Why we, the people, are a bunch of simpletons

This banking stuff isn't just exposing the golden circle. It's exposing us, the people, in an increasingly embarrassing way.

In what is, by far, the biggest scandal to hit this country in 30 years -- the systematic theft of public money through a corrupt banking system -- we have little to say except to ask for a few heads to roll and to blame a few politicians. Beyond that, it's all a bit complicated for us.

Where are the marches? Where are the handcuffs? Where are the public pressure organisations to demand accountabiltity and an overhaul of the financial system? Where is the political party which has decided to put this at the head of its political agenda, ahead of health, education and social welfare?

They're not there because we, the Irish people, don't understand what's going on and absolve ourselves of responsibility. We're not sophisticated enough. We're simpletons, two generations away from poverty and blaming everything on Britain.

We actually don't understand the damage that has been done. When the direct consequence of a soaring jobless toll, drastic cuts in health, education and social welfare, result, we'll actually blame the politicians for implementing those cuts. Incredible. Infantile. 

Right now we're asking politicians to take "tough decisions" but hammering them if they try to do just that. Make public servants contribute towards their own pensions? "Unjust! Imbalanced! Letting the rich away with it!" Cut health-card entitlements for rich people? "No way! We worked all our lives for this perk!" Talk of cutting the soaring health budget or recusing education or social welfare?

"How dare you! It's inhuman!"

And yet, the worst the people can muster about the calumnous turn of events with the banking crooks -- and the pathetic legislation in place to oversee them -- is a few cynical letters to the Irish Times. No marches about that, oh no.

And somehow we think we're sophisticated?

In the US, in Germany, even in Britain, these would be public accountability issues. Jailtime. Complete overhaul of the legislatative environment. Elections won and lost on the issue. In Ireland, nope -- it's somehow the affairs of some political and business elite. Not us.

At what point does the notion sink in to us that we are responsible for the behaviour and legal environment that our banks operate in? That we have to take this into account when we elect people? That a banking scandal is partly our fault?

Not for a long time yet, I suspect. We're nowhere near sophisticated enough.

Comments

[dahamsta]

The same could have been said about the idiocy that is the "levy" Adrian. They set out to distract the Irish people from their inability to implement a new tax regime with "plans" they had absolutely no intention of implementing, and the Irish public fell for it hook, line and sinker. I call it "collective stupidity". As a nation, we're morons.

adam

[Niall Kitson]

Impassioned stuff but I think you're being a little harsh. It's not that 'we' in Ireland didn't understand what was going on, the 'we' in question stretches across the world.
The Madoff scandal showed that bankers anywhere get drunk at the smell of a dollar - imaginary or otherwise.
Yes the banking class has royally messed things up for everyone, and a supine government and bloated civil service don't do us any favours but it remains to be seen which country is sophisticated enough to think its way out of the recession.

[Yourtech]

Niall,

The Americans are taking responsibility for this -- they are not blaming others. They're acknowledging that their system is at fault and that they are responsible for creating and maintaining that system. Elections will be won and lost on this issue: how congressmen voted on Obama's package will be dredged up as relevant content come election time.

And over here? Are you joking?

Sure, if you're a public servant who had just been hit with the pension levy, you'll take it out on the government. But will you, the Irish citizen, (not you, Niall) acknowledge that you were part of the system that is corrupt and lets a golden circle do what they want? Of course not. That would be too logical. And it would mean being partly accountable for the way your country is run.

[Yourtech]

Adam,

The pension levy is a tough measure if you're a public servant, a logical one if you're not.

I can understand why the government has decided not to implement the rest of the measures we need to do (eg cuts in health, education, social welfare and cutting tax breaks for businesses and the well-off).

I can understand it because in this country, there is simply no way that the people are yet willing to accept that dire economic circumstances means a (substantial) cut in their own living conditions. They'd go berserk.

"It's not my fault," they'd scream. "So why am I paying?"

They're already doing this with the levy. They did it with the medical card for rich pensioners. And they'll do it with any goddamn cut the government tries to make.

Because we are not yet ready to accept that we -- you, Niall and I -- have to take responsibility for this. Us, not somebody else. We are the ones who have to pay more and get less.

The sooner we start to accept this, the sooner we can tackle this problem seriously. If we refuse to accept this, if we all insist that "someone else" must pay, then we're fucked.

[Not this time]

I get it.

I get that Fianna Fail are corrupt beyond redemption, and if the latest opinion polls are a guide, even the core vote is finally beginning to see that.

I get that Fine Gael haven't much different to promise, a leader who over reaches (either name the ten or shut up, Enda) and a set of policies that will never be enacted, they just exist to win votes. Maybe they're a little less corrupt, but are they less corrupt in principle, or is it just that they haven't been in power enough for the corruption to be as visible. Michael Lowry anyone?

I get that ten percent cuts in TDs salaries amount to more than I earned last year, limits to unvouched expenses are meaningless, Dail committees are powerless, and it's that even with all the bullshit manipulation of the stockmarkets nothing much illegal happened, because light regulation amounts to no rules to break in the first place.

I get that Fianna Fail hacks have been appointed to state boards for years and infest the machinery of the state, arranging state contracts enriching their own companies, that judges are chosen because of who they support politically, and typos in lawyers contracts become legally binding.

I get that I won't have a chance to vote these fuckers out unless the Greens grow a set of balls and pull the plug. I get that when that eventually happens, I'm not going to have much of a choice anyway.

I get that in the 1980s, there were places I could emigrate to, and that option isn't there this time.

I get that punching the first cunt to knock on my door looking for a vote might be satisfying, but it wont change anything.

Show me a leader worth following, and I'll march on Leinster house. Don't tell me I don't fucking get it. I get it. Do you?

[Yourtech]

Dear Not this time,

In fact, there is something that you don't get.

YOU are Fianna Fail. YOU are Fine Gael. YOU are responsible for our political parties. And the light regulation. And the judicial selection criteria. And everything else in this country.

Who do you think decides what happens in this country? Someone else? No -- it's YOU. Joe Citizien.

Shocked? Offended? Don't like that as a notion, do you?

So don't march. Don't accept responsibility. Sit back and blame someone else.

It's not your fault. It never is.

[Not This Time]

I didn't vote for Fianna Fail.

I didn't vote for Fine Gael.

I did vote.

Maybe next time, someone I vote for will get in.

I live in hope.

[Jason O'Mahony]

Not This Time

How many doors did you knock on for the guy you wanted to get in? What was the reaction to him/her?

[dahamsta]

For the record, I wasn't talking about the pension "levy", but the income tax "levy". I don't have a problem with taxes, I have a problem with the way FF implements them, and the way the Irish people accept that.