Time to end this groupthink and gushing over politicians
WE’RE all happyclappy now, on the one side, wearing that same green jersey with the united aim of achieving one great national objective – saving lives. The coronavirus pandemic has tightened up the herd, heightened our sense of community and instilled in us a kind of all-embracing groupthink that would have been inconceivable even a few short weeks ago.
Groupthink used to be something we were supposed to avoid like the plague. Now, with this actual Covid19 plague to torment us, we can’t get enough of it.
You know things might be heading in a dangerous direction when politicians like Simon Harris and Regina Doherty are on the receiving end of undiluted praise.
In February, poor Simon was given explicit instructions by the electorate to clear out his desk at the Department of Health and Regina was told to find the nearest door and close it behind her on the way out. Now, they’re the bee’s knees.
And the HSE, once regarded by almost everyone as the most dysfunctional and irredeemable agency ever cobbled together by this State is now, miraculously, transformed into an army of focused super-heroes, bearing all the hallmarks of Japanese-style manufacturing efficiencies.
Where previously the HSE couldn’t catch a break, today they are untouchable and seemingly beyond the bounds of criticism.
All of which illustrates what happens when groupthink takes hold, when people’s critical faculties are set to one side.
It’s as if in our social distancing lockdown we’re in this huge virtual theatre where our disbelief has been entirely suspended. Certain elements of the media too have taken leave of their senses and their duty to question and challenge, particularly at a time when billions are being spent in our name, when enforced joblessness, stresses and strains are everywhere, when costly mistakes are bound to be made, when our fundamental rights to freedom of movement are being curtailed, and when autocratic creep and policing overreach are real and present dangers.
On The Late Late Show, Miriam O’Callaghan featured the Aer Lingus pilots who flew all the way to China and all the way back with badly needed personal protective equipment for our frontline healthcare workers. Imagine that!
Now, this was hardly Battle of Britain derring-do; it wasn’t remotely like the massive human effort involved in maintaining that vital land corridor that helped defend Leningrad during the siege; it wasn’t anything like the ‘under fire’ relief flights into Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War and it certainly didn’t go near Tom Crean’s famous trek across the Antarctic. It was over to China in a super-duper plane at 37,000 feet. And back again.
And then we discover that around 20 per cent of the equipment picked up in China is useless for the purposes intended. The HSE. Our money.
Now’s the time for us all to step back a little. And see more clearly the bigger picture and the risks we now face.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris is asking us all to turn in our own neighbours and others if they breach the restrictions on personal freedom of movement that have now been imposed to delay the spread of the coronavirus.
The coercive power of the State is now on full display and they want us to be their eyes and ears to ensure that holiday home owners are turned back at Garda checkpoints that weren’t so visible previously when marauding bands of gangsters were plundering rural Ireland and intimidating old people in their homes. But they are now.
Simon Harris’s latest restrictions which now carry criminal sanctions mean we can only exercise within 2km of where we live (Statutory Instrument No. 121 of 2020, Section 4(2)(i)), yet we can travel the length of the country if we want to buy a bar of chocolate for the kids or a bag of nuts for the dog (Section 4(2)(b)), because there is no distance limit when it comes to heading down to the shop.
Despite that Commissioner Harris is still saying that people who have already made it through to their wonderful holiday homes will now have to stay put.
You can imagine the surprise gardaí in Connemara will get when they’re told at the weekend by some holiday home owner heading back to leafy Dublin that they’re on their way to do a spot of shopping in Donnybrook, and there’s nothing in the regulations to prevent them from doing so. Emergency powers are always messy. But they are also extraordinarily dangerous because of the way they interfere with our fundamental freedoms. Threats of stiff fines and jail time make it essential that such powers are examined and, where necessary, challenged and altered.
That’s why we need the scrutiny of the Oireachtas on every twist and turn of this saga. TDs and senators need to get back to work, in exchange for the handsome salary and expenses they’re still receiving during a time when the Oireachtas has effectively shut up shop. State restrictions on our freedoms, backed up by force, are not petty, insignificant matters. They need to be necessary and proportionate to the threat we confront.
Heightened anxiety (and frankly, class-based animosity) about holiday home owners visiting their expensive retreats only leads to the kind of terror threats to burn down those holiday homes that has emerged now in Clare.
We need to win this war on the coronavirus but, there is something worryingly unattractive in the Commissioner’s appeal for us to inform the gardaí about those who refuse to play by the rules – in our new valley of squinting windows.