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Elitism
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On this blog I said vote PD and clearly the people of Ireland didn’t vote for them. Fair enough that is the people’s choice I am not going argue with it people didn’t want them fair enough. However why can’t people on the left except they got beaten. Take the left parties. Labour gained zero, Green’s gained zero, Sinn Fein lost 1 Socialists lost 1, left wing ind’s lost 3 or 4. The left made no gains in this election. The big winners were Fine Gael who depending who you ask would generally thought of being on the right. They gained 20 seats. So if you want any ideology to claim victory it would be the right. (Although I think it was a victory of parish pump politics). So in the democracy we live in the people voted and they got what they wanted. But instead of looking at themselves and wondering why people don’t vote left. The left turn on the people and call them cunts.
So what is it about some on the left that cannot understand that people don’t like what they offer. Take Twenty Major’s post Don’t complain, you stupid, stupid cunts. Lovely is it not . I mean if someone posted about the PD’s collapse with the same headline how much insults would I get loads people would call me bitter and sad. People do it about FF and get compliments saying how it captures feelings. On Thursday I posted a post of reasons not to vote the rainbow in reply to another post . Basically I outlined various policies of the rainbow. Now the post got 45 replies over most of them not actually dealing with any of my points just throwing insults at me (exceptions of course). To me that is attributed to the smug elitism that the left suffers from.
The left now is the realm of the well off. Look who vote Labour, luck who vote Green it is the middle to upper classes not the working class. They vote Fianna Fail. But when they do vote Fianna Fail the elite left wing insult them. They pretend to be in favour of all things for them but seem not not care what they say. The simple fact of the matter is they do not respect the voters they feel they know better then other people.
That Girl compares this election to sexual abuse.
When people wonder how sexual abuse can thrive in the 21st century I will point them to the results of this election.
Now other then the fact that this is absolutely sicking to trivialise sexual abuse to the fact that Fianna Fail got elected. I am sure any victim of sexual abuse would feel that Bertie returning to power is perfectly apt metaphor for their suffering.
She then goes on to say.
I have no respect for people who take no action
And then goes on in the rest of the post to giving out to people for actually taking action and voting. Going on about how people who did not vote colluded as if they have done something illegal is if voting for someone who in her opinion is not good is some how morally wrong. Suggesting again that voting Fianna Fail is akin to turning a blind eye to corruption, raping children, mutilated women in hospitals and abusing in nursing homes. There you go according to That girl 41% of the people in this country are just as bad. Lovely respect for the people’s democratic rights.
Listening to people txt in to radio stations it is all people txting in saying that people only cared about greed, self-interest and likewise and that is the only reason they voted in Fianna Fail. Which of course means that they think that the policies of the others were the greater for society, health care, crime etc. Never even presuming that maybe people thought Fianna Fail would be the best leaders.
Of all my belief’s my most fundamental is that of democracy. I will make my point’s, I will argue on the merits of what ever policy I am discussing but when the people chose I respect that as their choice and never degrade them for making that choice. Not everyone seems to have the same belief.
“On this blog I said vote PD and clearly the people of Ireland didn’t vote for them. Fair enough that is the people’s choice I am not going argue with it people didn’t want them fair enough”
How generous of you!
Also, if you think Twenty Major represents the left can I respectfully suggest that you may have bumped you head…
Interesting “interpretation” of my post. Inaccurate but an interesting spin nonetheless. If you’d read the entire post you would have realised that what I was writing about was denial, collusion and the unwillingness of some people to stand up to corruption (all of which the Fianna Fail party are well versed in) - these are the same reasons why abuse thrive in our society and I’m sure if you do a more indepth analysis you’ll see that FF were in power for most of the time when all of that secret keeping was going on. Not voting is making a choice, simple as that.
But I’ll forgive you for your shameful inaccuracy on this occasion (not the first as you have a track record on misinterpreting me in the past) as I’m sure you must be hurting now that your heroes have been so well dethroned.
Don’t you mean his heroe’s?
Feckit Twenty - always sweating the small stuff - are all you lefties the same?
I don’t know why I am even getting in to this but you said.
FF were in power for most of the time when all of that secret keeping was going on
FF were the party in power for longest. What did the other parties do when they were in. Because Labour and Fine Gael were also in when all this happened. Do you seriously think they did not know?
I will no longer sit at dinner parties listening to the middle classes chattering about congestion on the M50, the price of houses; the appalling health service which doesn’t “do” children in the absence of asking - who did you vote for? What did you do to try to make it different?
Suggests that you do not think that people who voted for Fianna Fail did so on the because they believed that Fianna Fail would be the best to make the difference.
Also as for hurting on the PD’s not really it is pretty much what I thought would happen. The reason I said vote PD was that very reason i.e they wouldn’t be able to put in Fianna Fail or Fine Gael. But looks now like they will put in Fianna Fail so if I was a PD supporter I guess I would not be that downhearted. As I am not mhhh
I have to say that the PD result doesnt give lefties anything much to crow about. Unlike the Greeen/Labour/left indpendents/SF, the PDs will have a minister if Bertie can manage it. I think Minihan speaking in today’s Sindo can be interpreted as spinning for a ministry, not a return to FF.
The party will still bear the hallmarks of power-brokers and i think from this election a 5 year stint in power, again, will either raise them from the dead (admittedly unlikely) or kill them totally.
Either way unlike the left, the PDs will still have a major say in government policy. Harney is a figure of huge influence who will not be ignored at cabinet.
But I’ll forgive you for your shameful inaccuracy on this occasion (not the first as you have a track record on misinterpreting me in the past) as I’m sure you must be hurting now that your heroes have been so well dethroned.
I think simon can defend himself on that one. Though i am not sure about “shameful inaccuracy”
Suggests that you do not think that people who voted for Fianna Fail did so on the because they believed that Fianna Fail would be the best to make the difference.
What difference? a vote for FF was a vote to keep things the same! ergo all that whining about congestion, the health service etc can’t be entertained from FF voters because they just voted to keep it the same! and that quote you took from my blog was also directed at people who didn’t vote at all - nearly half the electorate didn’t vote and my point (again) is that not voting IS a choice - it’s a choice to support the status quo. FF didn’t get 41% approval from the population - they got 41% approval from those who voted which with my rudimentary maths is around 20% of the population. The reason 40% is being bandied around is due to the nearly 50% who simply didn’t vote..
I don’t know why I am even getting in to this
What difference? a vote for FF was a vote to keep things the same! ergo all that whining about congestion, the health service etc can’t be entertained from FF voters because they just voted to keep it the same!
Proving my point. Can you not accept that maybe people who voted approved of the measures FF were taking rather the measures FG/Lab etc were going to take?
nearly 50% who simply didn’t vote..
Where you getting this figure from? 33% didn’t vote. You saying kids should have the vote as well. If FF/PD/IND go into power that is 51% of the vote share i.e. the majority.
Also are you presuming that the people who did not vote would automatically vote differently to the rest of the population?
The left were beaten? When you go shopping and decide to shop in Tesco instead of Dunne’s, do you class it as Dunne’s being beaten? Simon, when you think about it in terms of one side beating another you see the people as being irrelevant in this whole thing. People are not the tools of political parties.
The left lost Joe Higgins, but sure at least Bertie is still Taoiseach. Surely that’s a victory for socialists everywhere?
Seriously, thinking about the election in terms of left versus right is a mistake. It was very much a personality contest. The manifesto policies put forward by the opposition and the government were near identical. They both promised everything to everybody.
Personally, I hoped that people would bloody FF’s nose not so much because I was against their policies but because they are led by a corrupt man and because of their deliberate attempts to rob people of their right to vote. I was also afraid that if Fianna Fail were re-elected again, that they would become complacent. Labour and Fine Gael at least would have felt a certain degree of pressure to sort out the problems in the health system. And while I don’t support the Progressive Democrats, my issue was with McDowell’s leadership more than the party itself.
And as for Twenty’s reference to cunts, the man is a poet so he gets a licence.
I posted this comment in response to someone called Michael (http://www.irishelection.com/05/election-brings-out-the-crazies/#comments), but it bears repeating on this post.
“I see we’ve imported the Fox News classification of the “elite”. Wonderful.
Lest you be under any illusions, Michael, the elite establishment in this country is Fianna Fail and its front bench of boarding school educated lawyers like, for example, William “Man o’ de peeple” O’Dea.
It’s tragic that if you try to use your brain in this country the mogadons cry foul and look to burn you at the stake.”
Simon, I read down through your anti-Rainbow post and when people responded to undermine the points you made, you simply accused them of playing the ball and not the man. It was, frankly, bizarre. You make the most incredible assumptions all the time and it’s quite obvious that you haven’t given them a moment’s critical thought, which isn’t that surprising given your distaste for critical thinking as lefty elitism.
If the people of this country are unimaginative and cowardly, people who have to put up with the fallout from their crappy decisions have a right to be angry about it. Just because the idiots are entitled to their opinions THAT DOES NOT IMPLY that they are entitled to respect for their cowardice, pettiness and closed-mindedness.
And sorry, but on the question of sexual abuse, I suggest you consider a) Dr. Michael Woods deal on the behalf of the religious orders whose members committed much of it, and b) the Government’s failure in spite of everything we’ve learned over the last 15 years to do anything about the recommendations in the Ferns Report. You should also note that the Ferns Report was hobbled in the kind of findings it could make in the first place, which makes the failure to act even on the watered-down recommendations even worse.
The fact that these things don’t even occur to you makes it pretty disgraceful of you to get high and mighty about a better informed person pointing these truths out and to accuse THEM of trivialising child sexual abuse.
You trivialised it by scoring an uninformed political point. You owe that girl an apology.
Simon, I read down through your anti-Rainbow post and when people responded to undermine the points you made, you simply accused them of playing the ball and not the man.
Care to point out where I did this?
Just because the idiots are entitled to their opinions THAT DOES NOT IMPLY that they are entitled to respect for their cowardice, pettiness and closed-mindedness
That is where we differ. People’s choice has to respected.
“People’s choice has to respected.”
Christ Almighty. I feel like breaking Godwin’s Law.
Doesn’t it ever occur to you Simon that your level of analysis might be somewhat flawed. I mean after however many years of reading Twenty Major you actually think he is a leftwinger?!
He’s on the Law and Order wing of Fine Gael. Brendan McGahon wouldn’t be in it with him. And yet, you think he’s a lefty. A lefty!
Again.
Simon, I read down through your anti-Rainbow post and when people responded to undermine the points you made, you simply accused them of playing the ball and not the man.
Care to point out where I did this?
“you simply accused them of playing the ball and not the man”
You’re supposed to play the ball, not the man.
You’re supposed to play the ball, not the man.
oh sorry mis-read copernicus. Thanks for the compliment copernicus
I love you, copernicus.
(You can be my sperm donor.)
Mistake was a measure of how infuriating your posts are.
I don’t have to go back and start cutting and pasting from the other comments to prove my point Simon. People (including you presumably) are more than able to do that themselves. If they do, they’ll see that when Tom Cosgrave, for example, responded you simply claimed he’d made a personal attack when actually he’d pointed out a)you don’t understand the triple Lock and b) the appeal to the Triple Lock neutrality is rather undermined by the use by the US of Shannon for troop deployment and rendition flights.
You should check the position of allowing such use in international law. It isn’t characterised as “neutrality”.
At any rate you’ve done the same thing here. Where’s your acknowledgement of your ignorance of Ferns and the residential compensation scheme? Where’s your acknowledgement that you have been completely unable to read Twenty Major’s political position? Where’s your acknowledgement that you don’t know what “elite” means and that FF is the elite not marginal voices like Joe Higgins and people on the left?
Instead of engaging on these criticisms of your ill-informed rant, you’ve simply latched onto the point I made about a post yesterday. Not only are you lazy, you’re unwilling to make an honest concession when you’re hopelessly out of your depth.
BTW, comparing nearly half the country to sexual abusers or those who turn a blind eye to sexual abuse is one of the most crass and ignorant things I have ever read. That sexual abuse can be used to boost your argument for something as unimportant as politics or anything else shows a total lack of empathy to what sexual abuse is about.
Damien, nobody did that as an honest, reasonable parsing of the words used would show.
And anyway, if you don’t think sexual abuse is a political issue or that the people of this country have turned a blind eye to it, your blinkers must be on especially securely today.
Triple lock neutrality relies on the UN approving of an action correct?
UN Security Council Resolution 1637
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/592/77/PDF/N0559277.pdf?OpenElement
We are not breaking the triple lock.
The question was about abandoning it. And the question was changed to the use of Shannon. If some one asks what is the policy of a party on x if your reply with party a does y. That is in my mind dodging the question. and I did not accuse him of making a personal attack.
Fair enough if Twenty is not a lefty.
Are you saying I’m not a lefty?
Are you saying I’m not a lefty?
Are you saying your not a lefty? Does Twenty vote? More importanrly are you french
The nastiness of some people posting here that supported the “Alliance for Change’ is truly staggering. Why will FF voters decide to move to an FG/Lab government in 2012 when that sides supporters hurl names and abuse at people who voted the way they thought best. Inferring FF voters as ’stupid cunts’, ‘elitist’, conspirators to sexual abuse, ‘idiots’, ‘greedy’ etc will not win over anyone. Be gracious in defeat, yes you’re angry now but why not be a little more constructive and calmly put across your points to the electorate over the next 5 years explaining that you guys are really fit for government.
Also I’ve heard enough of FF ‘only’ getting 41% on this website and elsewhere, let’s think about this, on these terms it is straight forward to conclude that 89.1% of voters didn’t want Labour in power, 72.7% of voters did not want FG in power, ditto for the smaller parties.
…and no, I’m not a big FF supporter nor am I involved in any particular political party. My vote was based on the candidate and local issues and not the party (FF came fourth on my voting slip after independents).
Are you saying your not a lefty? Does Twenty vote? More importanrly are you french
Am I French?
Am I French?
là où est le marché
Ross can’t agree more. As Rabbitte said the electorate is sovereign. the question for Labour etc is not why did the people vote ff but why did they not vote for them. insulting the electorate is not the answer.
By the way just incase anyone mis-interpreted my post. I was not calling the left elitist just people who look down on people who decided to vote Fianna Fail and refer to them as stupid, greedy and colludors in child abuse. I know many people who don’t do that many who post on this blog and to para-phrase ross calmly and constructive make their points and let the people decided and accept their decisions.
A dishonest and disingenuous post. If Pat Rabitte had gone on tv and announced that the Irish people are all cunts, then you might have a point. But Twenty (a) does not represent the Irish left (b) may not, for all I know, belong to the Irish left, (c) calls the people of Ireland cunts on a daily basis anyway. To act as if this was somehow part of a contempt for the electorate by the left as a whole is cheap and dishonest. You might as well say that your own posts are symptomatic of the PDs contempt for punctuation.
The democracy for which you profess your love includes the right to call people cunts if you feel like it. No opinion is entitled to automatic respect, no matter how many people share it. There is absulutely no requirement to do anything other than accept the decision of the majority. You don’t have to like it, or even respect it - just accept it.
Simon, what are you on about?
As a PD I hope we can salvage something from this. At least we still have TDs unlike the Socialist Party. Harney would have given us a better result than you got. I think there are a lot of caricatures about our party circulating in the media which we need to counteract. I think the result was not so much a verdict on our policies - many of which have been poached by our rivals and FF - but our leader who lacked the common tough, was seen as negative and polarising, and was always getting demonised in the media. Harney found herself in meltdown territory in 1997 with a loss of 6 seats from 1992. She recovered the party’s fortunes in 2002 and she might be able to do so again.
It’s great Simon that you googled up some info on the Triple Lock. Sadly, you’ve completely missed the point. No one said we were breaking the Triple Lock. If you actually took the time to read and absorb the comments which were directed at you, you’d realise that what was said was that an appeal to the Triple Lock does nothing to boost the neutrality credentials of a Government which allows the US Army to cycle its men and materiél through Shannon and which turns a blind eye to rendition flights.
I note you still have nothing to say on any of the other points, not the least of which related to the outrageous, politically illiterate title of your post.
Copernicus you have again missed my point you said that I said Tom made a personal insult against me which I did not. I said nothing of the sort did you actually read what I said?
Then you precede to go on about Shannon my point was Fine Gael are against the triple lock. He went on about Shannon that was not the point that was dodging the point. Which I said. Indeed you are totally dodging that point as well. You have yet to point to an example where I said a person was attacking me and not the point when they were dealing with a point.
Now on the point of child abuse.That girl said “When people wonder how sexual abuse can thrive in the 21st century I will point them to the results of this election”.
And you went then on about Michael Woods and compensation of the church and yadda yadda. The point of the post was not that this government paid the compensated the church. Which I have posted about on the blog if you cared to actually read what I write.
But the same culture of silence that surrounded the abuse of children is the same culture that all the people who vote Fianna Fail have. As if not informing on child being rapped is morally equal to voting Willie O’Dea. It is not and it is absolutely terrible to suggest that their is any link to that.
Which is an entirely different point to them supporting a government that paid out potentially 15 billion to clerical sex abuse. (Which considering they were state schools the state is somewhat responsible for). Which by they way was not mentioned at all in That Girls post and only now are you try to spin that into the debate.
The problem is copernicus you don’t respect anyone who doesn’t agree with you. On your own blog you said “The Irish electorate is so thick and cowardly” why because you disagree with them. Which is a delightful way to call your fellow citizens. So would I be right in suggesting that you see yourself as the opposite i.e. intelligent and brave. Do you think that you are more intelligent and your opinion deserving of more respect then the 41% of the people in this country? That to me is elitist.
But I will leave you be copericus I was a bit rash even though suggesting that voting for a party is a kin to looking past child abuse is horrendous. That 41% of the population would let a priest violate a child because sure they vote Fianna Fail is idiotic I realise your hurting and a bit emotional and should have been more caring about your feelings.
Good night and good luck.
Where do you get off saying I don’t respect anyone who doesn’t agree with me? A typical nonsensical leap for you. I never said Tom insulted you by the way. Again, what the are you talking about?
You’re a cheeky git Simon and an absolute hypocrite. Sorry I’m not sufficiently “delightful” about the Irish people. Of course, one of this country’s biggest problems is its insistence that its delicate sense of self must not be affronted in any way no matter how disgracefully it behaves.
You’ve done an amazing job on this site over the last week or two, but you don’t know squat about politics, ideas or the people of this country.
Basically I outlined various policies of the rainbow. Now the post got 45 replies over most of them not actually dealing with any of my points just throwing insults at me (exceptions of course). To me that is attributed to the smug elitism that the left suffers from.
I raised a query on that thread which was fairly pertinent to the issue of the Triple Lock, and given that the Triple Lock has raised its head on this thread, then I’ll raise it again:
do you really believe that the PRC should have a veteo over this country’s military affairs?
Care to offer a defence for Macedonia?
In addition to which, if you wish to square the use of Shannon with the Triple Lock (which is a bit illogical given what the Triple Lock relates to, but heh!)then you have to have a resolution which permitted the war in the first place. 1637 would only be valid as an attempt to square that circle, if the use of Shannon was subsequent to 163
John I did actually reply to down the bottom of the thread and agreed with you (you were one of the exceptions in the thread of course thank you) . But my point was that not many people in the rainbow would also agree with Fine Gael’s stance on the triple lock. Hence why I said would you vote for this etc etc. I think only one or two people realised you could just answer yes to those questions.
Well John I was not the one relating Shannon to the triple lock in the first place in fairness
“I was not the one relating Shannon to the triple lock in the first place in fairness ”
That was people’s point, Simon. You weren’t able to make the leap to see that your point that open disagreement on the Triple Lock among the Opposition does not (as you think) bolster the Government’s cynical defence policies.
Honest disagreement versus cynical manipulation and obscuring of the truth, that was what undermined your original politically illiterate point. And as usual, you completely missed and continue to completely miss it.