Presidential election in the (almost) least important country of the EU

The single reason outsiders should pay any attention to the presidential election of the westernmost and (almost) least important part of the European Union is to see how severely the pathology of doom has struck. For in Ireland, its blow has been deep, and might in the longer term even be deadly. But one thing is certain: No candidate offering any such sceptical opinions about the EU, which are now widely shared in Ireland, will be competing in Ireland’s forthcoming presidential elections on October 24.

In other words, wherever it appears, and whatever its form, ideological stupidity defines the modus operandi of the EU. The old saw about stupidity/insanity is that it repeatedly does the same thing while expecting different results, and is variously attributed to Shaw, Einstein, Beckett et alia. This cliché remains interesting only because it still masquerades as wisdom, complete with spurious “sources”. In short, its endlessly recycled “novelty” proves how resistant to verifiable truths human nature can often be, especially when fortified by the knowledge-resisting toxins of liberal orthodoxy.

Mass immigration, as proven in country after country, is the surest route to national ruin, yet it remains the thrice-consecrated Holy Grail of the legal-classes of the western world. Hence the electoral collapse of the Democratic Party in the US is probably due to a folly identified by Janan Ganesh in The Financial Times: Tim Waltz, the running mate of that hapless halfwit Kamala Harris, was the first presidential/vice presidential candidate for the Democrats since 1980 not to have a law-degree. What depths of multigenerational foot-rot does that single fact reveal?

Just as leeches were once used to treat smallpox, our ruling elites – especially lawyers – think that money will “cure” illegal immigration. Thus the Irish government last week announced its great gambit to remove immigration from any Presidential debate: Illegal immigrants (cosmetically renamed “asylum seekers”) will be paid €2,500 each, or €10,000 a family, to return home. Such brainlessness requires a complete ignorance of both human nature and the Kipling poem that warned about the consequence of paying bribes (geld) to keep Danish invaders away, which is the surest way of retaining them.

Of course, wisdom from a laureate of the British Empire would be anathema to Ireland’s ruling elite, and the milquetoast-trio now contesting the presidential election is wholly representative of the welfarist, un-boat-rocking consensus that has defined and stifled Irish politics and journalism throughout this century. The Irish presidency traditionally has been a ceremonial position, rather akin to the British monarchy, though in recent decades it has become both more feminised and touchy-feelified, as embodied in the current holder of the office, President Michael D. Higgins. His encomium upon the death of the mass-murderer Fidel Castro and his disdainful obsequies for Margaret Thatcher could have come from Pravda.

Indeed, Ireland is rather like an offshore Silicon Valley: Leftist-political jargon infusing “free-market” economics, except that Ireland’s economics are less free-market than of a race-track card-sharp playing find-the-lady. Ireland’s booming economy largely depends on mostly American multinationals liquefying profits from operations in high corporation-tax jurisdictions, and through complex accountancy-pipelines, then transferring them to low-corporation tax Ireland. Naturally, Ireland’s humbug-Left stays silent about the immorality of such transactional fraudulence, preferring to wax indignant over (the irrefutably horrific) events in Gaza.

The politico-journalistic leftist elite is delighted that no conservative candidate survived the complex qualification-processes necessary to get on the presidential ballot-paper. The most obvious candidate, Maria Steen, a Catholic anti-abortionist and full-time (but generally-liberal) mother, fell (or was tripped) at the final hurdle. Last year, she co-led a campaign against a government plan to insert into the Irish constitution a recognition of the family as being based on marriage or “other durable relationships.” That Ireland’s ruling political, legal and media classes vehemently backed a definition that could have turned James Bond, Moneypenny and M into a “family” proves how intellectually and morally shallow they are. The electorate, though warned that only reactionary Christian bigots would reject such an enlightened measure, voted massively against it. Just as well, because by now immigration-lawyers would be cropdusting family status on vast numbers of unrelated foreigners, roll up, roll up, six for the price of seven, kiddies free! That lesson learned, the aim for liberal Ireland now was to prevent Steen getting on the ballot-paper. Project achieved, and all is well.

Not quite. President Trump is in the White House, and the Irish Left, while it detests him as it would a fusion of Chernobyl, gonorrhoea and Andrew Tate, is not so stupid as to deny his ability, single-handedly, to wreck the Irish economy. Even President Higgins has been reluctant to tiptoe along that particular gang-plank. So leftist disdain for economic realities is expressed in displacement activities, such as the recent sell-out appearance of Barack Obama on his worldwide, snivelling-interview roadshow, the modern equivalent of Joseph Hansom extolling the exemplary virtues of his horse-drawn cab to a whooping audience that had all arrived in Daimlers.

Indeed, Obama’s hypocrisy characterises the Irish left: Posturing, spineless yet noisy, like town-crying frogspawn on stilts. Their political ecosphere is a hallucination based a non-existent socialism, in which the international tax-returns (ie, booty) gathered abroad by American multinationals are distributed as bribes to an undeserving but ethically-anaesthetised Irish population. But that population is growing uncontrollably: The application of EU-lawyers’ law in Irish courts means that Ireland is rapidly becoming demographically unrecognisable, especially to the restive poorer classes. The latter’s peculiar dependency-culture cannot compete with, never mind co-exist alongside, the many imaginative internet-savvy foreigners who are already welfare-literate when they arrive at Dublin Airport. There they burn all identification, proclaiming themselves as (help! help!) oppressed gays fleeing the homophobic horrors of the Hindu Kush. Awaiting them are hunting-packs of hungry “human-rights” lawyers, anxious to inhale Irish government money and embed their newly-arrived clients within the Irish welfare system.

Naturally, the Irish people will get as much a chance to elect a president who opposes such nation-wrecking idiocy as they would an Ayatollah in Iran. The EU naturally entitles this process – if somewhat imprecisely –“democracy”. And so all is well.

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.