First, some good news: If you’re a weekly roundup hater, this will be the last one for a fortnight. On Monday, I’m heading off on a week’s holiday with my wife and my parents to somewhere sunny and warm – which is good news for everyone here at home because it inevitably means that the weather in Ireland will be the best it will be all year. Then, the week after, Mrs. McG and I are venturing into the badlands of Ukraine to attend the wedding of a very old and dear friend. I shall endeavour to bring back reports from the front lines.
In all honesty, I’m looking forward to the break. Regular readers may have divined a sort of mounting frustration on my part with the general state of political affairs in Ireland, and most especially with a nascent right wing slash nationalist movement that seems entirely intent on shooting itself in the foot at every opportunity. One of my principles in this job is that I try to always write what I honestly think, without worrying about the impact on subscriptions or reader happiness or any of that stuff – and what I honestly think at the moment is that the grassroots energy on the right in Ireland is persistently being directed down stupid and dead-end paths by a cadre of internet influencers more interested in their own standing and audience growth than they are in anything productive. That kind of movement is one that ultimately rewards being the guy with the edgy takes and fan service over those people trying to build a movement that can actually win. The result, I’m afraid, is growing extremism and detachment from political or cultural reality – living in a little bubble where everybody agrees with you, rather than in the real world where a great many people assuredly do not.
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