Waiting for disappointment.

There is nothing the Irish like more than a good betrayal. As a people, the idea of being screwed over by someone else, whether it is the British, the banks, the IMF or our own potatoes, delivers in us a masochistic pleasure, allowing us to  believe ourselves to not be masters of our own destiny, but instead, the pitiful plaything of other greater forces. Many an Irishman gets no greater pleasure than, as the jackboot of the oppressor pushes his face into the cold wet soil, he gives the oppressor the dirtiest scowl he has ever received! Let him go back to his big house and better living standards knowing that we have scrabbled in our own filth and shook our fist in his direction (when he wasn’t looking, of course)!

Already, yesterday, before the new government has even been sworn in, I encountered someone who is “disappointed” with the new government. Before they are even the new government! Yet even as I dismissed the criticism, I know in my own heart that I’m just waiting to be disappointed by Enda and Co. Not by their inability to transform the country’s economic situation, which is something over which they will only have limited control, but that shadow over the face moment when they become the establishment and step quietly away from the stuff they spoke with passion about in opposition. I’m waiting for that moment when they start to actively sabotage political reform, or at worst defang it so that it becomes meaningless. Watch as local government reform gradually gets watered down, or as the constitutional convention gets packed with people who are all for putting symbolic stuff into the constitution, but don’t change the voting system or the balance between voters and the state. Watch as the Dail remains answerable to the Government, not the other way around.

Maybe I’m a cynic. They are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and maybe they will surprise us by, for example, nominating people from outside the Dail (like Pat Cox) as ministers. If they do, they deserve credit for it, and get it (from me) they shall.

2 thoughts on “Waiting for disappointment.

  1. Oh, they are low, don’t worry. I have given up on relying upon others for happiness.

  2. Ah, come on Jason, surely the PDs broke your heart? You’re not going to let Enda do it all over again. Keep your expectations low. No lower. Alas, alack, where’s that jackboot?

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