We Must be Talking

  The Midterm Elections           Gerry OShea When John Healy, the great Irish Times columnist in the 1970’s, faced covering a bewildering political situation in Ireland he would playfully plead with his readers for help. “Riddle me this!” he would ask as he started to draw the readers into the complexities of whatever conundrum he was writing about.    I feel like Healy’s assertion applies in spades as we look towards the  elections on November 8 th because they involve so much emotion and are so crucial for both parties and, indeed, for the future of American democracy.  Republicans are justifiably confident that they will benefit from the traditional midterm negative judgement on the party in office. In addition, all the polls point to the rising cost of food and gas as the number one voter concern.  I read about a woman in Colorado who bought a dozen eggs for 80 cents two years ago but who i...

    On December 5 th 1921 the British Prime Minister, reminding Griffith and his colleagues that the Dail made them plenipotentiaries, issued an ultimatum: sign the treaty document or face immediate and terrible war. Collins knew that many of his colleagues at home would be outraged at any oath to the English monarch which clearly reneged on their promise of fealty to an Irish Republic. Just how difficult he found signing his name on the document can be gauged from Churchill’s assessment: “Michael Collins rose as if he was going to shoot someone, preferably himself. In all my life I have never seen such pain and suffering in restraint.”   In the last letter he wrote to a friend from London, he unburdened about the depth of his painful misgivings. “When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, cold and dank in the night air. Think – what have I got for Ireland? Something she has wanted these past 700 years. Will anyone be satisfied with the bar...

  Michael Collins – Part Two            Gerry OShea Michael Collins’ leadership was at the heart of the Irish War of Independence. He oversaw the revolutionary plans with Richard Mulcahy in Dublin but the decisions about confrontations with the Crown forces in country areas was appropriately left to the local leaders. Only 18 people were killed during 1919, the first year of the insurrection. No wonder the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, dismissed the sporadic attacks by Irish Republicans as the actions of “murder gangs” that the police were well-equipped to handle. By the time of the truce in July, 1921, he had learned that he was, in fact, dealing with a major national insurgency. A week after the mayhem of Bloody Sunday, Tom Barry’s famous West Cork brigade killed seventeen Auxiliaries in an ambush at Kilmichael, near Macroom in County Cork. This defeat shocked the military and political establishment. In revenge...

  Christian Nationalism                      Gerry OShea During the summer, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia proudly highlighted her identification as a Christian nationalist.   In typically exuberant language she declared: “I am being attacked by the godless left because I said I was a proud Christian nationalist. These evil people are even calling me a Nazi because I proudly love my country and my God.” Fellow congresswomen Lauren Boebert and Mary Miller are on board with their colleague’s views in this area. Many other leaders from the political Right also align with these opinions including Governor Ron DeSantis who propounds the esoteric theory that “the nation’s founders did not desire a strict separation of church and state.” The Governor likes to quote from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “Put on the full armor of God, so you can take your stand ag...

                           Michael Collins – Irish Revolutionary             Gerry OShea Michael Collins was born in 1890 in the townland of Woodfield, near Clonakilty in County Cork. He was the youngest of eight children born to Michael John Collins and his wife, a local woman named Mary Ann O’Brien. It was an unusual match insofar as the father was 61 when he married Miss O’Brien who was just 23. Mary was pregnant with their oldest child, Margaret, before the nuptials, a circumstance that would certainly have invited censorious gossip in those days. Michael attended a local school where he was influenced by stirring nationalist stories told by his teacher Denis Lyons, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and also by a local blacksmith, James Santry, an old-time Fenian, whose forge was loca...

    Strongman Politics              Gerry OShea Donald Trump is America’s strongman. On election night in November, 2020, he claimed that with over 70 million voters he had won the approval of a greater number of Americans than any previous presidential candidate, but he didn’t reckon with the fact that his opponent earned over seven million more votes than he did. His strength comes mainly from his ability to identify the grievances felt by many Americans. In his announcement that he was seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2015 he pointed to illegal Mexicans allegedly raping women in Texas and promised to deal aggressively with such ugly lawlessness by immigrants.   Never mind that the crime statistics in that state did not validate his assertions, and that he himself has been accused of rape or sexual assault and harassment by at least 25 women since the 1970’s. His words at the campai...