Avoid the Papers.

The general reaction here to Trump and Brexit is one of shock, especially among the middle-class who can’t understand how it has all come about.  Hypocrisy reigns.  When it’s not ranting hysterically about the state of things, the establishment is keen to prostrate itself – ostensibly on behalf of the Irish population – in front of the demagogues.

Talk of the usual bowl of shamrock for Trump from Enda Kenny and an invitation to Ireland. In Europe and the US, the collapse of the so-called centre and the resulting re-emergence of the left, has been met with the reaction of the far-right (or alt-right as those pseudo-fascists are now being called – euphemism also reigns.  Newspeak.  Alt-truth, post-truth, ‘Ignorance is strength’).  The liberals seem to detest Trump, but they despise Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and the socialist movements even more, whom they ridicule when they’re not ignoring.  They use every method to undermine sincere alternatives that threaten their status-quo, even moderate alternatives like Bernie Sanders.  The Irish Examiner has published articles claiming the threat to Irish democracy comes from the left and not the far-right.  Other papers have written virtually the same.  Why analyse politics properly when two ideas can be portrayed as two sides of the same coin.  Ignorance is strength.  Evidence is not needed for their purpose.  The liberal part of the establishment, once again it seems, will sacrifice all social progress and reform for the sake of maintaining economic class divisions and their privileged part within those classes, just as it did in the early 20th-century with Spain and Germany.  ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy…’

I wrote to my expatriate father:

It’s all quite surreal at times.  Orwellian.  It may be best to avoid the papers.