Is this presidential race demeaning to all of us?
It’s a pity we can’t take this as an opportunity to have a real conversation about who we are and who we want to be, writes Brendan O’Connor
WOULDN’T it be fantastic if we had the opportunity to have a real, broad-ranging conversation about this country? Wouldn’t it be great if we set apart some time and space every now and then to discuss our values, our symbols, our psyche, our dreams, our future?
In fairness, we have chunks of the conversation now and then. But we tend to do it in a reactive way. Something pops up and it causes a minor frenzy of soul-searching and navel-gazing on some particular aspect of Ireland and our national personality. And then we move on, having had a half-assed go at one strand of the national conversation, often having agreed to differ, often after much abuse.
What if we put aside time and space for a more broad-ranging conversation about who we are and who we want to be and how we see ourselves versus how we are in reality, and what we agree on, and how we choose to disagree with each other?
Obviously this is a conversation that could go on forever, and it is a conversation that is ongoing in academic and artistic circles, but it is one that many of us choose to largely ignore because it can be a bit above our heads.
We had another fragment of the national conversation last week when we reflected on the banking guarantee and the bailout. There was an excellent short film on Prime Time for example, that took the whole conversation out of the hands of talking heads and experts and told the story of the past 10 years through the stories of five people. It was a quiet kind of a piece that gave a bit of space to reflect on the trauma that different types of people went through after the crash.
If that was the qualitative data, the quantitative data was just as revealing in a different way. A study by Amarach of 1,000 Irish people, released last week, suggested that 17pc of adults were diagnosed with depression or another mood disorder linked to the crash; 14pc had thoughts of suicide or selfharm due to the crash. Seven in 10 adults experienced stress and anxiety because of the downturn. A quarter sought professional help; 42pc suffered from sleep problems or disorders due to the crash.
Together these two pieces of data suggest what we all know already, that this country still suffers a form of post-traumatic stress disorder due to the crash. You can see it in lots of things, in the anger and resentment we still hold, in our endless appetite to go back over things again and again, asking the same questions about whether the right or wrong choices were made, in our constant fear — justified, in fairness — of another crash.
We have had many major conversations involving religion and the church in recent years. They are usually angry and divisive and often sad. Sometimes they were around social issues, and once the social issues were resolved, the conversation was apparently over. On we went to the next thing.
But you wonder in all that did we ever have a real conversation about values, faith, meaning, how we treat each other? The discussion around clerical child abuse and related matters led to simple conclusions — Godbotherers are bad, intolerant people and always were and they harboured evil. The discussion around gay marriage ended with the conclusion that everything has changed and we are now a different, open, tolerant country. And anyone who disagreed is stuck in the 1950s and they’ll be dead soon anyway. The conversation around abortion was similar. The fascist men in dresses who know nothing about women or marriage, or relationships were finally defeated. And good riddance.
The only values, the only faith that anyone dares express in public now are liberal values and faith in liberalism, that it will make us all better, more tolerant people. Unless you disagree with us. Then we might not be so tolerant.
Imagine if, instead of half having many of these conversations and then moving on, leaving massive fault-lines that could blow up again any time, we tried to have a full conversation about who we are, and how we live together with some respect for each other, in our differing views, and with our differing experiences and our differing circumstances.
Obviously many conversations about the kind of society we want to have are carried out in the political sphere, or in the media. But what if we had another conversation, somewhere above politics, where we could discuss the softer issues, the less tangible glue that holds us all together.
What’s that you say? We do? And we’re having it right now? The presidential election you say? A month-long stock-taking and reflection on how we see ourselves and how others see us, on the kind of country we want to be?
The only problem with that is that most of us don’t especially care how Liadh Ni Riada tries to squirm around the fact that she was clearly against the HPV vaccine at some point, even though she seems to have copped on now. Most of us don’t care that Gavin Duffy would take the salary and thinks that Peter Casey is wrong not to take it because if the president doesn’t get paid only rich guys like Peter Casey would go for the job. Most of us don’t care that Peter Casey thinks Gavin needs the salary to keep in the style to which he is accustomed. Most of us don’t care that Casey is disgusted that Higgins and Gallagher didn’t show up for the first debate. And that Casey thinks it’s disgusting that Higgins went to meet the number 10 in the royal family instead. Most of us don’t care that a woman wandered into the Aras. And that Peter Casey initially thought it might have been a set up, and that Michael D Higgins is a master at the passive aggressive comment and suggested that maybe Casey wasn’t long back from America. As to politicians feigning shock and outrage about the presidential allowance, many of us who follow the news knew about that allowance a long time ago. Makes you worry about the guys on the PAC and their knowledge of current affairs.
Possibly the most useful piece of information to come out of this whole campaign so far is that you can do yoga at 77 and it’s helpful.
I accept that we are all having a great laugh at all this and it is mildly entertaining watching the other candidates squirm while all the time knowing that we will put the lovable meme/emoji that is Michael D Higgins back in the Aras, whatever his views about Castro.
But are we not missing an opportunity here? Of course there’s going to be frivolity and craic around any election, and that too is part of who we are. But when that’s all there is, are we not in some way demeaning ourselves? I vaguely know two of these candidates and they seem like interesting people. Joan Freeman also seems to be a thoughtful woman who wants to try in some way to have a conversation about the national psyche. So it’s not all their fault that this has turned into a dog-and-pony show.
We all enter into presidential campaigns now with two general thoughts. Firstly we say a bit snootily that presidential campaigns in Ireland have become a real bloodsport, as if we are above it, when in fact we are saying it hopefully. And secondly we ask what kind of mad egomaniacs these people are to think they should be president? And that tends to dictate how it all goes. This time out, Michael D is being treated with an air of untouchability by the media — respect for the office and all that — while the other candidates are basically all subject to out-and-out piss-taking and snide questioning of their motives.
You wonder if this whole process is not only demeaning to them but demeaning to all of us.
‘The most useful information is that you can do yoga at 77’