I don’t do sincerity very well. Don’t get me wrong, it‘s not a flaw or anything which gets me down, it’s just a conditioning, a layer that has applied itself to me since a long time back. There are days when I wish I was a very principled person, one who could be strongly committed to one cause of another. I encounter lots of people who strongly believe in a cause or a campaign and I lay the resources of my pages at their disposal and I admire them. But I’m not one of them. And because I’m afflicted with a latent lack of sincerity, I tend to get that little twitch in my nose when I detect similar insincerity, when I resist the temptation to have an almighty yawn and say to someone ‘save the bullshit for someone else.”
And because of that, I am apolitical when it comes to choosing parties or candidates.
I feel that way this afternoon as I make my way through yet another press release of woe and betide from politicians bemoaning how they feel they have to do the right thing, that they have to listen to their minds (and not their pockets? ) and to make the hard decisions. How, despite being thinking adults with minds of their own and despite being elected by us because we thought they were better than they are, they have been led down a wrong path blah de blah de blah.
It has become de rigueur for public representatives to shift their public thinking now and blame it on the world moving against them.
Maybe it’s different in the real world where people have had to cut the crap and get down to the basics. Now is not a time for posturing, in politics or at home. In many Irish households, there is no scope for a change of mind or for reflective convenient shapethrowing.There is now no flexibility in any household for showmanship or for allowing ourselves to shirk challenges merely because things are not going our way.
Now is a time for leadership, not showmanship. It is a time for a backs to the wheel approach to every challenge that faces us, so that together we might get through this ever-worsening mess, enhanced this week by the mocking of our only potential saviours.
Maybe it’s because Galway is seen a fluffy city, but we get more than our fair share of showman (and showwoman politicians ) both domestically and in the Oireachtas. Do these politicians think that because they are not publicly rumbled that they are getting away with their acts.
Perhaps in the same way that people are warned about what’s in their food, eg those messages for those with nut allergies, maybe newspapers and media should have a little warning system, just a symbol in the bottom corner and an italicised line (May contain some traces of bullshit ).
We have been led up the garden path by people we trusted and we are still being led down that garden path again. Nothing much has changed. Outrage is confined to social media and polite cafe society. And we are laughing at ourselves and what fools we were. Are? Will be? And the blather machine continues to blather. And we’re still the same fools we were last week
