With typical hype, the pendulum of lazy journalism and that class of corridor-prowlers who feed regular doses of nonsense to silly journalists has swung into action yet again. This time, we are told, that Angela Merkel is “now the leader of the free world”. Assuming that Ireland still remains part of “the free world”, is there any sense at all in which Irish people now consider Dr Merkel to be “our leader”?
I very much doubt that many Irish people would confer that accolade on the Chancellor of the Federal Republic – or, for that matter, on anyone else these days.
Germany is not a super-power. The EU is not a super-power – whatever some of its ruling elite might wish to believe.
Insofar as occupying the White House used to carry with it the office or job description of “leader of the free world”, the remains of that lable are now going to pass from Barack Obama to Donald Trump.
The idea that we are “led” by Trump is slightly ridiculous. He may make decisions that will radically affect our future in Ireland. But that does not make him our leader.
While leadership requires power, it consists of something more than power – and the missing ingredient is moral authority commanding loyalty.
The post of leader of the free world is now “Sede Vacante”, as the Vatican might put it.
A crazed mosaic of the Trump administration is beginning to emerge. To have Stephen Bannon as the chief strategist in the White House means that the spirit of white nationalism will pervade the Oval Office. How young American Blacks and Latinos and Muslims and Jews are supposed to owe loyalty to an administration populated by strategists such as Bannon is difficult to fathom.
Happily, we need not grapple with that problem in Ireland or in Europe. We owe this new administration no loyalty at all. If it seeks our pragmatic cooperation, that is one thing. But Bannon and Trump can expect no feelings of loyalty or friendship from liberal people – at home and abroad.
Why? Because they have denigrated the values that we for the most part hold dear in order to secure election.
They have approbated treating people differently by reason of their religion. That is plain and undeniable. In order to mobilise the white nationalist vote, Trump said he would ban all Muslims from entering America. He later tried to dilute that commitment. But he made the commitment – not of the cuff. He read it out word for word to one of his rallies. That was a calculated act of sectarianism. And it worked.
If that is the path to power, there is a price – Loss of respect.
Loss of respect for your mandate is the price you pay for using sectarianism to obtain it. And it is the price that must be exacted in our minds if we oppose sectarianism. And it is the price that this new administration must now pay.
We can and will respect the offices that they may come to hold. But we do not have to respect the office-holders’ opinions or their policies or their records.
Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General designate, is an ultra-conservative from Alabama whose views were previously found to make him unsuitable for appointment to the Federal bench. He will have a major role in producing a Supreme Court favourable to the reactionary and conservative views of white nationalism.
General Flynn is to be promoted from Trump rally “warmer-upper” speaker and leader of the “lock Her Up” chant to national security advisor. So well fitted for the job!
I am not engaging in the risible foot-stamping that we have seen in much of the media since Trump’s election. I accept the result. I accept that we will have to work with the result.
But just as Daniel O’Connell was roundly and wrongly condemned by many as naïve for supporting the abolition of US slavery at the cost of American support for his Repeal movement, I think that Irish people today must not acquiesce in the emergence of a new type of politics based on an abandonment of the equal worth of humans in the pursuit of office.
The anger of the political mob does not ever justify – or even explain or excuse – the lynching of our principles.
I note that Trump’s victory has coincided with – if not inspired – an attempt by Justin Barrett to launch a far-right, Catholic “National” party in Ireland. Make “Rome Rule Great Again” are being printed in their hundreds –or tens!
The meanness of spirit that characterised a goodly portion of the minority of US voters that chose Trump can evidently fly the oceans in jig time.
Barrett’s reactionary agenda is now decades old. As a one-time founder of “Youth Against Divorce” and as occasional keeper of the atavistic flame of reactionary, Catholic conservatism, he has a dogged determination to stop and turn back the Irish political clock.
This particular initiative is doomed – even if it manages to find a salubrious hotel for its launch which will take the risk of a pitched battle in its lobby between aging members of Youth Defence and frenzied ranks of Trots and anarchists.
We do need a new component in our politics if the people are to be rescued from the utter paralysis and futility which pervades Leinster House these days. But it cannot be Trumpism in a leprechaun suit.
Jack O’Connor and the public sector unions sense weakness and drift in the corridors of power. The malign effects of a minority government were clearly spelt out by me in these columns five months ago. I claim no special knack of clairvoyance. What is now happening was predictable and predicted.
A government in office but not in power attracts disastrous outcomes. We are witnessing that truth made plain before our eyes.
In this dangerous, unpredictable world of Trump and Brexit, must we heap the timbers around our own stake?