got to where it did. Makes no bloody sense by the end. Still, my point is effective action to limit Climate Change must now be put on hold. At least until the Americans rejoin civilised society and/or consensual reality. Not saying those two always overlap, but either will do right now.

We can imagine best-case scenarios where the rest of the world continues onward — even redoubling our efforts to compensate — and America swiftly rejoins us after Trump’s impeachment in December.

But we can also imagine the next few months and years being punctuated by announcements from Saudi Arabia, Russia and the Philippines, that after careful consideration they too have decided to withdraw. This provokes a complete breakdown of faith in the agreement and it’s another decade before we even get everyone around the same table on this issue. By which point the militarisation of southern and eastern Europe has begun in a desperate response by populist governments to the tens of millions of Africans and Central Asians fleeing the devastation of the places that once sustained them (Climate Change is going to hit those places first and hardest — places that have been politically and economically screwed for the past century are about to be given a whole other sort of kicking). Meanwhile topsoil depletion, drought and catastrophic land management decisions in China force a massive State of Emergency and tripartite tensions between China, India and Pakistan result in… … …

Well. See that’s the thing about Climate Change. Words like “existential threat” or “clear and present danger”? There are issues where they aren’t hyperbole. This is one of them.

Climate Change is no longer a binary possibility. It’s happening and it’s become a question of how much? How severe? Even small differences in the answers to that question can equate to huge amounts of human suffering. International cooperation is surely the best way to minimise that suffering… to adopt a united front against a problem that faces us as a species… as a biosphere.

And so. To turn your back on that is a grossly profane act. Whatever the hell the word “immoral” means; if it doesn’t cover this, it’s not a useful concept.

In a sane world, the United States would be hit with an active trade embargo until it returned to the fold. This sovereign individualism go-it-alone schtick only works when you’re not shitting in the village well. So long as you do that, you’re everyone’s problem and you need to be made aware of that. Trump should have his personal assets seized, just as we would do if it was a Liberian or Angolan president threatening the stability of others. He should be prevented from all foreign travel and all diplomats should be withdrawn from the US. All US embassies should be closed. The United Nations should collectively relocate to Beijing or Berlin (or wherever we think it would most annoy Trump) and we should send one bloke to sit in the UN building in New York with a pen and a copy of the Paris Agreement.

Soon as we get a signature, it all goes back to normal.

Sure sure, most Americans, even the liberal ones, will bristle at that suggestion. How dare anyone tell us what to do! US culture insidiously promotes exceptionalism to the extent that it’s a part of the fibre of anyone growing up in America (just like Catholic guilt burrows to the heart of every Irish person even if they’ve never gone to church, and the most militant British anarchist still unconsciously views the world through the prism of class stratification). It’s just in us because it’s the water we’ve spent our entire lives swimming through. We can’t help it.

But in this case, dear Americans, you can shove your exceptionalism right where you think this sentence was going to end. You’re shitting in our goddamn well. Stop it right now!.

2 comments  |  Posted in: Opinion


18
Dec 2016

Most powerful man in the world? Hope not.

As I watched President-Elect Donald Trump become embroiled in a twitter flame-war with China, it struck me that we are indeed entering a period of genuine uncertainty.

I am vaguely hopeful that my general cynicism about US politics and democracy is validated; that the president actually has little or no real power; that Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex will simply keep trundling towards catastrophic climate and resource wars in much the same way its been doing for the past 50 years; and President Trump will essentially become the world’s most embarrassing reality TV show for the next 4 years. The Pentagon’s Court Jester.

donald-trumpBecause the alternative… that the guy will actually be responsible for substantial shifts in US policy, that he will set directions and the US behemoth will follow them… that’s honestly quite terrifying. His position on Climate Change alone — if translated into active policy changes — will make him the most damaging president in recent US history. I’m not saying current US policy is anything short of disastrous on this issue… but Trump’s anti-science stance has culminated in threats not just to ignore existing climate research but to veto any further research being carried out by US government organisations. This is very worrying (hint: remove NASA, the EPA and the USGCRP from climate research and you deal a very serious blow to the entire field that will cause lasting damage).

Bizarrely, I find myself sincerely hoping that American democracy is fundamentally broken. That the president is an ineffectual figurehead who will be deftly handled and manipulated by the Illuminati, or the Rockefeller Foundation, or the Gnomes of Zurich, or the Zionist conspiracy, or the the Liberal Elite, or The Greys, or the Milk Marketing Board… to essentially keep everything exactly the way it is.

Normally when a politician gets elected I hope they shake things up; that they challenge the system and turn against the establishment. Not so with Trump. The man is a menace.

3 comments  |  Posted in: Opinion


12
Nov 2012

Send in the drones

Last Tuesday – mesmerised as I am by coloured maps – I stayed up late enough to see Barack Obama hold onto the US presidency. So I went to bed early Wednesday morning knowing that Mitt Romney wasn’t going to be President of the United States. And I was glad about that. The lesser of two evils won. And as a friend pointed out, “The lesser of two evils is still evil, but is also lesser. That’s just maths.”

When I awoke the following day though, I was a little taken-aback when I watched his victory speech online. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the people in that convention hall were precisely the people who will feel strongest about an Obama victory; but I found the sheer distance between their euphoria and my resigned fatalism a little disconcerting. Then I read an article about that mass re-tweeting of Obama’s “victory tweet” with the attached photo, and it floored me. According to a different article, that creepy photo of Barack and Michelle embracing has been shared by almost three quarters of a million people on twitter and 3.6 million Facebook users. That was last Wednesday; I feel certain the numbers are higher by now. And I’m pretty certain the vast majority of those people weren’t forwarding the photo as an example of “a creepy thing”.

And then I had three different discussions on social media forums which led me to realise that quite a lot of people seem to be relatively heavily invested in Obama; intellectually, emotionally, politically… however you want to put it. Mostly those on the American centre-left, but plenty of non-Americans too. They didn’t find that photo – and the shared urge of millions to forward it to their friends – at all creepy. They found it celebratory, uplifting, inspirational even. And that sense of disconnect I’d been feeling continued to grow.

Political puppets

Hey! There’s one guy holding both puppets!

Once again, let me stress that I’m glad Obama beat Romney. If someone put a gun to the head of someone I loved and told me to choose the next US president from between those two men, I would – of course – choose Obama. I’m not sad because the greater of two evils failed to win the election. I am, however, pretty sad that the entire world – but Americans in particular, as it’s their president we’re talking about here – appear to passively accept a state of affairs in which they choose between two evils every four years. Here in the 21st century, is that really the best we can come up with? Because it’s far from the best we can imagine. Is the gulf between our imagination and our ability to shape our society so vast? And have we completely abandoned all attempts to bridge it?

I understand that relatively rational, relatively liberal Americans are consumed by a fear of the right-wing crazies in their midst. There is a fundamentalist religious movement in America (along with a bunch of Machiavellian politicos willing to exploit it) whose views on many issues are right off the chart – whether it’s legitimate rape, the death penalty for rebellious children or that whole “teaching creationism as a scientific alternative to evolution” thing; there is a segment of the US population who appear to want some kind of psychotic theocracy. And I understand the celebrations of those who see Obama’s victory as having prevented that outcome.

But those celebrations rest upon two very dubious foundations (in my view). The first is the idea that a Mitt Romney victory represented such an outcome (I’ll explain in a moment why I don’t believe it would have). The second is the idea that returning a murderous war-criminal beholden to corporate America to the White House should be a cause for celebration under any circumstances. Even if the only alternative to Obama had been a bizarre genetic experiment comprising equal parts Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Osama bin Laden… even then, the proper reaction to a victory for a murderous war-criminal beholden to corporate America should be some brief muted applause followed by an immediate decision to change the system so that the lesser of two evils is not the only option next time around.

Mitt Romney: He’s no Jim Jones

Firstly, let’s clear up a few misconceptions. While Mitt Romney would have offered the occasional bone to the Tea Party movement and other religious fundamentalists in America, he’s certainly not one of them (Mormon or not). As president he would have had to take them more seriously than Obama; so yes, once again, I’m glad he didn’t win; but Romney represented the rich, corporate wing of the Republican Party; not the poor, deluded, religious wing. His position on things like homosexuality and gender politics is less liberal than Obama. But he’s far from the religious extremist that many Obama supporters saw him as. Just as Barack Obama was painted as a far-left, ultra-liberal communist Kenyan by the US right, so Romney was also demonised by the US left (admittedly, not to quite the same extent). Those on the left who cannot see this, or deny it happened, or insist that “their side” would never use such dirty tactics are – sadly – just as deluded as those who believe the nonsense spewing from Fox News.

First and foremost Mitt Romney represented the wealthy elite. And exactly the same is true of Barack Obama. To suggest otherwise is either ignorance or wilful self-delusion. It’s almost certainly true that Obama doesn’t view everyone else with quite so much contempt as Romney (see: the 47 percent) and is willing to throw them a few more crumbs, but the fundamental changes necessary to rid America of deep economic injustices are just as far away under an Obama presidency as they would have been under a Romney administration.

Barack Obama: Liberal-lite

When it comes to social policy, there is some clear water between Romney and Obama. And it’s on this subject that the various Obama fans I have spoken to always want to focus. And yes, to return to the gun-to-head-Romney-or-Obama scenario, it’s here that I too would base my decision. Obama’s support for gay marriage is to be welcomed (though his unwillingness to be proactive on the subject is a bit of a cop out). And he doesn’t appear to view women with quite as much disdain as the Republican party – certainly if he does, he’s too smart to blurt out dodgy statements about “legitimate rape”.

But Obama’s presidency to date has seen no attempt to reform drug policy. And given the monstrous incarceration rate in the United States (with most of those in prison for non-violent drug offences) this is not “a minor issue”, as someone described it to me in a conversation. Far from it; this is one of the fundamental human rights issues facing America (indeed the world) right now. The US prison population is disproportionately made up of poor, young, uneducated men from ethnic minorities. The US state is destroying the lives of millions of these people for doing something that – at most – should be viewed as a public health issue, and in a lot of cases shouldn’t be anyone’s business at all. It’s called a “war on drugs” but it’s really a war on poor people (or as Bill Hicks described it, “a war on personal freedom”). And Obama has been fighting that war on poor people just as enthusiastically as any president before him.

And that’s not the half of it. The effects of the American drug war on places like Mexico and Colombia have been little short of devastating. Torture, corruption and tens of thousands of violent deaths… all because the United States refuses to take a rational approach to the issue. Some analysts believe Obama has plans to revisit US drug policy in his second term. If this does prove to be the case, then I have two reactions:

  1. Yay! Well done. Finally!
  2. Hang on, you waited until your second term to do something about this? Presumably because you were worried it might affect your chances of re-election? You spent four years trampling over local democracy by cracking down on popularly-mandated medical marijuana initiatives in your own nation, and watching while tens of thousands died horrible deaths at home and overseas… all because you were worried that to do otherwise would threaten your job security? Seriously? You absolute bastard!

But let’s hope he does something about this insane drug war over the next four years, even if it will demonstrate he’s a typical cynical careerist politician with no moral compass.

Cluster bombs and predator drones

And here, finally, we get to the main reason I felt such a disconnect with the euphoria surrounding Obama’s re-election… the main reason I found that photo of him and his wife hugging so very creepy…

The man’s a child killer. And not just kids. He’ll kill pretty much anyone – man, woman or child. And not just one or two of them either… Barack Obama has ordered the deaths of dozens – perhaps many hundreds – of children. And people are sharing a photo of him hugging his wife? Seriously, I just don’t understand it. So what if he’s better than Romney? He murders children, what the hell are you celebrating!?

I have addressed the issue of cluster bombs on this blog before; but it’s not an issue that can be discussed too often. Handicap International “is an independent and impartial aid organization working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster.” They – along with many other campaigning organisations – have highlighted the role played by the United States in the “production, stockpiling, trade, and use of cluster bombs”. In fact, during the past four years the Obama administration has been hugely instrumental in obstructing international efforts to ban the production and eliminate the use, of cluster munitions. Despite the fact that the use of cluster bombs clearly contravenes several international treaties (including the 4th Geneva Convention and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions), Obama has consistently reasserted the right of the United States to deploy these heinous weapons – weapons which, let us not forget, disproportionately result in civilian casualties (note: the US is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions but boycotted the Convention on Cluster Munitions when it was signed in 2008 and continues to do so).

Only last week UK Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the use of cluster bombs in Syria citing them as “further evidence of the brutality of the Assad regime.” He went on to insist that “the apparent use of cluster munitions shows an appalling disregard for human life.” I completely agree with Hague’s statement, but I find it pretty weird coming from him of all poeple. While the UK was actually instrumental in setting up the 2008 Convention, it is one of the closest military allies of the nation most responsible for the use of these weapons. Furthermore, Hague’s government – unlike the previous New Labour administration – appears to be quietly backing US efforts to overturn the Convention.

Let’s not be under illusions; any state military or non-state militia using cluster bombs is an enemy of humanity. It’s that simple. Barack Obama – by asserting the US right to use these vile things, and furthermore to actively obstruct international attempts to end their use – is a goddamn monster. When you forward that photo of the Obamas, you may as well be fawning over a photo of Syria’s Assad hugging his wife. Or Saddam Hussein hugging his. Because to knowingly use cluster bombs is to knowingly murder and maim children. There is no other way of looking at that issue. In the murky world of global politics you rarely find a black-and-white issue. Well, cluster bombs is one of the rare ones. And if you think it’s not; then go do some bloody reading on the matter. And that’ll be “bloody” in both a literal and an expletive sense.

Predator droneAnd then there’s the predator drones. Imagine a scenario where the Pakistani government regularly flew remote control weapons platforms over Texas. Platforms that periodically launched missiles at buildings suspected of housing enemies of the Pakistani state. Imagine a large proportion of those buildings also contained innocent civilians; sleeping families, students studying for their exams, average Americans watching TV. Imagine if the US government had issued repeated statements forcefully demanding that Pakistan cease their bombing campaign. Imagine this went on for years.

I’ve heard people argue that “while the number of drone strikes has increased significantly in the last few years, US intelligence is getting better and there are now fewer civilian deaths”. Would that placate the population of Texas, I wonder? “Hey Hank, I know you lost your kids in that last drone attack, but actually the Pakistanis have killed less children this year than they did last year. So chin up, eh?”

Maybe you’re happy with a US president that oversees such a policy. Maybe cluster bombs and drone attacks are cause for rejoicing in your world. They’re not in mine. And they never will be.

And no, Mitt Romney would not have been any better in that respect. He wouldn’t have halted drone strikes. He wouldn’t have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions. But that just means modern politics is deeply screwed up. If the best we can do is manufacture a false choice between two murderers every four years (or a murderer and a would-be murderer), then we really don’t have much to celebrate at all. I’m glad that Mitt Romney is not the president of the United States. Truly I am. But don’t expect me to jump for joy at the re-election of a mass murderer. And next time you see that victory photo, try to remember that the man with the satisfied smile on his lips also has the blood of children on his hands.

UPDATE: Worth mentioning that I didn’t even get around to Obama’s lamentable environmental record… worthy of a blogpost (nay! a book!) all its own. “Clean coal” my arse!

Note: I had intended to illustrate this blogpost with an image of a cluster bomb victim, but I felt uncomfortable posting such a photo as I would inevitably be using an image of an individual in great distress to make a political point (albeit a valid moral point as well). However, I suggest you do a quick google image search on “cluster bomb injuries” if you are in any doubt about the horrific nature of these weapons. And if you do so, note the high proportion of children… because of the nature of the devices; cluster bombs disproportionately target children. How? Well, they leave lots and lots of shiny unexploded bombs lying around – the kind of things that most adults would know to avoid but which attract the inevitable curiosity of children and toddlers.

1 comment  |  Posted in: Opinion


5
Jan 2012

Politics, religion and the United States

Earlier today the TV news broadcast a report about the victory of Mitt Romney in the Iowa Caucus. This signals the beginning of the 2012 US Presidential Election and is the first step taken by the Republican Party in choosing who will run against Barack Obama in November. The report on RTÉ included short clips of the two front-runners, Romney and Santorum, speaking to their supporters. I was fascinated by Romney’s veiled reference to Manifest Destiny when he described America as the “hope of the world”, and by the openly religious language used by both candidates. In fact, in the case of Santorum I found the phrase “aggressively religious” leaping unbidden to mind.

Rick SantorumOf course, I’ve long been aware that the United States, for all its superficial similarities, is very much “a foreign country” from a European perspective*. I don’t mean that in any pejorative sense, but simply as a description of the experience I had when I lived there. Just as with the time I spent in Egypt or Brazil, there was a real sense of being “outside Europe” when I worked in the US heartland, which is pretty odd considering the wide gulf that exists between many European cultures. I’ve lived in five European countries and I married a woman from a sixth. Yet despite the language barriers and the clear cultural differences, I felt much more of an alien when I lived in the English-speaking American Midwest than when I lived in Athens or Berlin.

No amount of US sitcoms or Hollywood movies can prepare a European for time spent in Ottumwa or Des Moines or Columbus. There’s a sense of dislocation precisely because everything seems so familiar on the surface, and yet the people you work with and spend time with clearly possess a very different value system. There’s the strange ideological attachment to gun-ownership, which I found quite disconcerting at times. And there’s the extreme patriotism, which in most European countries would be considered close to the dodgy end of nationalism despite being part of the mainstream of US society. And most of all there’s the heavily religious aspect of American life. Even coming from an Irish Catholic background, I found the seriousness with which many Americans take religious belief to be remarkable.

Although the United States is clearly in decline, it remains the only superpower at this moment in time; certainly the only superpower capable of projecting military and economic power around the world. One imagines that China or India might be at the stage where they could flex their muscles should they so wish, and test the dominance of the United States. But right now they haven’t done so, and so long as that’s the case, the US remains the only global superpower. Which is why US policy matters to the rest of the world. And why we should never forget – particularly when they have a Republican president – that US policy is not necessarily guided by the same considerations as those of European governments.

Witness, for example, the stark contrast between otherwise bosom-buddies Tony Blair and George ‘Dubya’ Bush when it came to their faith. Both professed to be religious Christians. But while Bush spoke proudly of leading his staff in daily White House bible readings, Blair’s irritation when asked by Jeremy Paxman if he ever “prayed together” with the US president (50 seconds into this video) was palpable. Blair clearly viewed the very premise of the question as being an attempt to ridicule him; as indeed, from a European sense, it probably was. But Bush would never have reacted in such a way and would almost certainly have taken the question at face value. That clip of Blair’s discomfort – almost embarrassment – when faced with questions about his faith (a faith that, let us not forget, he expressed openly in his writing) always calls to mind Matthew 26:31-75.

Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice…

Take the – admittedly more extreme than most – Rick Santorum who, having made it clear that he was running on an anti-abortion platform and “the sanctity of the American family” (which is almost certainly a reference to his profoundly homophobic views), came out with the following…

… America is a moral enterprise. Our founders understood that for the constitution to work, it had to be based on something deeper, something grounded. Our rights came from a creator [Santorum points upwards to heaven] and the creator has rules… ‘Nature and Nature’s God’, that was another phrase in the declaration of independence. They understood that through reason and through faith we could build a strong country from the ground up, based on a moral society. John Adams said our constitution was made for ‘a moral and a religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other’. That is the mission of America

Prior to the report on the Iowa Caucus, the RTÉ news had run a story about the increasing tensions between Iran and the west, complete with a clip of President Ahmadinejad working himself into an impressive fury and shaking his fist at America. So when the Santorum clip was shown, Citizen S who was sitting next to me, wondered aloud, “how is that any different to the rhetoric of the Iranian government?” My reply… “it’s not”.

Indeed this point is made rather well by Ronald Wright, author of What is America? A Short History of the New World Order in this interview…

It’s well worth watching that clip. Wright lucidly explains how America developed as a nation riven with tension between religious fundamentalism and predatory capitalism, and how it has somehow managed to combine the two into a strange hybrid that has antecedents in the ‘frontier spirit’ of the 17th and 18th century and still looks forward with evangelical zeal to a world reshaped in its own image. The fact is, there are few things more dangerous than a powerful person who believes God is on their side. It makes them reckless with the lives of others and it provides them with a spurious justification for idiotic decisions. And it’s all the worse when that person feels backed into a corner, as the decline of the debt-ridden American Empire must surely do to future presidents.

Having said all that, and it pains me that religious discussion has become so polarised that I feel obliged to add this disclaimer; none of this is meant to be an attack on religion in and of itself. I believe the mytho-poetic aspects of religion and religious faith are of genuine importance to the future well-being of humanity. I believe the sterile atheism currently in fashion is also extremely dangerous in the long run; though in a different way to the various flavours of religious fundamentalism that grips much of humanity today. I believe that those “intellectuals” who are making a living tearing at the fabric of religion are doing terrible damage to our culture and our collective psyche. Yes, we need to radically re-evaluate our relationship with religion, but it needs to be done constructively and with subtlety and sensitivity. The boorish attacks of the new atheists are as unimaginative and unintelligent as the fundamentalist literalism of Rick Santorum or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

* Incidentally, I would exclude New York from that “foreign country”. Just as London is in no way representative of much of the rest of the UK, so New York feels more like an island off the coast of America than a part of the place.

Rick Santorum photo courtesy of salon.com

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26
Oct 2011

(Who’d want to be) Head of the state we’re in

In a couple of days time, on Thursday October 27th, the citizens of Ireland will make their way back to the polling stations. This time around, however, we won’t vote for a new government (more’s the pity) but for a new Head of State. A new president.

The presidency of Ireland lasts for a term of seven years and can only be held for two terms. Traditionally a president is unopposed should they choose to serve the second term, and historically most presidents have taken that option, remaining in office for the full 14 years. Health permitting, that is… Ireland’s first president, Douglas Hyde, was unable to serve his second term as a result of ill health and the fourth president, Erskine Childers, died a year into his first term. Childers was succeeded by Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh who resigned after two years as a result of a series of clashes with the government of the day (it was the beginning of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and Ó Dálaigh was far more militantly republican than the government). Mary Robinson, of course, was offered the post of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the end of her first term and did not, as a result, take up the option of a second term. All of the others served the maximum 14 years. And our current president, Mary McAleese, has reached the end of her second term, so the post must once again be filled.

Irish Presidential flag

But does it really matter who holds the presidency? Despite being democratically elected, the position is more akin to that of – for example – the Queen of England than it is to that of the President of the United States. It’s a largely ceremonial role and one that offers little room for influencing national policy. Despite the strident claims of one candidate in particular, the president will not be able to prevent a further expansion of European control over Irish social and economic policy… no matter how often the candidate might appear on TV brandishing the Irish constitution like a sword. But more about the individuals in a bit.

For now, let me dig a little deeper into that phrase, “a largely ceremonial role”. Because “largely” does not mean “completely” and the president does have a tiny bit of real power as well as – potentially at least – a fair amount of cultural influence, and therefore indirectly, political influence. The “real” power comes from the fact that the president is required to sign any Bill passed by parliament before it becomes Law. And Article 26 of the Irish Constitution states that the President may – with the exception of national budgets and bills enacting the results of a referendum – refer any bill to the Supreme Court should they feel the Bill “is … repugnant to this Constitution or to any provision thereof.”

Now, while this power has been very rarely exercised, there is a school of thought which suggests that the various laws that led up to the ECB/IMF bailout (including the infamous and disastrous bank guarantee of September 2008) effectively undermined Irish sovereignty and could, therefore, have been interpreted as anti-constitutional. Whether or not the Supreme Court would have agreed with that interpretation is, of course, another thing entirely. But President McAleese could certainly have thrown a spanner in the works back in September 2008 by delaying the bank guarantee. This could have had a massive impact on our recent history (for better or for worse, we’ll obviously never know). That said, there’s another school of thought which suggests that the bank guarantee and subsequent bailout legislation were “Money bills” and were – as a result – immune from presidential referral. However, I believe there is enough room for interpretation on that question to have at least provoked a constitutional crisis should President McAleese have chosen to do so.

Let me stress; all of that is hypothetical. President McAleese has been a fine president and I’m not criticising her here. The social, political and economic landscape was radically different when she was elected 14 years ago and she was certainly not elected to be a political firebrand. Her ambassadorial / ceremonial role was implicit in her presidency and this almost certainly aided her quietly effective social campaigning on issues such as gender equality and sectarianism. As much as I personally would have liked her to do so; had she suddenly decided to attack government economic policy 12 years into her presidency, it would have been with a questionable mandate.

This time around, however, there is at least one candidate openly campaigning with a view to testing just how far a president can go to obstruct government policy. And while I do not – for reasons I will get on to soon – endorse that particular candidate, there’s little doubt that people have the option to cast their vote for a much more “active” president this time round (or not… there are several “won’t rock the boat” candidates in the running too). The Irish Presidency is an office with limited power, yes, but will the people vote for someone who promises to push those limits?

There is another sort of power inherent in the presidency. The power of symbolism. To anyone sceptical of the power of symbols, I suggest you walk into a packed synagogue wearing a swastika armband and see how quickly a symbol can inspire robust action. The effective use of symbols can bring about social change just as quickly as any law. In 1990 Mary Robinson was elected as Ireland’s first female president. Robinson was a woman with the backing of Irish socialists, a woman who as a campaigner had previously spearheaded the law that saw contraception legalised in Ireland and the law that saw women sitting on juries for the first time. It would be naive to suggest that modern Ireland is gender neutral; that women enjoy an equal status within the institutions of power. However, let’s not belittle the progress that has been made, and Mary Robinson’s election as president was a powerful message of just how far the equality agenda had come by 1990. Furthermore, it helped consolidate that agenda and there are two candidates in this coming election whose election could send an equally powerful message on other issues.

The candidates

David NorrisThe first of the two candidates whose election would be powerfully symbolic is independent Senator, David Norris. Norris is openly gay. Now, it’s possible for public figures to be openly gay without that fact playing any part in their public statements or – if a politician – their policy decisions. Norris, however, has championed gay rights in Ireland for most of his life. He was the first openly gay person elected to public office in the country. He founded the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, and his 14 year campaign to overthrow the Irish anti-homosexuality law was finally successful in 1988. The election of David Norris to the presidency would be – whatever else it might be – a triumph for gay rights on this island. Just as the election of Mary Robinson in 1990 didn’t make Ireland gender neutral overnight, so the election of Norris wouldn’t signal the end of homophobia. However, it would be a massive symbolic act by the citizenry of this country. And while there is far more to Norris than just his sexual orientation, we should not underestimate the importance of that symbolic act.

Symbols matter. They’re not all that matters. But they do matter.

But of course Norris is far more than just a gay rights campaigner. He’s an academic and Joycean scholar (very much a point in his favour in my eyes). As an independent senator, he was one of the few politicians to vote against the bank guarantee and has steadfastly and consistently criticised the economic policies of the current and last governments. Within the ranks of the political establishment he’s been a lone voice in the wilderness on a whole bunch of issues. He is outspoken, and he’s erudite and humorous with it. At the same time, his ebullient manner and rarified accent does paint him as a bit of an eccentric in the eyes of some.

Norris started the campaign way out in front in the polls. A couple of months ago the media were almost painting him as a sure thing. Since then, however, he’s been hit by a succession of scandals and – if we’re to believe the polls – his support has plummeted. It’s hard to escape the feeling that the negative stories were – in large part – a tabloid campaign to undermine him. Maybe it was just the inherent anti-intellectualism of the tabloid press rather than homophobia. Or maybe it was a bit of both.

That said, he really dug himself into a hole with the “letters for clemency” scandal. It filled the newspapers for a week, yet the sum-total of the factual information that the average Irish person knows about the issue could fit into a single paragraph. It was outright character assassination, and yet another in a long line of new lows for the mainstream media. But it’s also true that Norris handled it far worse than he might have done and managed to spectacularly shoot himself in the foot on the Vincent Browne debate. I’m not going to rake over those old coals, but my take on it is simple enough… just because some members of the public might well be interested in reading the letters, does not make their publication “in The Public Interest”.

Anyway, Norris will be getting my first preference vote. Yes I think he handled the “letters” scandal badly, but it won’t stop me voting for him. He’s the best person for the job.

Michael D. HigginsMy second preference vote will go to Michael D. Higgins. Up until the last few days that wasn’t the case, but recent polls have made up my mind. If Norris isn’t going to be President, then I want my support to transfer to the person most likely to beat Seán Gallagher (about whom, more later).

Higgins is the official candidate of the Irish Labour Party and I’m desperately trying not to hold that against him. Like Norris, he’s also a scholar and an intellectual. A poet on the left fringe of his (rightward-marching) party… kind of like Tony Benn in the years following the establishment of “New” Labour. Higgins voted against the bank guarantee and has, I suspect, been nominated by the Labour Party partly in the hope that he won’t be a thorn in their side as they implement public sector cuts over the next few years. A president who spoke publicly against government policy would be pushing the limits of their office.

And one thing that Michael D. Higgins won’t be, you see, is a president who pushes the limits of the office. He has called for an overhaul of the Irish constitution and has made it very clear that he does not believe the current government (in which his party is a coalition partner) is a force for social justice. He has decried the values of the Celtic Tiger and lambasted the rampant capitalism it brought to Ireland. But he has a very conservative view of the role of the president and seeks to use the office to initiate a “national conversation” on our social and economic values rather than to directly challenge or obstruct the government in any way. A part of him might secretly daydream of using the position of president to overtly forward a socialist agenda, but it’s not something he’d actually do. A Michael D. Higgins presidency will not be remembered as a revolutionary one. Whether or not any president could effectively act upon a revolutionary agenda is highly questionable of course, but Michael D. Higgins won’t be asking that question. And I worry that he may well be an easy man for the government to ignore once they’ve got him safely ensconced in the big house in Phoenix Park.

Still, by and large he’s a man of honour and integrity and if we are to have a “national conversation” about our values, I can’t think of many better men to chair it. Also, if the polls are to be believed, Higgins is currently the only candidate with any chance of beating Seán Gallagher, automatically earning him my transfer.

Martin McGuinnessI considered giving my second preference to the other “highly symbolic” candidate I mentioned. Martin McGuinness. Let me pause to allow some of you a moment to seethe. Even more divisive than the scandal-hit Norris, Martin McGuinness (yes, that Martin McGuinness) is by far and away the most controversial candidate in this presidential campaign. He has come under fire from many in the media, and the entire campaign by the official Fine Gael candidate seems based around McGuinness-bashing. In fact, the reaction he provoked from many quarters in the establishment was – almost as much as any personal or symbolic qualities of the man – partly the reason I considered voting for him. I don’t subscribe to the maxim that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but for me it’s definitely an endorsement to have the voices of conservativism raised so stridently against you.

Just as the election of Norris would not eliminate homophobia, the election of McGuinness as President of Ireland would not draw a line under ‘The Troubles’. However, it would be another step away from that dark period of history. There’s no question that the peace process in Northern Ireland was the work of many parties and individuals. It was probably Tony Blair’s finest hour. The same can be said for Bertie Ahern. And the unionists in the north also played a huge part. But I genuinely believe that nobody took a bigger risk (both politically and in a very real “bullet in the head if this doesn’t work” sense) than Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams. It was they who convinced the IRA to put down their weapons. They who walked into darkened rooms filled with men carrying guns and told them they were going to make compromises on their behalf. Blair didn’t have to do that. Ahern didn’t have to do that. I seriously doubt any prominent unionist politician had to do that.

So despite the attempts of Fine Gael to belittle his role in making a success of the Good Friday Agreement, I believe that Martin McGuinness is a peace-maker. That he was a man of violence before that…? Yes he was. Peace-makers sometimes are. I abhor what the IRA did and I abhor the actions of McGuinness so far as they were a part of that. The IRA took a legitimate social grievance and turned it into a campaign of violence that lasted a quarter century. I am not someone who claims that violence can never be justified. But bombs in shopping precincts? Fighting tyranny with those tactics is just another form of tyranny.

However, when a man of violence renounces violence. When he goes further and risks his own life to compel others to renounce it. When he goes further still and sits at a table with his sworn enemy and negotiates a truce to bring peace after more than 25 years of shootings and bombings. Then he is no longer a man of violence. And let’s not forget that the mainstream political parties that now attack McGuinness for his IRA membership are themselves a legacy of organisations that today would be defined as terrorists. Éamon de Valera, president between 1959 and 1973, was himself a “man of violence” once. And compared with Martin McGuinness, de Valera did a damn sight less renunciation and peace-making.

Not that McGuinness is the ideal candidate of course. I understand that political campaigns are all about self-promotion, but if I hear him dropping Nelson Mandela’s name once more I think I’ll scream. And while he has every right to campaign on his track record as a peace-maker, he needs to come up with some different sound-bites. Everyone in Ireland has heard McGuinness say “I was able to build a relationship with loyalist leaders Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson” at least 15 times in the past few weeks. It’s an impressive achievement Martin, and it might have secured a vote from me if it wasn’t for Gallagher, but at least vary the wording now and then.

At no stage did I consider voting for any of the other four candidates In fact, I’d happily write a negative number alongside a couple of their names if such a thing were possible. And at the top of that negative list is the official Fine Gael candidate, Gay Mitchell. Thankfully he’s nowhere in the polls so I don’t have to worry about having Mr. Narky as Head of State.

Gay MitchellLet me start by saying that Gay Mitchell really rubs me up the wrong way. On television he comes across as smug, patronising and frankly unlikeable… he may be nothing like that in the flesh, but most of us are only ever going to encounter him in the media. If he had some good ideas or a positive agenda, I could probably overlook his abrasive media personality. But he doesn’t, so I can’t. His outburst at the end of the Pat Kenny debate was bewildering though strangely appropriate.

Not only could the country not expect any substantial action from a Mitchell presidency, I doubt he’d even carry out the ceremonial aspect of the role very well. In parliamentary campaigns where policy issues can create friction between candidates, negative campaigning is generally unedifying but tolerated. But to have such a relentlessly negative campaign for an office like the Irish presidency suggests that Gay Mitchell and Fine Gael have seriously misjudged the mood of the Irish people. At times during the TV debates it honestly felt like Mitchell was in the campaign for no other reason than to attack Martin McGuinness. It was embarrassing.

Mitchell represents the forces of Irish conservatism more than perhaps anyone else in the race. He is the official candidate of the centre-right government currently pandering to the demands of The Market in such a spineless fashion. A government whose robust promises during the general election campaign have evaporated with remarkable speed… and who have dedicated themselves to continuing the disastrous job of the previous administration. A job that involves asset-stripping this nation for the benefit of an international financial system that’s completely out of control. A job that, when complete, will have plunged future generations into a debt they never asked for and from which they have derived little or no benefit.

On top of that though, Mitchell is an Old School Catholic of a kind this country no longer needs. Of course, realising that hardcore Catholicism isn’t a vote-winner any more, he’s played down his links with Rome. In a radio interview he denied he had any connection with the fundamentalist Catholic, anti-abortion organisation, “Dignitatis Humanae Institute”. Yet a spokesman for the organisation appears to contradict this, suggesting that Mitchell co-authored the Institute’s manifesto (the “Universal Declaration of Human Dignity”). Mitchell’s stance on issues like abortion and homosexuality (including gay marriage) are straight out of The Vatican and are not, in my view, worthy of the Head of State of a modern nation.

Sean GallagherAnother candidate to whom I’d give a negative vote if such a thing were possible, is independent candidate Seán Gallagher. Unlike Gay Mitchell, who represents Ireland as it was a few decades ago – caught in the terrible grip of a Church that had long since lost its soul – Gallagher represents the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger. And I’m genuinely not sure which is worse. Certainly neither would gain my vote.

Gallagher is that ultimate symbol of modern consumer capitalism, the “celebrity entrepreneur”. Young, over-confident to the point of arrogance, and constantly insisting that his track-record of financial success somehow automatically translates to success as a president, Gallagher is a product of an unholy union between Fianna Fáil and The Dragon’s Den. Until a few months ago Gallagher was a member of a political party that spectacularly misused their decade of power and left this country stricken for generations to come. He wisely severed all official ties with that party before announcing his candidacy, so that he could run as an independent. But frankly I’ve yet to hear a single thing from Gallagher that suggests independence of thought.

Instead he regularly trots out the clichés of the modern capitalist. As a “dragon” on the Irish version of Dragon’s Den, Gallagher has sat, week after week, and dangled his piles of cash in front of desperate people before cruelly yanking it away in the name of televisual entertainment. He talks about business and entrepreneurship in the same way a priest talks about God. It’s the reason for living. It’s the salvation of the nation. It is unquestionably a good thing. It will save us all.

It was the mantra of modern capitalism that got Ireland into the mess it’s currently in, and Gallagher hopes to carry that mantra with him as Head of this damaged State. The man marries reality television with a grasping free-market ideology. He pays lip-service to social justice while revelling in the inequities of market capitalism. Were he to become our next president, it would be almost as depressing a decision by the Irish electorate as their selection of Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. More than that, I honestly feel it would haunt us over the next 7 years. The Celtic Tiger is dead. It was never more than a sick joke in the first place. But now the corpse is starting to stink. The Celtic Tiger is never coming back and although people may agree with you when you say that to them, I’m not sure it has really sunk in yet. But it will do. And when it does, having a Tiger Cub like Gallagher as president could end up being a national embarrassment.

Yet he’s way out in front in the polls. Perhaps the implosion on the Pat Kenny debate a couple of nights ago will affect his turnout… are people really already prepared to forgive Fianna Fáil? More than that, to once again embrace the brown envelope culture that pervaded them? Dear God, I hope not.

Mary DavisAlso running as an independent candidate is Mary Davis. I don’t have much to say about her. Mostly because she’s kept rigidly to a rather limited script during the campaign, and relatively speaking the tabloids haven’t had a massive go at her. Despite being an “independent”, Mary Davis is almost as much an establishment insider as Mitchell, Gallagher or Michael D. Her main claim to fame is the fact that she headed the Special Olympics committee during what’s been acknowledged as a very successful Special Olympics held in Ireland a few years back. She insists – perhaps with some justification – that this experience would be invaluable for an international ambassadorial role like the presidency.

However I was mystified by her apparent eagerness early in the campaign to constantly remind the media about the various “boards” she has been appointed to over the past few years; earning large amounts of money for a handful of meetings. Over the past 6 years she earned €150,000 sitting on the board of a bank and a building society. Given the disastrous track-record of Irish banks and building societies during that period, her only defence seems to be that the position she occupied involved no actual power or responsibility. Either she was part of the banking establishment during the run up to the crash, or else she was drawing a handsome salary from the banks for doing very little. This was bound to alienate a hell of a lot of people, and I don’t think her campaign ever recovered.

During that same period of time she earned over €85k for sitting on the board of the Dublin Airport Authority (but presumably bears no responsibility for the various screw-ups during the design and construction of Terminal 2). She earned over €35k for sitting on the board of the Broadcast Commission of Ireland (BCI), and while her working relationship with Irish media-magnate Denis O’Brien has generated a few column inches in the papers, it’s never erupted into a full-blown scandal. O’Brien is chairman of the Special Olympics Ireland Council of Patrons and worked with Davis on the Special Olympics in 2004. He is a contributor to her campaign. And whenever the BCI was voting on whether or not it was appropriate for O’Brien to expand his ownership of Irish media, Mary Davis always voted in his favour. Another case of the mutual back-scratching of the establishment. Nobody seems surprised, let alone outraged.

Though of course, her position in the polls has never been good and it’ll be a small miracle if she gets 10% of first preference votes. So while Ireland does look willing to elect one business-as-usual insider claiming to be independent; it’s not this one.

Dana Rosemary ScallonAnd last but by no means least is Dana Rosemary Scallon. While I shan’t be voting for Dana, unlike either Gallagher or Davis, she at least merits the label of “independent” candidate. Well, in a political sense anyway; her ties to the Catholic Church rob her of total independence. But as far as party politics go, Dana is equally dismissive of the lot of them, and while she has been an independent MEP, there’s no way she could be described as an establishment insider.

Originally coming to prominence when she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1970 (with the massive worldwide hit, All Kinds of Everything) Dana subsequently went on to have a relatively – if mystifyingly – successful career in music. In the early 80s she broke into the American Christian Music market in a big way, which as it turns out, is a big market.

She ran for president 14 years ago and has also served as an MEP so is not a complete novice to campaigning, though there were times she gave that impression. She had a meltdown on the Prime Time debate and her early campaign appearances in which she constantly brandished a copy of the Constitution made her easy to caricature. Like Mitchell, her ties to the Church make her a somewhat “unfashionable” candidate in a country that is not quite done with its anti-Catholic backlash.

Her TV meltdown related to yet another tabloid scandal (a story about someone in her family) which again revealed the Stygian depths to which the media will stoop to package and sell sensation. The case is something that should be handled by the family and by the legal system; the glare of the media helps absolutely nobody and risks making the situation even worse for everyone. And there is absolutely no public interest served by running the story unless Dana was implicated in any wrong-doing (which she wasn’t). But hey, if it helps sell copies of The Irish Sun who cares if it’s poisoning our culture? Right?

Anyway, Dana is polling in last place and has been for some time. The tabloids didn’t rob her of support as she never really seemed to have much… but they did make it more difficult for her gain any. Still, she didn’t do herself many favours either. Her strident claims that she would single-handedly wrest our sovereignty back from Europe – at least that was the message she appeared to be conveying – mostly had the effect of demonstrating that she didn’t actually understand the role of the President. McGuinness and Norris might be willing to test the limits of the office, but Dana gave the impression that she didn’t know there were any. On top of that, her calm insistence that the Seal of the Confessional trumps national law and is enshrined by the freedom of religion clauses in the constitution, made her sound like a religious extremist in the Vincent Browne debate.

And there you have it

So those are the seven choices we’re faced with on Thursday. Norris would be by far the best president in my view, but seems unlikely to win. Gallagher looks like he’s heading for a victory, which would surely demonstrate – in the words of David Norris – that the Irish people “haven’t learnt much” from the recent economic disaster. We can only hope that Michael D. Higgins will gain enough second preference votes to pip Gallagher to the post.

Also on Thursday we have a couple of referenda (I’ll be voting ‘No’ on each*) and a by-election, though not in my constituency. There’s definitely a strangeness about the fact that at a time when momentous choices need to be made about the path our society takes into the future, we’re being offered a vote on a largely ceremonial position. Then again, we recently had a general election and the public voted for the current government…

… maybe it’s not such a good idea for us to be making important decisions.

* While I support the notion of Dáil Inquries in principle, constitutional experts have stated that the amendment is badly worded and ill-thought out. And regarding judges pay… yes, they probably get paid too much. But there’s actually a small number of them so the total economic impact is small, whereas there are potential problems with turning their salaries into a future political football… if it undermines the separation of judiciary and legislature even a little bit, it’s not worth the money saved.

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