Dáil Éireann: One Man’s Futility Is Another Man’s Wet Willie

Day 2,050, 20:50 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Arjay Phoenician III

You’re counted as a reader, you might as well vote!

When I told my fellow members of the Dáil Éireann that I was started a thread for Congressional discussion at eIrish University, I got more than my share of rolling eyes. Oh my freaking Dio, Arjay, the national forum is dead for a reason: No one ever goes there. No one bothers. It’s a waste of time to start another forum thread. You know this already, why are you doing this if no one is going to show up?

My answer is, because I feel compelled to try.

When I was elected last week, I thought for sure, after our short hiatus, there would be more enthusiasm for our Congress, and the first-timers would rush over to the dead national forum, get on the Dáil Éireann section, and say, here we are, now what do we do? It wasn’t until I wrote about my disappointment in the lack of action within our Congressional community that I got a few answers to my questions, to which I was given the old IF YOU HAD JUST SHUT UP AND BEEN PATIENT, WE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AROUND TO TELLING YOU.

I cringe if that’s what counts for Irish leadership on the Congressional level, to deflate a first-timer’s enthusiasm by telling him to sit down and shut up until they get around to doing their thing.



The fact that there is no national forum worthy of the title in this country, I understand it, even if I don’t like it. It was sort of a community decision, as seems to be the case with smaller countries around the world. There’s no point in wasting time registering at a forum no one goes to, no one is obliged, everyone can get their information through the newspapers and shouts, and Congress can do its business through group mail.

That’s all well and good, but where’s the transparency?

I mean, this is a game world. We didn’t get elected to some super-duper-double-double-secret organization where we need retina scans to get into the room. We’re not dealing with triple-classified information here. It’s not like I could tell you what we do, but then I’d have to kill you. What’s so damn important that we can’t have a little public discussion?

Oh yeah, because no one cares, Arjay.

Nope. I cannot buy that.



I’m not going to be part of a group that thinks, for whatever reason, it has to segregate itself from the rest of the country. None of us EARNED our Congressional medals. We were picked by our Party Presidents to be put nearer the top of the list, the voters voted for the parties, and game mechanics did the rest. None of us campaigned (well, I did, but that’s another story). Thus, none of us has earned the privilege of closed-door status.

At last check, there are 422 Irish citizens. 29 of them are Congressmen. I am not going to fully honor a status quo that excludes over 90% of Irish citizens from the process. I am a lot of things, but I am not an elitist, and I don’t want our Dáil to be seen as a place where the same two-dozen knuckleheads get in every month, close the door, make deals the rest of the country has to live with, and you generally won’t know about them until after they’ve run their course and possibly screwed up this country even more.

Had I seen more articles on what we’ve been discussing in the group mail, perhaps a point would have been made about keeping the public in the know. Where are they?

I simply will not subscribe to the notion that, because the national forum is a ghost town, there is no one in the country who gives a damn what their semi-elected leaders do with themselves. With only 422 citizens, leadership in this country is in no position to just write off everyone as apathetic.



So I started a simple Dáil Éireann thread. No one in Congress should feel compelled to come along, although they are certainly invited. I plan to take the general discussions we have and post them so other Irishmen can see what we’re talking about. No, I don’t plan to post the super-duper-duper top-secret stuff, but what have we really discussed so far? There was no discussion on the impeachment proposal or the MPP with the US, those occurred before the group mails started. What are we talking about these days?

It’s on the thread. Here’s what you do if you want to go there:

1. Click on the banner for eIrish University, or go to http://eireland-university.freeforums.net/.

2. Go to the School of Political Science. It’s located in the eRepublik University Irish Campus section. The Dáil Éireann thread is there.

And that’s it. That’s all the trouble you have to go through. Register if you want, it’s pretty quick, but no one’s holding a gun to your head.



I don’t care if just one or two Irishmen go to the thread and chime in. That’s one or two more Irishmen than the current understanding of mutual apathy would have produced.



At the end of the day, it may be that no one shows up, and there’s going to be plenty of Congressmen who will sneer at me and give me a big fat WE TOLD YOU SO, and they’ll make it as obnoxious as they possibly can. It will be like the wettest Wet Willie they could stick in my ear. They’ll remind me what a waste of time it was for me to think there’s some number of Irish citizens out there who really would like to know what we talk about.

And I’ll remind them it’s my time to waste. I’d rather use it being idealistic and hopeful instead of jaded and sarcastic. I’d rather try to find a handful of people who are looking for a little activity than just write them all off as apathetic.

It bugs me how national leadership could ever consider such a pursuit, whether it bears fruit or not, a waste.


Belfast Lough Times: Issue #28