Well the first thing I want to say is; Democracy my ass.

Second thing I want to say is; I am part of that generation. That rising tide that will be dictating policy to your grandchildren. By being part of that high water mark twenty, thirty years down the line – I am the future. Whether I turn out to be like Tesla or Edison is all time will tell.

Only in Ireland, in this, the official European Union year of intercultural dialogue – can we have a minister of state (with special responsibility for Integration Policy) who is largely famous for being a racist – crocodile apologies or not.

That’s right, come to Ireland, where democracy isn’t just a word, it’s starring in it’s own vaudeville exploitation movie.

Where James Larkin is just a forgotten statue on a street called O’Connell and people openly fear the police lest they come to their attention.

Where once we stood on a global stage as a symbol for glorious revolution against tyrannical oppressors who crushed both culture and freedom. One of the loudest voices in a multicoloured chain of hands desperately harrying the buckets of dissent back and forth across the planet. Now we just stand for the hideous thought that once freed from their oppressors, the prisoners will become worse than their tyrants ever were.

If only because they’re so unused to being free they’ll flee straight back into a new dark age of repression. Not used to being our own masters, we created new ones in the satirical image of our old ones.

If only because with some twisted set of glasses, we’re looking backward – where surrounded by gutless corrupt politicians who keep us in a merry dance of tribunals that amount to nothing but the padding of their solicitor friend’s pockets. We have embraced a strange sort of rosy nostalgia – where we want the staunch Catholic conservatism socialism of heroes like de Valera. Only to get the blue-black-brown shirt goose-stepped diplomacy of people like Patrick Ahern, Michael McDowell, Mary Harney and Micheál Martin.

Where a head of state can draw a parallel between himself and the supposed socialist ideals upon which the state was founded then turn a blind eye to private Hilton-hospitals being built on public land.

What has happened is that, in the last twenty years, Ireland has changed from a country gripped by spurting liberalism, to a beautiful picture of Mosley’s ideal Britain. Free to remove our blinkers – we looked about and found ourselves surrounding by nightmarish truths. Desperately trying to turn to face backwards, we aren’t sure whether we want the now or nostalgia. At least back then, we had a common enemy and we could lay all our woes at their feet. The endless summers of martyrs are gone and it has placed us in a situation we all want to cringe away from. Where every priest is a suspect, if only for helping to brush away a sex offender and where we’d rather three monkey it and grumble than admit that our politicians are raping us so hard, it’s a wonder we haven’t suffocated as they press our heads down into the couch that is “Don’t worry, the country’s loaded.

Money will change your world.

We used to be in the Third World and even though we’re living in our house in the First World, we’ve still got the lease on the one in the second and we’re just subletting for the moment until we decide what to do.

The most cost effective of exploitation films; we have removed the cannibal from the script and we’re content to film ourselves pillaging ourselves. Yet you can’t forget the vaudeville element where everyone knows what’s going on and it is all just a grim joke told around the pub.

Cue the music number.

Supported by so many other countries, oppressed peoples and revolutionary groups throughout our long struggle to be free so we may show the world how to really suppress a people. We did what any wealthy white would do when faced with the faces of those who helped and now expected help back. We spat in their hands and turned our backs.

Thinking this must be part of a greater plan, someway, somehow, we wouldn’t leave our brothers in the dust. They love us all the same and wait for us to jump back from behind the curtain to reveal all.

Don’t worry. As long as we don’t have any trade with them, we’ll be your bulldog. At least, we’ll pick some slightly worthless politician to speak out. Maybe just a focus group, things could turn around and you know, Shamus did say something marketwise about opening a…

Mine is the first generation that has not been forced en-mass to take to the boats and planes as we flee in an effort to find work. Our response to those amongst the world wishing now to partake of some of the success they helped us build? “Stand over there. We’re shipping you right back.”

We will sell our energy rights for a song, to companies famous for treating communities like prison bitches. Talk nuclear because we have to ignore that we have enough wind energy off our coasts to make the country money from selling it to Europe. If only, because somebody is afraid the view from a window in their holiday home might be spoiled.

It’s gone beyond pressure from the oil companies keeping wind energy down. As a people we’re working on a mandate. Every screw is being turned to a planning nightmare where if you erect a wind turbine it can only turn this way and not that and with them we’ve wrapped ourselves up in so much red tape snake oil Shell psalms that we’ve tooth fairy-ed the forest and know that the cake was only ever a lie.

We talk a good trade on going green across the global stage, yet we closed our only glass recycling plant even when the workers tried valiantly to save it.

A place where the separation of Church and State only happens in comic books and those fancy science fiction movies you see from auld’Hollywood. Joyously keeping condoms almost prohibitively expensive and allowing one company to all but have a monopoly, we’re happy to take the credit for being one of the only European countries with a positive birth rate. In the exact same breath though, we’re only too happy to send thousands of our daughters abroad should mistakes happen. You wouldn’t want to offend the Church now.

We cannot march to voice our dissatisfaction anymore or more to the point, most of us won’t. Achieving nothing isn’t worth an afternoon of the police removing their identification numbers and being released on us like howling dogs that belong in that scrap yard of some old celluloid Americana. When you have to be careful in citing or pursuing your rights, lest you offend the officer concerned and get yourself into more trouble, peaceful disobedience just isn’t an option anymore.

We may have dodged the bullet on our police being able to swab our cheeks on minor arrests, but as our schools start to fingerprint our children, we can be happy to know we’ve segued all our communication through American hands. The unintelligent green lollipop sucking schoolgirl with a crush on her father’s sleazy friend, if he so much as says “Jump! we’ll take our knickers off.

New to this whole democracy thing – we’re committed to completely ignoring history just so we can repeat the mistakes of the past. If only, because, maybe with those mistakes under our belts, the big boys will take us more seriously or just ignore the few bob we swindled here and there without them noticing. Faced with decades of mismanagement, our judicial, health and education systems are crumbling under their own corpulent yet well meaning weight.

We know full well prohibition doesn’t work. Just as we know strict legalization and taxation would free up our prisons, destroy the power of drug cartels, ease up the workload of our police force and create a massive surplus of cash we could use to reinvigorate both health and education systems. Granted, we also know most of that cash would be spent on cementing their place as some of the highest paid public servant politicians in the world. Unctuous hands furiously patting each other on the back with the rallying cry; “Helicopters and raises all round.”

As they vigorously move to curtail the freedom and protection of the press. We need you to-there look what the other hand is doing, look at the shiny…

…no there, behind you…

That there is called the turn.

We’re just going to keep doing that as we know at this stage, you don’t even need the prestige anymore.

I am reminded of the words of a rather sagacious taxi driver who once did work for a fat man with glasses he claims was assassinated in Eastern Europe, lest the bird squall and many find themselves unable to work.

“See what we need to do – is just take one out. Execute the thieving lying bastard on live television and warn the others in the Dail to behave. Just one. That’s change the whole political landscape. It’s just a shame it’s the only way they’ll listen – when we start killing them.”

Granted, I am also reminded of a recent taxi journey with a man who turned to me and said,

“When you look around, at how Ireland is going. You have to admit Mosley was right.”

Beautiful place Ireland – what other country will so readily destroy its own culture to sell the parody created by Hollywood?

Control your people’s fun and you can control their minds. Where there is fun to be had – you can all-in the Irish powers at be will be there, rubbing their hands together as they get ready to curtail it.

It makes little to no sense to dump at the very minimum, a hundred thousand varyingly inebriated people from different walks of life, out onto the street at the same time. Wait, the population of Dublin is a million odd. It can’t be a hundred thousand it must be…

Ah screw it. Bloody hooligans. Close the pubs earlier. Conform the other ninety percent for that ten’s crimes. Curtail their only way of letting off steam, box it up, force them to go a little wild at last orders, give the box a good shake then let’s shunt them out onto the street.

Not content with this already astute policy of stirring the waters. The Irish ruling council is set to toughen up even further, if only because that makes sense. They’re going to crack down on everything, even the opening hours of fast food restaurants. Because really, it makes no logical sense to actually loosen everything up and allow people to go at their own pace. To be staggered on their release to the streets by varied drinking hours. Or to actually provide a proper late night public transport infrastructure

No. What has never worked in the past – will somehow – if we hold our breath long enough – work for us.

In prison, this is what they call lockdown. Don’t worry though; they won’t see it like that. They won’t fully grasp just why the youth are so disaffected, why they riot, because they don’t see anything wrong. These, the children of political dynasties, the power hungry and the mad. Forget the conspiracy term prison planet – we have left them behind and are now entering the era of the prison Island. Where with a moments notice, the alarm can be rung and the shutters brought down as we wait diligently for inspection.

While they turn the mattress of my kept indefinitely digital records to find any reference to me even discussing the possibility of a crime they can ship me to overloaded prisons for six months.

I understand now the last moments of ‘Heaven’s Gate’ – the forlorn look on Kris Kristofferson’s face as the ship pulls away from land.

Just as I can understand why, Gil Scott Heron, the inspiration for this piece, ended up becoming a hard-line junkie. You can stand and you can point and you can try to eloquently rally the troops around some sort of truth. They’ll either kill you. Or you’ll get lost in the static white noise blare of their television as contrary to what you’d like, you can be damn sure they’ll be televising the revolution.

They’ll have to.

How else will they teach us futility?

It’s at that point – when you’ll turn to the gun, the bottle or the needle – and down you’ll fall – into blissful ignorance. It’s not so much that you won’t feel it anymore. It’s just that you won’t really care anymore. Mores the point, you’ll be at peace with the pain.

But while you’re rummaging through morning thoughts in an effort to give your head peace, down you’ll fall through society cracks and even if you sober up, it won’t matter anymore because your voice is automatically invalid.

So join me now.

Join me in impatience.

We don’t need to look forward anymore.

We are the future.

And this…

This ain’t really your life, It ain’t nothing but a distopian book written by an English Democratic Socialist.

And just remember,

“Why wait for 1984? When we can panic now…and avoid the rush?”

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This was written to be spoken and as a homage to ‘B Movie’.

Racist minister source