When a Country Deserts Its People

What 100 euro for a taxi says about Ireland

I recently returned from Ireland, my homeland, to Madrid, the place I call home at the present time. It was great to be back, if only for a short spell. And, as opposed to last time, my departure went as smooth as you like.

If you’re curious about the last time, I was on my way back to Moscow, which entailed a 24-hour trip, and had an awful experience trying to leave with both my carry-on bags being stopped. One was flagged because I may have hidden something inside the cheddar cheese I was bringing back by means of melting it down (the mind boggles) and the other for some other equally unconscionable infraction.

Dublin Airport became a nightmare for a time after covid as a lot of good staff were let go, and this, coupled with the police state that is modern flying, meant I got the worse possible send-off from the country I was born in.

This time though, my departure was smooth as silk and I was happy as Larry. One thing did change for the worse, however — the fare for the taxi to the airport. It has now gone through the roof; it was already rattling the rafters before.

It is one hundred of Europe’s finest to go 27km as the crow flies/45km as the taximan fleeces his customers. Insane!

The price of a taxi from my hometown of Bray is now 100 euro (a little over actually, but the driver in his infinite mercy let me off a few euro after saying it would be around 90). It is one hundred of Europe’s finest to go 27km as the crow flies/45km as the taximan fleeces his customers. Insane!

Of course, it isn’t the driver’s fault, although he should have charged me the 90 he said at the start. It’s the fault of dumb duplicitous politicians who coldly impose anything and everything on their people right up until it all blows up in their faces. They bend over backwards for big business and the power games of the US Government and not one measly inch for 90% of our populations.

Another day another dollar. A rising tide lifts all boats. The invisible hand of the market. Too big to fail.

They give us platitude and proselytism to make us believe that prices have to tick up because everything has to tick forward and that’s just the natural way of the world. It is as if we’re talking about immutable forces like gravity and evolution and not talking about humans managing the lives of other humans.

It isn’t the natural order of the world. This the language of the weasel who wants to weasel out of responsibility by blaming it all on the natural and the supernatural.

They give us platitude and proselytism to make us believe that prices have to tick up because everything has to tick forward and that’s just the natural way of the world.

Modern human society is highly complex and highly dynamic and no one understands economics or politics in any deep sense, otherwise such a person would be able to precisely and predictably foresee the future. Nonetheless, certain people make certain choices which privilege the wishes of the few over the needs of the many.

Irish governments back the big, never the little

Irish governments consistently back big business over the little guy.

This was most infamously reflected in the bailout of Irish banks in 2010. And it continues up to the present day with the same two parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, lifting the eviction ban just a few days ago which threatens to make thousands homeless. The ban had prevented landlords from turfing tenants out on to the street, and, in case you don’t know, Ireland has a huge housing problem and huge problem with homelessness.

The same Irish governments turn a blind eye to the US’s social engineering wars in the Middle East, which have killed and displaced millions upon millions.

At the same time, our governments ignore every single action the US has taken to provoke the war between Russia and Ukraine and then go along with the rigorously enforced narrative that the war was somehow, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, wholly ‘unprovoked’.

What’s good for the US is most definitely not always good for Europe, yet Irish foreign policy boils down to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, as far as the United States is concerned.

Our government can’t go along with the sanctions placed on Russia fast enough even when it’s to the detriment of Ireland and the majority of Irish people. What’s good for the US is most definitely not always good for Europe, yet Irish foreign policy boils down to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, as far as the United States is concerned.

If the Biden Administration said that China had prevailed upon a superintelligent alien to side with them in all future conflicts, the Irish Government would ask how many eyes it has and be handing out posters the next morning to prove it was true.

This privileging of banks, landlords and transnationals, on the one hand, and going along with whatever insanity the US cooks up to safeguard its continuing ascendency and ostensibly the ‘free’ world, on the other, has helped to make Ireland one of the most expensive countries in the world. Our GDP per capita is ridiculously high, but sadly most of Ireland pays rents that are beyond what it can easily afford and many Irish people struggle to even make ends meet and survive.

What happens when a country runs away from the vast majority of its own citizens? What happens when governments desert their citizens and throw them to the dogs?

What happens when a country deserts its citizens?

The USA is a massive trendsetter. By virtue of its power and success, people look to it for leadership. This seems to be an innate feature of the human animal, for better and for worse. Much like people will follow a tall man wearing a suit across a pedestrian crossing because they subconsciously attribute a certain level of knowledge and awareness to this sort of person, much in the same way countries and companies emulate America.

The USA is also a massive trend-enforcer. By virtue of the very same power, it involves itself in all areas of the globe, punishing, rewarding and bending nations to its will and perpetuating the status quo, all for the benefit of its ideologues, its hawks and its business elites.

The US is gargantuan compared to a country like Ireland. Regardless, it’s still the best place to start to see what happens when a state deserts its people.

The Democrats and Republicans are right and righter; or dumb and dumber to give them their proper moniker.

America has been dragged firmly and continuously to the right in economic terms over the last fifty odd years. The Democrats and Republicans are right and righter; or dumb and dumber to give them their proper moniker.

A few little facts to adduce this sad state of affairs:

In the 1950s, a typical CEO earned 20 times more than an average worker in their company. In 2021, the same CEO took in around 400 times more, again in relation to someone working at their company. Either the performances of CEOs have gone stratospheric and they’ve found gold dust up in the heavens or big business has managed to ensconce itself in the right positions to line its own pockets.

For average folks, the polar opposite is true. In terms of purchasing power, average real wages have barely budged since the sixties. Are everyday folks doing a shittier job or deserving of less? No, they’re working longer hours with more family members in jobs. There’s also supposedly more money than ever, but it’s not going to those that need it.

The fat are getting ever fatter and the system works to satisfy their ever-growing gluttony.

America as a system and way of life has been hijacked by small groups of people. It really doesn’t matter so much if they’re cackling behind closed doors at how they’ve hoodwinked the rabble; the effect is the same.

It is sometimes said that policy is made to suit the top most-influential 20% of the electorate. This estimate must be getting towards 1% and 2% for the US now.

So, what happens when you stretch society like this? Well, you get more instability, more unpredictability, more disillusionment, more extreme thinking, and everything starts to tear at the seams.

This eventually led to an election between a hatemonger and a warmonger and the hatemonger won.

Donald Trump is both a symptom and a driver of this process. The Dems and Reps have been steadily walking to the right for the last fifty years whilst forever arguing about the grass on whatever foot of land they happen to be standing on. This eventually gave rise to an election between a hatemonger and a warmonger and the hatemonger won.

Enough of the people had had enough and went with a pied piper. There are without doubt real racist and cultural aspects to this, but one would be unwise to discount the deep socioeconomic forces that brought Trump to power. They are very real and only becoming worse and worse.

They say that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, but there is nothing funny about such madness.

And then the Democrats got back in. And what did they do? They blamed everything on Russia and the stupidity of some American people and went right back to their policies of wanking off Wall Street (which Trump did too) and poking bears and slapping dragons. They say that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, but there is nothing funny about such madness.

Society is never going to be close to equal in socioeconomic terms and humans and governments are never going to be fully rational and fully aware in terms of the outcomes their decisions will lead to. But, and it’s a big but, when you consistently and unrelentingly privilege the interests of a very narrow segment of the population and pay for this privilege by imposing the costs on the rest of us, your reward will eventually be the breakdown of the economy and political system you purport to care about so much about.

Perhaps this now is the American political system: two diseases, the status quo and the pied piper, both of which claim to be the cure for the other, but instead of curing anything, all they do is cause one another and make the US sicker and sicker. And it seems there are many more Trumps and a million heartless centrists (in American terms) to keep the whole thing spinning round.

When will Ireland get its own Trump? The system has already deserted its people and it can only be a matter of time.