President Trump is nothing if not provocative. Yesterday he signed an Executive Order proclaiming March 2025 as Irish Heritage Month. One wonders if this was partly a bit of a message to the Irish political elite who are out-Trump-deranging one another these days in their efforts to distance themselves from Orange Man.
In paying tribute to Irish Americans, and I suppose by extension to the rest of us, the President made a rather cryptic reference to us being “a great people …. a great people.” And that Irish Americans voted for him in “in heavy numbers, so I like them even more.”
That appears to be the case. At one time the Irish American vote for the Democrats was as strong as the Jewish vote. Some of that was a reflection of the fact that in the cities that were heavily Irish they managed to capture control of the party with the Republicans often regarded as a patrician and sometimes anti-Irish party – Boston being a good example.
Now it would appear that as part of the general shift of “white Catholics” to Trump that the Irish American vote has swung significantly in his direction and may even have been a key factor in the President’s taking of the swing state of Pennsylvania. Nationally, Trump beat Harris for the Catholic vote by 56:41.
That percentage includes Hispanics, so it can be taken that the margin among “white” Catholics such as Irish, Polish and other “hyphenated Americans” in places like Philadelphia was higher. Indeed, that Washington Post exit poll had Trump beat Harris by 60:37 among white Catholics in the swing states.
So, you can see where the numbers matter to Trump. One still wonders exactly what he meant by his quip that “you are not supposed but to, but you have to like them.” Mmmm. Those who petulantly made the decision not to attend an event on Patrick’s Day – to which they had not even yet if they were ever even going to be – invited might have chosen the best option.
Trump is not a person who disdains public humiliation of his opponents, so Micheál and the lads might hope someone else is further up the ticker tape list of enemies on March 17. Or that they had chosen to sit in the freezing wind in the county town reviewing stand.
The reluctance to visit the Donald has nothing to do with overall American policy. Sinn Féin’s grandstanding over Mary Lou and Michelle O’Neill’s announcement that they are not going is weak on several levels. Sinn Féin had no difficulty taking the plane last year to meet Biden even though the same issue of Gaza was also the reason why pressure was applied to them both internally and from their leftie rivals not to go – which they ignored.
The only difference – and I am someone who disagrees with America providing uncritical support for Israel – is that Trump is now the incumbent rather than Biden or another Democrat. Does anyone seriously believe that if Kamala Harris was in the White House that the Shinner ladies would not be doing cartwheels at the prospect of drinking Green Wkd with such an icon of female empowerment?
They’d be the first in the queue and they’d have the same excuses as Mary Lou used for meeting Biden at the height of the bombing of their “comrades” – a poisoned chalice of there was ever one as some of their actual comrades know – in Gaza. They’d say that it’s better to talk and so on and so forth. Which it is.
The main reason of course is that the Irish political and media elite is so enthralled with the Democrats that their effusive adoration makes The New York Times and CNN look like the New York Post in terms of criticism. Fine Gael and Labour actually appointed a member of the Democratic Party, Katherine Zappone, as a Minister. She has never been a member of any other party as far as I know.
Sinn Féin not only received significant political and other backing from the Clinton Democrats when they agreed to accept Partition but were the beneficiaries of significant funding from Chuck Feeney whose billions were also a key factor in similarly backing the advocacy NGOs who took the same line on abortion on other “social issues” as Sinn Féin.
With some hands-on assistance, it might be added, of north Americans who came to Ireland to work for Sinn Féin in quite senior positions and whose political and other provenance was quite apparent. So there is an element of Singing for their Supper in the Shinners craven attitude to the Democrats.
But back to Irish Americans. The sneering tone which many of our own bien pensants adopt towards people of Irish American heritage who live in the United States has long been one of my bugbears.
I was intending to write about this for St. Patrick’s week but the Trump order yesterday provides a handy peg upon which to hang it.
You will not have to search for long on the Interweb to find someone mocking Irish American “plastic Paddies.” I have not conducted a scientific analysis of the phenomenon but anecdotally it would appear that not an insignificant proportion of those who ridicule Irish Americans for their allegedly ersatz claim to ancestry have no problem believing that someone from Africa who lives in an IPAS centre is Irish.
Or that having a passport or having acquired citizenship makes one Irish. It clearly does not. Nor does being born here if the person is part of a different ethnic community which certainly does not think of itself as being Irish, unless for pragmatic or even opportunistic reasons.
They fail the Shane McGowan test. Or the Tom Clarke test or the James Connolly test. Were they “new English” or “new Scottish”? They were not. Proof – to paraphrase the Irish born English settler descended Duke of Wellington – that being born in a stable does not make one a donkey nor a Derby winning colt.
Irish Americans on the other hand have both a genetic claim and an identitarian claim to Irishness. Some clown whose lobotomised trance in front of Sky Sports is briefly interrupted by an American inquiring where the Kellys or Dunnes or O’Shaughnessys used to live 200 years ago may find it oddly amusing in his deracinated mind.
Many of those “plastic Paddies” – who actually find it puzzling that another of their race thinks an English soccer team is “us” or “youse” – have saved for many years to visit the land of their forefathers and foremothers – a land which for millions of Irish Americans whose ancestors were forced to flee in the face of attempted genocide they regard rightly as their spiritual and racial homeland.
The derision of our Irish American cousins speaks more for the weird psychological neo colonial walking bag of neuroses which make up much of our current gene pool than whatever overly sentimental displays of Irishness those cousins might sometimes engage in.
They are deserving of a warm welcome here, and indeed we might do well to cultivate that diaspora and our exiles as those of other ethnicities with a strong presence in the States have done.
Top of the Morning To You – Go n-éirí an bóthar libh.