Road Rage

“ ‘EU Would Never Betray Us’ Confirms [Irish] Government Forgetting Bank Crash”
 —Headline in the Irish satirical newspaper Waterford Whispers, January 23

After I returned from a year in South America and took care of a few commitments at home in California, I traveled to the Pacific Northwest for an extended visit with my old childhood friend Eric. It had been a couple years since we had spent any time together, and in the meantime, he had moved north with the rest of his family for a new start. They had become owners and operaters of an old-fashioned general store and gas station in a rural area. Eric still had his penchant for American-made muscle cars, and after work in the evening, he would drive me around the local backroads. As he laid rubber on pavement wherever he could and executed maneuvers resminiscent of the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt, I quickly came to realize that Eric was in fact living out his own Dukes of Hazzard fantasy. As he made sudden turns onto side roads and performed well-practiced hairpin turns on the mostly empty roads, he explained that the local sheriff deputies all knew his car and were anxious to track him down and arrest him but they simply could not keep up with him or outsmart him.

He did not tell me this with a wink or any other sign of a joke. He clearly believed it. We did occasionally spy a sheriff’s car on the road, but as far as I could tell, the deputies had no particular interest in us. Yet Eric was convinced that they and he were engaged in some desperate Smokey and the Bandit duel to the death. Always a nervous passenger in Eric’s car, I did not argue with him. I simply participated in the charade as I carefully checked my seatbelt one more time. It seemed clear that Eric was delusional, but how could I really be certain? Maybe I was the one who could not see what was going on around me. Maybe Eric’s crazy driving really was the only thing keeping us out of a night in the pokey.

There is a point to this story. One’s grip on reality is always a tenuous thing. As in the parable about the blind men and the elephant, we only perceive a portion of everything that goes on in the universe. When it comes to politics and world events, we are at the mercy of our news sources. If we do not read or hear about something, then to all intents and purposes it did not happen. We tend to fill in the gaps according our own individual experiences and our own expectations. Information which does not conform to our expectations tends to get filtered out. News that conforms and supports our biases looms large, mainly because we seek it out to confirm those biases. While Eric perceived a daring cat-and-mouse game with law enforcement, I looked at the same reality and experienced nothing more than a bracing, sometimes-harrowing drive through the countryside.

There is a further point to the story. What is currently going on in Europe and in the United States reeks to high heaven of people looking to the same elephant with entirely different filters. I’ll leave the American situation for later, as it will be interesting to see if any realities merge in the wake of the now-complete Mueller report. In the meantime, let us look at the UK situation.

The Brexit melodrama has been, at turns, fascinating and frustrating, as seen from the Irish media market. Needless to say, the Irish have all kinds of baggage when it comes to the British that affects how journalists and politicians see the situation. On one hand, there is some eight centuries of cultural, political, linguistic and military domination. On the other hand, there is the Irish establishment’s complete buy-in and commitment to the vision of European unification. This means that this small republic, which shares an island with its former colonial master, doggedly views the situation through the mindset of Brussels rather than of London. This creates the strange situation where the single thorniest issue caused by Brexit—what will happen with the border between the republic and Northern Ireland—is being negotiated between London and not the republic (which fought tenaciously for many years for sovereignty) but with an administration that was elected only indirectly and dominated by much larger countries on the European continent.

This is where the filters come in. The Irish media report as if the Irish government is somehow a crucial player in the Brexit negotiations. It is not. The republic has no control of its own land border because it has ceded its authority in such matters to Europeans in Brussels.

Meanwhile in Britain, the most incredible display has played out among the political class. A quick summary: In 2013 David Cameron secured his reelection as prime minister by promising a referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union. When the referendum was held in 2016, to everyone’s surprise, a scant majority voted to leave. Cameron, who had opposed his own referendum, resigned and was replaced by Theresa May, who had also been on the Remain side. She has since done her best to negotiate an agreement with the EU that would provide the least amount of disruption to trade and travel. Her agreement—or any agreement for that matter—is optional. Absent an agreement, the UK would simply revert to a state with no established cooperation with the rest of Europe.

Here is where the filters come in for Brexit. People who were in favor of remaining have opposed May’s agreement because they hate Brexit. In their movie she is the one causing Brexit. People who were in favor of leaving have opposed her agreement because they think it keeps the UK tied too closely to the EU. In their movie the PM is ruining Brexit, but at least the Brexiteers are somewhat consistent. They actually want a hard Brexit. The Remainers, on the other hand, are just taking a situation they hate and are making it worse. The opposition Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn—less a faction that bolted because Corbyn is an unreconstructed Marxist and an anti-semite—opposes everything May does because the sole objective of Corbyn (who, as it happens, was on the Leave side) is to get power any way he can. In his movie May is all that stands between him and full authoritarian domination. As for the Irish media, they reflexively do what they have always done: heap scorn on the Conservative prime minister—even though her agreement is actually in Ireland’s best interest. In their movie May is Margaret Thatcher.

At this point it is hard to see any outcome other than a hard Brexit—the one thing most people say they do not want. The political establishments and the media are like passengers in a car hurtling down the rural backroads unable to agree on what movie they in, let alone on how to get to a happy ending.

Through the Brexit Looking Glass

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
 —Philip K. Dick, in the short story “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”

Why should you never rely on just a single news source? Because, of course, you get only one perspective, but more importantly, because it is much more entertaining to read two or more.

Here is a good example. A headline today from the UK state broadcaster (the BBC): “Brexit: May looks for way to break deadlock.” A contemporaneous excerpt from a news item from the Irish state broadcaster (which no one calls “the” RTÉ): “Mrs May is to set out her next steps to build a Commons majority for a Brexit deal amid signs she is still unwilling to give ground on her central demands.”

Both takes are technically accurate, but together they demonstrate how nuance can influence news reporting. Neither broadcaster would be known for sympathetic treatment of a Conservative prime minister, but here the BBC does at least approach the story in terms of the difficulty—if not impossiblity—for any leader to bridge the gap between the European Union and her own government. RTÉ’s reporting, on the other hand, focuses entirely on the position of the Irish government (which is understandable enough) and how Teresa May’s apparent new strategy is incompatible with it. The result is that the BBC makes the British PM look a politician in a difficult position, while RTÉ makes her look stubborn and unreasonable.

This marks something of a change. Up until now, Irish coverage of May’s efforts have uniformly portrayed her as incompetent and hapless. Perhaps this is reflexive, given Ireland and Britain’s problematic joint history and Ireland’s experiences with female Tory PMs in particular. To this day, on-air Irish journalists cannot utter the name Margaret Thatcher without a noticeable, visceral frisson wafting through the studio. Their treatment of May seems particularly odd, though, to someone like myself who considers himself an objective observer. The fact is that the prime minister’s recent ordeal of undergoing a humuliating defeat over her negotiated deal with Brussels followed by a further humiliating no-confidence vote was all in the service of trying to implement the very deal that the Irish government—and presumably most Irish people—wanted. It would have given Britain more or less the same status as Norway, which is not an EU member but which enjoys many of the same economic and trade benefits that EU members enjoy. It would have kept the UK and Ireland in a common customs union, thereby avoiding the problem of this island being divided rigidly into different customs areas. Irish politicians were cheering (if that is the right word) her on, but RTÉ just kept shaking its head and muttering, “What a sad, old duck.” Seeing a Tory politician roundly humbled seemed to take precedence over Irish economic interests.

To be fair, though, Brexit has everyone thoroughly confused. You could see it on the night of the big Brexit vote in Parliament. After May’s deal crashed and burned at Westminster, TV crews did their usual vox pop among the rabble gathered outside, and everyone—I mean, absolutely everyone—was thrilled and ecstatic. It did not matter which side of the question they fell on. Remainers were joyous because they thought this somehow meant that Brexit would not happen. Leavers were happy because they thought May’s deal, in keeping the UK entwined with the EU, defeated the whole point of Brexit. When people with totally opposing views on a question both think they have won, either one or the other or both are is out of touch with reality.

No one seems more confused than the Irish, including their media. The politicians pontificate and make pronouncements and go through all the motions of being part of the negotiations, and yet Ireland—which more than any other country beside Britain will be changed by Brexit—is a mere bystander. The negotiations are entirely between London and Brussels. You could argue that the EU is not even negotiating. It has simply issued its terms. It looks determined to see Britain thoroughly punished lest any other uppity EU member try the same thing. The one issue that might actually have been a concern for Europe, the question of the EU/UK border in Ireland, was taken off the table almost immediately by May in agreeing to the famous “backstop”—a term that has become increasingly annoying, not only because of its over-use but also for the fact that most people do not seem to know what it is. (It is meant to be a guarantee that there will be no “hard” border between Northern Ireland and the republic.) Using that border as a bargaining chip may have been distasteful, but it was really the only leverage May had going into the talks. Her situation is further complicated by the fact that her perpetually-teetering government is propped up by an anachronistic Unionist party that is hardline pro-Brexit even though it exists in a province likely to suffer the most from a hard Brexit.

This entire preposterous situation comes down to a few awkward facts to which most of the local media seem blind. One is that Ireland, which struggled for centuries to get out from under the yoke of Britain, has happily handed over its sovereignty and its key decision-making to people in Brussels. Another is that the UK is Ireland’s largest trading partner and that, in the long run, the much-larger UK will do a lot better economically on its own than Ireland will if there are a bunch of barriers thrown up between it and the UK.

This is what can happen when you base your political positions on which politicians you personally like or dislike and ignore facts that are simply too inconvenient to contemplate.

Reality TV Insurgency

“Local Man Suddenly an Expert on US Midterm Elections”
 —Headline in the Irish satirical newspaper Waterford Whispers, November 8

Did the results of the U.S. midterm elections brighten your day and put a spring in your step? Or did they make you shake your head and wonder what is wrong with the country? If it’s any consolation, every country has its quirks and strangeness that seem to be brought out and put into high relief during political campaigns.

Someone in Galway has fun with one of the
elfin Michael D.’s campaign posters

The Irish media paid a lot of attention to the U.S. midterms and, as usual, since the media here are pretty much dominated by the state broadcaster, the coverage was pretty much from the same kind of perspective as, say, PBS or NPR in the States. In other words, Democrats were treated as distant relatives and Republicans were regarded as alien creatures. For me personally, the coverage provided more opportunities to field questions from acquaintances and in-laws, like “How is it again that Hillary Clinton could get the most votes and still not become president?”

Ireland went through its own election a few weeks ago, although, unlike the U.S., it was not to fill seats in the national legislature. It was for the presidency plus a referendum on a proposed constitutional amendment. In an email to a friend in Seattle, I joked that Ireland is going to hell in a hand-basket because, after recently legalizing same-sex marriage and abortion, Irish voters have now decriminalized blasphemy.

That’s right. Up to now blasphemy has been a crime in Ireland. It is the kind of thing that is easy to joke about but, as we know from recent reports of a Christian woman spending years on death row in Pakistan, it is not always a laughing matter. Three years ago, Britain’s multi-talented Stephen Fry made some unflattering about the Christian God on an Irish television program and, because someone filed a formal complaint, the Irish police were obliged to go through the motions of an investigation. He was not charged.

The proposed constitutional amendment was not particularly controversial, and it passed with a 65-percent majority. There were, however, voices suggesting that maybe a law banning speech offensive to religious practitioners may not necessarily be a bad thing. I suspect these were thinking as much—or perhaps even more—about religions other than Christianity. Some would be nervous about those willing to take blasphemy enforcement into their own hands. Multiple attempted murders of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who mocked the prophet Mohammad, come to mind. It was striking at the time how many Europeans were actually ready to blame the artist himself for his own near-demise.

As for the Irish presidency, there was no surprise that the incumbent Michael D. Higgins received 56 percent the vote—and that was in a field of six. Because the post is largely ceremonial, it draws no seriously ambitious politicians but rather a quirky collection of individuals, each with his or her own idiosyncratic reasons for running. The only political party to nominate a candidate was Sinn Féin, the political remnant of the Provisional IRA. Higgins, a longtime Labour officeholder, nominated himself. The others had to get endorsements from various local authorities to get on the ballot. By a weird coincidence, three of the candidates were entrepreneurs who had all appeared on a reality TV program called Dragons’ Den. (Could they possibly have been encouraged by the 2016 U.S. election?) Of all the candidates, the one who created the most buzz was 61-year-old Derry-born businessman Peter Casey. His support shot up from 2 percent to 23 percent, earning him a strong second place finish in the election, after he was roundly criticized for comments he made about the Traveller community.

The Traveller thing is one of those subjects that is hard to explain to someone who has not lived in Ireland, and I am by no means an expert. My best understanding, however, is that they are essentially a subculture within the Irish culture. That is, DNA-wise they are no different than other indigenous Irish people, but as a group they have lived separately with their own customs and a nomadic lifestyle for as long as four centuries. Some Travellers are “settled” in public housing. Others camp at “halting sites” provided by local authorities. Others simply park their caravans wherever they find an open space, in other words squatting. They make up less than one percent of the Irish population and generally have lower education and quality-of-life statistics. Last year they were granted official recognition as their own ethnic group.

Casey’s comments were in response to a group of Travellers’ refusal to move into brand-new social housing offered to them in County Tipperary because there were no stables for their horses. Casey asserted that Travellers are not really an ethnic minority and that they are “basically people camping on someone else’s land” who are “not paying their fair share of taxes in society.” The latter point is arguable, while the former point seems technically accurate to me, albeit insensitively stated. Given the condemnation and charges of racism that were rained on him, one might understand if Casey felt he was running afoul of some kind of latter-day, politically-correct blasphemy prohibition.

Inevitably, Casey was immediately compared to Donald Trump. While Casey is much more pleasant and amiable than the U.S. president, he does share a knack for provoking powerful reactions from modern liberals while others think he is only stating the obvious.

With the election over, Casey amazed people by expressing his intention to become Taoiseach, i.e prime minister, which would be a much more consequential job than the mere presidency. That goal seems fanciful given his lack of party support and the resistance of Ireland’s entrenched and close-knit political establishment. On the other hand, Trump’s quest for the presidency two and a half years ago seemed pretty fanciful too.

If he refuses to go away, as the parties and main media want him to, Casey will join a number of other would-be so-called populist leaders agitating just out of reach of power in countries all across Europe. They are thus ready alternatives to entrenched and comfortably smug political establishments. Rather than attacking these figures, politicians and the media would serve a more useful purpose if they began at least treating seriously legitimate concerns of citizens drawn to such firebrands.