Sometimes running a blog like Gombeen Nation can be a bit like ploughing a lonely furrow. Given the blog's constant criticism of Irish orthodoxy, it's never going to be a hit with "de people" as such.
"De people", you see, are not given to questioning the conjured-up, mythical definition of Irishness used by our ruling class to establish their nation state's borders back in 1922. They are not used to questioning anything – that is the trouble.
"De people" are a bit thick, to be honest – dulled and cowed by a rote education system that sends half-literate, semi-numerate gobshites to under-achieving universities to be processed as pillars, and perpetuators, of the establishment themselves.
"De people" are a bit thick, to be honest – dulled and cowed by a rote education system that sends half-literate, semi-numerate gobshites to under-achieving universities to be processed as pillars, and perpetuators, of the establishment themselves.
The country's founders such as Dev were reactionary cultural nationalists, they founded their infant - some might say errant - state on a platform of neo-gaelicism, steeped with conservative Catholicism. And natural forces help anyone who lay beyond the field of this narrow vision, such as it was.
They founded a state where a docile, unthinking, unquestioning public kow-towed to their betters, and acquiesced in the torture, abuse or outright murder of thousands of children in its education system, in its industrial schools, and in its Magdalene Laundries.
"De people" blame the Church now, as the state considers that to be acceptable nowadays. This gets the polticians and the Irish people off the hook quite nicely, they think. But the Irish state and the Irish people were ultimately responsible for all of the atrocities cited above.
A journalist going by the nom-de-guerre of Tomás Mac Glasáin has written a comprehensive, and highly readable, proposal for an uncompromising book tackling the issues above. He is in the process of finding a publisher at the moment, which I sincerely hope he does.
There is a fair bit of reading in this, so I suggest you print out each chapter and peruse them at your leisure.
You will find it worthwhile.
Little Skeletons by Tomás Mac Glasáin
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16 comments:
I thank you this, as Mrs Taxpayer
will agree that I am parsimonious to the extent of finding the 2 euro shops an extravagance. I purchased for One Euro and 45 cents at Dealz the discount store, whom I have been informed are also in Blanchardstown, a most excellent read, "Why We Lie: The Source of our Disasters" by Dorothy Rowe. This deals with the psycholgy of the lie on a political and cultural context.
"But the Irish state and the Irish people were ultimately responsible for all of the atrocities cited above." Exactly, and that's the problem. NO ONE SAID, STOP. THE IRISH NATION, PEOPLE AND STATE ARE AN UNMITIGATED DISGRACE. ANYONE SAYING OTHERWISE IS A FOOL, OF THE WORST ORDER. It's probably one of the most offensive characteristics of the Irish that they do not FULLY understand and recognize genuine pain when they come across it. DESPICABLE.
The real tragedy now is, from a societal level, is, the opportunity as a Nation to genuinely change, has been lost forever. Anything State or Meeja led to attempt to redress the balance, will only be too little too late. It would of course fool the majority of the people, as it always does, but it won't change REALITY.
As a Nation, it can't be fixed until the cultural psyche completely changes. And that won't happen. The virus just mutates, to another available source of power and influence. The perpetrators of the crimes were IRISH, the PROBLEM in this particular case, is the UNDERLYING CULTURE both in 4 million Irish minds and within the Vatican City.
Look at the REALITY, these crimes against Humanity were perpetrated from the foundation of the State up until the 1990's. What took over from the early part of that later decade of the 20th century, in the Irish context? Rampant economic insanity.
Some achivement to have as a legacy for the last 100 years a Culture which has refined the terms UNTRUSTWORTHY, CALLOUS, SPITEFUL, MALICIOUS and RESENTFUL. The last one being the main motivational factor on the Island. With the Irish, all you need to know is, the insane took over the asylum.
thanks for this posting GM. Am working through the chapters. This ain't gonna end well i fear. Keep up the brilliant work, so many rocks to inspect under - more power to your elbow. PB
@ Taxpayer. Thanks for that - will check it out. Glad to save you and the missus a few cent!
@ Dakota. The thing is, we live in a place that came into being by defining itself by what it is not... ie, British. And that seems to be enough for many. Mad, eh?
@ Ponyboy. Cheers, my man. I think you will appreciate it as much as I did. I just want the guy to get a publisher, so I can read the rest!
GM Ireland was always the real deal when it came to psychological perspectives (many of which based on cattle movements and tribal boundaries). What's produced? A crude inferiority complex, a type of Nationalistic Penis envy, perhaps? An internalised open season on innocence (now heightened by post modern pap and pulp) and the ultimate destruction of the self? Yes all of the above.
GM, true to say the birth of the national identity was essentially British, with such Administrative processes as the Law systems remaining within this sphere of influence. While simultaneously adopting the myths and values (largely associated with poverty and backwardness some fifty years previously) of an imagined past.
A uniquely Irish split with the national psyche beginning to be completely dominated by power values from 1922 onwards.
Essentially the hegemony began to further degrade into confusion, as the newly formed State, continued to champion an ethos which promoted reproduction, with zero prospects for all outside the power loop. The GOMBEEN was given free reign...What was "produced" was labeled pathetically God's Little Mistakes and were literally thrown to beasts to be devoured. All very unsettling but REALITY NONETHELESS.
If you had wealth and influence and toed the line (didn't matter too much what Religion you happened to be, by and large) you were safe, if you hadn't and didn't then you would have been better off - in real terms - back in the Empire or Commonwealth. Yet fascinatingly the population as a whole either didn't care, fully believed, or liked the horse crap they were feed, on a daily basis. Somewhat unique. A REALITY carried on into Post Modern Ireland, with relish.
The administrative power may have resided in Dublin GM, but the individual psychological perspective, or Gestalt, began to radically shift west of the Shannon. The inevitable Cultural Cringe which was, and is, a phenomenon of most post colonial nations, has not only produced, in Ireland, some of the worst popular entertainment ever inflicted on a population, (alternative Irish comedy, music etc) it has merged with an over indulgent superiority complex, based on further false premises, myth and downright lies. Although uniquely Irish, it has to be said, it is ultimately distructive to the individual. The indicators are there for all to see, a staggeringly poor mental health record, an unquestioning servile race, a materially addicted population, a welfare system open to international abuse and a propensity to leave the country when the economic climate changes.
GM.
I'm shocked that you are so easily duped.
Tomás Mac Glasáin - an obvious gaelgoir. I mean even now he is probably printing leaflets to drop on us from his little heinkel 111.
As you have so often pointed out, you can't believe a word these gaelgoirs say. No, only those with a true love of the Queens English can be trusted.
Godsave McQueen
@ Dakota. "The administrative power may have resided in Dublin GM, but the individual psychological perspective, or Gestalt, began to radically shift west of the Shannon". Yes, D. The policy of Gaelicising the civil service saw to that.
@ "Godsave McQueen". Hope you were out enjoying those street parties. I suggest you might have read our "gaeilgoir's" text before you commented.
Thanks for that I will certainly read it – and has he tried Apple tree Press Belfast? They published this:
‘Children of the Poor Clares’- published by Apple tree press Belfast by 2 NI journalists in the late 80’s: I came across this book in a bargain bin in a NI bookshop at the time (50P), noted with interest that the publisher was in NI (though the 1940’s orphanage fire where 35 kids died in a fire due to negligence of the nuns- (who all escaped themselves) was in Monaghan. The writers touched not just on this place – but on others, all in South of Ireland, and touched briefly on the illegal Magdalene laundry Prisons- where 'sinners' worked for nothing. I read it with shock and sadness-and thought it was just a few isolated places- I did not realise there was a Gulag- but the revelations which came later did not totally shock me then. I picked it up in an NI bookshop- so did Easons or any other wholesaler Ever sell it down here? Because when I did a web search for it last year, a comment from the authors came up on the Magdalene site: one of the 2 ( NI) authors said it was published in Belfast, as in the late 80’s ( we are talking even after 1987) NO publisher down here would Touch it.Try these websites:
http://www.appletree.ie/cat/books/9172.htm
http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/
In fact why doesn’t GN give the Magdalenes a Permanent link- I think a report on them is now being down and they are upping their campaign for justice- they never were in the residential homes reports or redress schemes- as they were looked upon as adults. Some said they had No idea why they were in carcerated- one teenager was the daughter of an unmarried mother- so when she started seeing a young man, without her even being pregnant, 2 nuns dragged her into a car and locked her in one of these places for months, to save her from ‘contamination’- its Father Ted X The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As for complicity: I read a newspaper letter in the last 1-2 yrs. This lady was mid sixties victim of Fr Brendan Smyth. She actually was at a normal respectable boarding school, IE where parents paid fees, not a borstal. Fr Smyth would turn up every Sunday. The nuns were told get a line of girls ready (purpose not stated). He’d pick one, go off to a room and rape her. Never once did the nuns query what he was up to, though I'M sure it was Obvious- - if I’d been one of them, I’d have waited a few minutes, then burst in with a camera. Cowardice and self interest was well bred in the people- after all if you said anything, in this catholic class obsessed edifice, would you get a job? Would your children get a school place? Etc...
Sorry for the delay in publishing Anna. Thanks for the comments.
thanks for this GM man- fascinating- I have spent all eve reading it all- deserves a publisher-Anna
up to 'tribal elders' Jesus - what a read
It certainly does, Anna.
Yes PB... something else, isn't it? No point in being good with that religious franchise, so you might as well be baaaadd!
Anna - I can give you an even better Magdalen story - apparently a young woman in a Cork town in the 1960s was imprisoned in a Magdalen gulag for the crime of ... learning yoga while abroad.
We definitely do a have a problem here with the truth. 40% of the voting population colluded with the last government and returned them into power not just once but twice. Some of the political charades played out in the last election were cringeworthy beyond belief - so-called "socialists" opposing a property tax on the middle class in a country with 100,000 people on social housing lists and an "average" rent price of more than 40% of the average take home pay cheque, "Gilmore for Taoiseach" when Labour had no hope whatsoever of winning anywhere near a majority at any point in their campaign, "Labours way or Frankfurts way" - need we laugh at that one even more, the rise of Sinn Fein despite the fact that their previously won constituencies have decayed into even greater levels of deprivation once SF takeover the local political scene and drive out common sense, and my personal favourite, the farce that is played out by the unholy alliance of the trade unions, the pro-poverty industry and pretend charities that are riddled with careerist fat cats on corporate style pay packages mysteriously connected to the bloated pay rates of civil servants....
Meanwhile, the "civil rights" issue of the day is what? Its "gay marriage"..... Jesus wept.
Thanks GM, Anna,ponyboy, Dakota ... until lately Ivé been undecided in wanting to return to live in Ireland or move to S. Europe. Fears from my childhood memories and your vital contributions have confirmed my decision .... Lisbon.
Good luck to you Philip... and keep tuning in. If only out of sympathy for we poor sods!!
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