A foreigner’s view on Ireland political situation

Day 1,380, 03:56 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by F. Castro
Part 1: on unity and political stabilization

First of all, let me start by saying that, ofcourse, eIreland is not the only place in the eworld that from time to time, political quarrels make their appearance, disrupting unity, driving people out of the country etc etc. This pretty much happens everywhere. Everywhere, besides the comment and article battles, there are voices of reason, calling for unity in these hard times, putting asides differences and working all together. This seems a little naïve, but the case here is: can we have unity?



Let me start with another question? What does “unity” mean? And should we have it? Well, in my opinion, unity is a really different thing than the “we are all Irish (or eIrish, as I am not rl Irish) so we should be united”. Nor does unity mean, “don’t fight each other, don’t argue, don’t disagree, we are all together in this”. Unity in an e-country has little to do with nationality. For me, it has more to do with democracy.

I am not ofcourse accusing the government of being totalitarian or undemocratic in any case. I do believe though, that in an e-country, especially in a respectively small one in population like eIreland, the key of forging a national unity is give people the right to participate in every move their country does. A government that does what our’s did with Belgium destroys unity, not because this is a wrong decision (we ‘ll get to that in the 2nd part), but because citizens realize that they have no say, they are not asked about anything and a bunch of people run everything. So they are left out. So they actually have the Irish citizenship, but besides that they can do little to organize their game with other citizens: they just have to sit and wait for decisions and orders. And when these orders are incorrect or challenged by a group of people, then the fighting begins.

What I am saying is that unity is something good, but it can not be built on the common nationality or e-nationality. It can be forged when all people are equal in this country, participate in the governing of the country and through that, realize that they can all work together as they have the same interests.

Part 2: on the attack at Belgium

There has been a lot of talk about that subject. There are 2 points I would like to make. First of all, in my opinion, strategically, this was a bad move. Besides that there was no point in attacking Belgium (we just added people to our list of enemies), there was no gain from that. None in resources, none in warfare, as the Brits were invading Ireland. The problem with the Belgium thing is that there is another parameter, far more harmful for Ireland than making the wrong decisions and getting wiped out again.

Ireland is small, but it has a very good reputation in the e-world as a country with proud, funny and hospitable people, ready to stand for every ally, despising betrayals and back stabbings, helping others everytime they can. Attacking Belgium the way we did actually not only brings shame on the country, but weakens our place in the diplomatic sphere, as it damages the trust and good opinions of others on Ireland. Strategically, we lost both battles that day. What we lost on our reputation though, we shall see it soon.