Thanks, all, for doing such a good job.

Not half well enough if you ask me. ‘Self-hatred’ may be a bit too strong a word to use but I think a bit more self-analysis and introspection wouldn’t go astray.

“We” (the dreaded “we” again) as a nation are remarkably incurious about our history, our identity, our society and culture, about our place in the world, about what makes us tick as a people. We rarely look beyond the stock answers.

So while I agree that the article was poorly written (I read it with a similiar mind to you), using weak stereotypical examples (and replacing one set of stereotypes with another), I do think there is a lot to be said for the basic premise.

“We” Irish as a nation have a seemingly endless capacity for self deception.

Much of the nonsense is not even exclusively Irish. Take the “Drugs Myth”. Read this horrible claptrap, and weep:

The Drugs Myth
Like sex, we pretend that drugs don’t happen here.We operate a prohibitionist ideology, criminalising and locking up those who are caught buying, selling or simply possessing drugs like cannabis, ecstasy and heroin.(blah blah)

Yes, we and pretty much everybody else in the free world. Where is the myth of a drug free ireland? How we we have laws against drugs if we “pretend that drugs don’t happen here”. We also incarerate far less people per capita than the US, but nobody would say the US has a drug “myth” – that drugs don’t happen there : quite the opposite.

It is easy enough to debunk this crap: try find articles about the ten myths that actually cofirm the headline myths.

To start you off I will write 2 articles which confirm these “myths” – which leave you with 8 to find via google:

Sex In Ireland:

There is no sex in Ireland. People reproduce by dividing.

Drugs in Ireland.

Nobody uses drugs in Ireland: not even Alcohol or coffee, or an asprin.

So off you go..

( this can of argument is called Straw man, i think)

For one thing — the puncturing of our neutrality for the War on Iraq, with
the pathetic excuse of ‘it’ll hurt US investment if we don’t’, was
a terrible thing — a case of selling our morals to the highest bidder.
However, I certainly didn’t assent to it, nor did most of my friends
and family — the right-wing FF/PD government did.

‘We reject all progressive European standards; standards of decent State-funded
education, health and welfare systems, women’s rights, workers’ rights,
secularism, a good public transport system… Instead, we have embraced the
American model.’ Again, not us — the FF/PD government (especially
the PDs with their crazy free-marketeering).

As many USAians are saying nowadays — “I didn’t vote for them”. ;)

(It’d be nice to get them out next time around though, but we’ll
need to get a decent opposition together again, first.)

There is a smugness about “being Irish” that is prevalent, but then I now live in a country (US) that constantly tells itself that its people are the hardest working, most decent in the world..its democracy is the finest thing since the invention of the wheel…its troops are the best fightin’ men….its society is the most whatever.. So, we’re not alone in our blinkers, and it’s always harsh to have the mirror speak back.

But more than that, I find it tedious that the authors start a list of home truths by worrying what foreigners think, as if external approval were the most important barometer of cultural health. Which seems like part of the problem they’re diagnosing!