I am going to try and be as non biased as I can in this because some people might have an aneurysm if I did.The [redacted] banter crowd.
But with that out of the way let me begin. The whole point of this blog post in one sentence is that it drives me up the wall when people somehow believe that our government and society is somehow better than the US. Now let me specify that yes the US is a shithole but just because it is a shithole doesn’t mean you can feel superior to those living blissfully ignorant to their government while you wank off to Leo Varadkar and his Mean Girls quotes.
The most succinct moment of this was a convo I was having with my gf. In it the OATSA(offences against the state act) came up and I was discussing how it is undemocratic along with the special criminal court(which beside numerous other problems doesn’t have a Jury). My gfs response? Shock and responses like “But in CSPE we were told Ireland is democratic” and others of the like. She was genuinely surprised and confused as to why when she was in state education that they didn’t teach her about all the dodgy stuff they where doing. I do not blame her, I was the same for a long while. I am still shocked tho that people are so surprised by it.
I always knew that people had been fooled by propaganda from a young age due to political positions from my dad but even then I had been fooled. It is platos cave and all that jazz. But the most effective tool I think possessed by the propaganda machine of Ireland is the existence of the United States. Whenever police brutality is brought up? The united states is worse. Whenever poverty is brought up? At least it’s not the United states. Healthcare? USA. The same old story. We can laugh at how backwards they are while our government makes things worse and worse but at least our leader can quote movies and people who sent in death squads to massacre us.
Yet our government can arrest us and throw us in jail with very little “evidence” such as a senior Garda official saying we are in the IRA and then we get to be in jail for 5 years minimum. And no-one knows this. Our government is forced to pay money every time it uses the special criminal court and every year it costs money that we have portlaoise prison due to specific security precautions. Small price to pay for security. The government beats up travellers and throws immigrants in inhumane conditions in direct provisions. And do you want to know the funnies part? When I try to dispute propaganda? I am told I need to read and that I am the one suffering from propaganda. How dare I suggest that they are foolish enough to suffer from propaganda. I am the fool in fact. I am the one who has been propagandised. They loudly proclaim to me “I’m immune to propaganda but you’re not”