FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
5hr ago
God, how I miss the Bríd's crosses. I'm not religious, but it was still so nice to see them everywhere, actually physical crosses that schoolchildren had made with their hands. I wonder do they even learn how to make them in primary schools anymore? Certainly not in the Educate Together schools.
Do you mean that they would never dare in public because they would be crucified, but secretly they believe it? Or that even the far right don't believe in an ethnic conception of Irishness?
Hmm, excellent question. I don't know enough far-right people to know how deep the programming goes, how thoroughly Irish people have internalised the idea that being Irish has absolutely nothing to do with one's ethnic background. I'm reminded of Orwell's staggeringly prescient essay "Notes on Nationalism" which includes a passing comment along these lines:
The old-style contemptuous attitude towards ‘natives’ has been much weakened in England, and various pseudo-scientific theories emphasizing the superiority of the white race have been abandoned. Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology about the sexual prowess of Negroes.
I suspect that, even among the ranks of people who think that Ireland has taken in too many refugees in particular and immigrants in general, who think that our government prioritizes the needs of said immigrants over its own people and so on – even among those people, there are quite a number who would bristle at the suggestion that Denise Chaila is anything other than Irish. I'm not sure quite how they would justify such a claim: perhaps that, unlike first-generation immigrants who make their wives wear burqas, Chaila actually speaks English? But surely the entirety of Irish identity isn't reducible to a dialect and accent.
I have described elsewhere
It's funny: while writing my previous comment I was thinking of this exact comment, but didn't realise it was you who'd written it!
I agree there's been a great deal of goalpost-moving on the topic of immigration, especially from those in favour. I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of Ireland, and specifically what immigration implies for the Irish national identity, or lack thereof.
What is the Irish national identity, really? Certainly no one would claim that it's based on ethnicity: even the farthest of the far-right would never dare to suggest that e.g. Denise Chaila is anything other than Irish, no hyphen necessary. (As pointed out by Angela Nagle, there's a bit of historical revisionism going on here, with modern Irish progressives loath to acknowledge that the Irish republican movement was always an unabashed, unapologetic ethno-nationalist movement.) It can't be based on a language that almost no one can speak, not even at a conversational level. It can't be based on a shared literary tradition (if the average Irish person has read an Irish novel in their lifetimes, it was probably by Sally Rooney, and I suspect the only dead Irish writer most Irish could name would be Joyce) or a musical one (most Irish people are proudly dismissive of their native musical tradition, and the most popular Irish musicians have always been those who aped sounds coming from the UK or the states). It certainly can't be based on Catholicism, with weekly attendance figures hovering around a quarter of the populace (a figure which is bound to shrink even more dramatically as the older generations die off).
At the height of the clerical abuse scandal (but, I believe, several years prior to the legalisation of gay marriage and abortion), I remember reading an opinion piece in the Irish Times noting that, of the three traditional pillars of Irish society (the Catholic Church, the Fianna Fáil political party and the Gaelic Athletics Association), now only the latter still retains anything like the kind of power and cultural influence it once wielded. After the clerical abuse scandals, the Church's reputation lay in tatters and attendance figures have been in freefall for decades, while it's been nearly five decades since Fianna Fáil secured an outright majority. The tone of this opinion piece was more than a little triumphalist, but in retrospect one wonders why the columnist wasn't a bit more concerned. Yes, these once-powerful institutions are a shadow of their former selves – but what are they going to be replaced with?
I know this is the story of every Western nation in the twentieth century: we gleefully tore down all the old institutions without giving any thought to what we ought to replace them with, and now we're experiencing a crisis of meaning. But I feel like the absence is even more keenly felt in Ireland, given how thoroughly we've deprecated everything else that might have served as a placeholder for a national identity while we got to work building new institutions. Woke progressives often talk about "culture" as if it's just another name for "language, cuisine, music, dance, fashion, sport": when they talk about "multiculturalism" and respecting different cultural practices, what they really mean is "you can speak any language you want, as long as you use it to respect everyone's preferred pronouns". But language, cuisine, music etc. is just superficial window-dressing: when we talk about "cultural differences", what we really mean is that people from different cultures have different moral values, and different assumptions they take for granted. Culture is why Arabs throw gay men off of buildings; culture is why Kenyans cut off their daughters' clitorises; culture is why disgraced Japanese people kill themselves rather than bringing dishonor on their families. With the hollowing out of Irish cultural institutions, whatever moral values and base assumptions an Irish person can be assumed to have are functionally indistinguishable from the European average (and, more to the point, the British* average). But unlike France, Sweden, Germany and so on, we don't really have much in the way of "culture" in the superficial window-dressing sense either. What native cuisine we have (aside from the obvious) is limited to coddle, colcannon, and bacon & cabbage; Irish dancing is that thing you're forced to do in Irish college over the summer before you can get back to kissing girls; language and music were covered above; the less said about Irish fashion the better. The only one in which we can really hold our own in is sport, and even then I'd hazard a guess than an order of magnitude more Irish people follow English club football exclusively than follow GAA exclusively. It's for this reason that Irish people tend to sound so faltering and unsure of themselves when attempting to explain what's unique and peculiar about their own culture, and what makes it meaningfully distinct from that of our nearest neighbour. "Emm... mammy'd have the wooden spoon after you, haha... flat 7Up when you're ill... Bosco on the telly... forgot to turn off the immersion?"
Sometimes you can detect the tension underlying all of this when Irish people talk about Irish history. Opposition to British rule occupies such a central role in the Irish psyche that it's almost impossible to overstate, and when pressed for examples of how oppressive said rule was, one will invariably be the penal laws, which placed heavy restrictions on Catholic practices in Ireland. But when you ask the person citing this example what they personally think of the Catholic Church, they will surely reply that it's a repressive homophobic misogynistic patriarchical institution made up entirely of kiddy-fiddlers whose theological beliefs are incoherent nonsense. In sum: "the Brits were bad because they tried to stop people practising Catholicism; also, the Catholic Church is an evil institution which ought to have no power". This cognitive dissonance is almost never remarked upon.
Ireland spent centuries fighting to protect our native culture against attempts from without to destroy it – then, almost as soon as we had won, we decided our native culture wasn't really worth defending in the first place, and tossed it aside in favour of generic, undistinguished universal culture. More provocatively, one could say that Ireland spent several hundred years ruled by a colonial overlord (Britain), finally achieved full independence in 1949, and in 1973 (barely a generation later) voluntarily submitted to being ruled by a different colonial overlord (the EU). Joining the EU was a sound decision from the perspective of economics, living standards and so on. But it's hard to dispute the idea that it ultimately compromised whatever sense of a distinct Irish identity still remained. The average Irish person's worldview owes far more to a gaggle of unelected administrators in Brussels than it does to Michael Collins, Daniel O'Connell or Charles Stewart Parnell, and that goes double for the hordes of woke West Brits and East Yanks who call themselves Irish but have nothing but scorn for every extant Irish institution or cultural practice. Listening to them speak, they don't even sound Irish. I'd imagine that most of them would know who Washington D.C. is named after, but not O'Connell St or Parnell St.
(Keen to hear @HereAndGone2's thoughts on the above.)
*Regardless of political stripe, Irish people can be relied upon to become very irate when you point out alleged commonalities between our culture and British culture. This defensiveness, in my view, has more to do with the narcissism of small differences than with any real factual dispute. Ireland has its own culture distinct from our nearest neighbour's only in the sense that we have an army and a navy: nine times out of ten, what's true of British people can be assumed to be true of Irish people also.
FtttG
13hr ago
This belongs in the small scale question thread, not the culture war thread.
I agree that the Olympics don't have the cachet or cultural influence they used to, and the underlying reason is the same as everything else: the demise of the monoculture.
FtttG
15hr ago
At some point I'll put together an effortpost along the lines of Scott's "list of passages I highlighted in my copy of [book]". There was a lot of insight packed into a very small space.
FtttG
2d ago
Finally finished The True Believer. I have a lot of thoughts about it.
Started reading Philip K. Dick's Ubik last week. I'd heard of it years ago, but only recently discovered it was expanded from his short story "What the Dead Man Say", which I read as a child. Only about twenty pages in so far.
FtttG
2d ago
My brother and I are very alike along numerous axes, but he's significantly less Online than I am, and often mocks me for wasting my time arguing with strangers on the internet. (Something I do on multiple platforms, not just this one.)
The more I read about Savile, the more appalled I felt. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols once gave an interview in which he more or less stated that, within the BBC, it was an open secret that Saville was having inappropriate contact with children. This was in 1978, three decades before Savile died and all this bad business started to come out.
I'm a guy. Although I find it amusing that I apparently have such an – androgynous? – writing style.
@FtttG is generally quite liberal but was quite clear in the trans thread that (s)he doesn't think it's okay to write anything you want on a government form just because it makes you happy, and generally also doesn't particularly seem to like people traveling across borders as they please.
I find this characterisation interesting, as while I certainly think of myself as a run-of-the-mill 90s liberal and don't think any of my political opinions would be outside the Overton window for, say, a Democrat or Labour candidate circa 2000 – nonetheless, in my personal life I'm routinely accused of being a crypto-conservative (or even, rather laughably, "far-right"). I certainly don't dispute that I'm more conservative than many of my friends and family, a lot of whom are passively woke, though I still think I'm probably less conservative than the median poster here.
I will freely cop to the former characterisation of my opinions: government forms are for cataloguing demographic data, not for making people feel "validated", and governments should not concern themselves with cataloguing their citizens' unfalsifiable claims about their internal mental states. (Or rather, their citizens' unfalsifiable claims about their internal mental states should not supplant or override objective facts about the compositions of their bodies. "Identify" as whatever you please: that doesn't change what you are.) But when you say I "[don't] particularly seem to like people travelling across borders as they please", I'm a little taken aback. If all you mean as that I'm not an advocate for open borders, that's fair: per an article I read the other day, in order to have laws you must have jurisdictions, to have jurisdictions you must have borders, and if you have borders they must be enforced. But I get the impression you're imputing a stronger claim to me, namely that I'm opposed to immigration into Ireland in general, including legal immigration. If so, that's not how I would describe my own worldview. For example, I live with my girlfriend who's a first-generation migrant who was born and raised Muslim (though no longer practising); of the three long-term romantic relationships I've had as an adult, only one was with a fellow Irish person while the others were with first-generation migrants; it's been nearly a decade since I was physically intimate with a fellow Irish person, with virtually all of the people I was intimate with since being first-generation migrants; I would say a significant proportion if not an outright majority of my close friends are first-generation migrants.
That being said, I'm not going to pretend that all immigrants are created equal; I do think that a significant proportion of immigrants to Ireland (as in the rest of Europe) are a net drain on the public purse, not to mention responsible for a disproportionate share of violent crime; I have a big problem with people emigrating to Ireland solely to claim social welfare indefinitely and never make a positive contribution; and the progressive news media's habitual obfuscation about migrant crime and its wholesale importing of American racial grievance politics are long standing bugbears of mine. Immigrants who come to Ireland with the goal of assimilating and working hard without demanding handouts (either in the form of social welfare payouts or "ethnic spoils" sinecures) are entirely welcome, which is why I get particularly angry when I see immigrants meeting that description (e.g. Ireland's growing population of recent Indian migrants) receiving abuse and harassment from the native population. If you got the impression that I'm opposed to immigration into Ireland on general principle, I'm legitimately curious as to what gave you that impression (and not in a defensive how dare you! sort of way).
FtttG
2d ago
I've no idea why he goes by that name, but according to Wikipedia he's been convicted for several crimes, so maybe it has something to do with that. Apparently he also doesn't want people to know he's half-Irish (which would undermine his anti-immigration rhetoric), and I was under the impression that "Lennon" was an Irish surname, but apparently that's the surname of his English stepfather, so I dunno.
FtttG
2d ago
Elsewhere in the thread I said I supported a "common law age of consent," where the aptitude for consent is judged by a jury in a trial that charges rape or sexual assault, where the prosecutor brings evidence that the victim lacks mental capacity.
I'm really struggling to envision how this would work in practice. A 20-year-old man has consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl, but it's okay because "she seemed really mature for her age"?
How would this synergise (or not) with other rights only afforded to people who have reached the age of majority? 15-year-olds can vote, drink alcohol, smoke, buy guns etc. provided they can demonstrate that they're unusually mature for their age? Can you imagine the administrative overhead involved in having a public body vet the emotional maturity of every 15-, 16- and 17-year-old in the land on a case-by-case basis?
But somehow I suspect you aren't half as emotionally invested in extending the franchise to "emotionally mature" 15-year-olds as you are in decriminalising grown men having sex with minors.
FtttG
2d ago
Unrelated to the main thrust of your post, I've read that men tend to wear their trousers higher and higher the older they get, which may be related to their bodies producing less testosterone as they age (don't ask me to explain the causal mechanism here, that's just what I've heard).
A prominent example of this is this compilation of clips of director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist, Cruising), well-known for his bluntness and sharp tongue. One of the top comments quips "the higher the pants, the shorter the temper".
On a somewhat related topic, one item that has confused me for a long time in erotic art is the popularity of outfits (most prominently the iconic "bunny suit", but also many one-piece swimsuits and bikini bottoms) where the edge of the fabric rises from the crotch at a very steep angle (i. e., straight to a point lying above the hip bone), rather than a gentler, almost flat angle (to a point lying in the middle of the hip bone, or even below it) that to me seems much more alluring.
I think the idea is that it "frames" the waist in such a way as to give the impression that the wearer has wider hips and a narrower waist than she really does. A lot of women's clothing is designed to accentuate these features (e.g. if a woman is wearing a striped top, it will almost invariably have horizontal rather than vertical stripes, so as to make her curves more prominent).
I wish you would become a comedy writer on Substack or something, your talents are wasted here. The other day I told my brother your "Stochastic Frankenbrad" line and he roared laughing.
While the governmental interference in people's lives doesn't sound half as draconian or invasive as the worst excesses of Covid hysteria (it's not as if, in the interests of combating illegal immigration, Minnesotans are being prevented from hiking on mountain trails or attending their spouses' funerals; nor has their full participation in public life been made conditional on their undergoing a specific medical procedure), I nonetheless agree with you that many of the people cheering on ICE are motivated by a similar kind of spite. As a committed civil libertarian it's always disheartening to find out what a large proportion of my ostensible fellow-travelers really just want the boot on the other foot.
FtttG
2d ago
Far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
A relative of mine lives in the UK, and when he was last over he said that he always appreciates when media outlets point out that "Tommy Robinson" isn't his legal name. I replied "so you think it's okay to deadname him?"
FtttG
3d ago
Yes, but the operative fact in that distinction is sexual contact. It's not a crime in and of itself for a fifteen-year-old girl to love a twenty-year-old boy, or vice versa. (Indeed, how could the law ever criminalise emotional states? That's right out of Nineteen Eighty-Four.)
FtttG
3d ago
It would be even better if the law made a distinction where a loving relationship involving a 15 year old between could never be statutory rape.
Does the law ever pass judgement on which relationships are "loving" and which aren't? How would it even go about doing this? I know that in custody disputes between divorcing parents the judge may well take the respective parents' apparent affection for their children (and concern for their welfare) into account, but my understanding is that this is only one factor of many taken into consideration: if forced to choose between granting custody to one parent who really loves his children but is a heroin addict, and another parent who doesn't seem that invested in them but isn't addicted to heroin and always feeds and clothes them, I imagine most judges would choose the latter parent. Offhand I can't think of any instance in which the legal system adjudicates on which relationships are "loving" and which are not. Still less can I think of any crime which is not considered a crime provided the perpetrator and victim love each other. We used to recognise such categories (domestic abuse, marital rape), and it was considered a major feminist victory when we no longer did so. I, for one, would not like to go back to the world in which it is legally impossible for a man to rape his wife.
I guess in mine it's not
Which jurisdiction would that be?
It is if they have sex, even if she wanted it and is not victimized by it.
No, it's not. If a fifteen-year-old girl loves her twenty-year-old boyfriend, but they have a celibate relationship, no crime has been committed. If a fifteen-year-old girl has sex with her twenty-year-old boyfriend, in some jurisdictions he will be considered a statutory rapist. The extent to which she loves him simply doesn't enter into it. We're not criminalising loving relationships, we're criminalising the sexual exploitation of minors, and as with literally every law in the history of the human race there are bound to be weird edge cases where it could plausibly be argued no real harm has been done.
FtttG
3d ago
Assault is legal in some cases, such as self defense
The law makes a very clear distinction between the two such that self-defense is not assault.
it's not a felony to get in a fight
In many jurisdictions, it absolutely is.
if I punch someone, they're more of a victim than a 15 year old girl who loves her 20 year old boyfriend
A "15-year-old girl who loves her 20-year-old boyfriend" is not the same as "a 15-year-old victim of statutory rape".
FtttG
3d ago
I keep thinking about a tweet which went something like this:
Being a boy sucks because when you're 13, you're competing for the attention of 13-year-old girls against 19-year-old men. And when you're 19, you're competing for the attention of 19-year-old girls against Saudi princes.
FtttG
3d ago
First there's evospych; studies show most men in their twenties are attracted to 15 year old girls.
Studies also show that men are more aggressive than women. That doesn't mean we should legalise assault.
My girlfriend watches the halftime show every year – not the Super Bowl, she just likes the halftime shows. I was half-watching it, and while reggaeton (or anything reggaeton-adjacent) is not really my cup of tea, I did feel like it's more appropriate for this context than Kendrick Lamar, purely for being more overtly "party" music composed with dancing in mind. Bad Bunny, with whose music I was erstwhile unfamiliar, is an undeniably talented performer.
Favourite take so far is from Ryan Long:
Legitimately: why is that every Spanish-speaking country is so obsessed with the reggaeton drum pattern? I went to Cuba for a week and it was inescapable. My brother went to Spain several years ago and came back saying the same thing, that Spanish people like music with exactly one rhythmic pattern. I went to a rave during Covid and there was a DJ playing techno, but all of the Mexicans in attendance simply refused to dance until another DJ took over and began playing reggaeton.
And the weirdest thing is that every other non-Anglophone culture is starting to follow their example. In the last three months I've been to a wedding for a Turkish couple and a Syrian birthday: the soundtracks were Turkish reggaeton and Arabic reggaeton, respectively. What is it about those four notes that inspires such a hypnotic cross-cultural fixation?
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