Immigration and Ireland - MEGATHREAD *Mod Note Added 02/09/25*

We can thank American culture wars and easy access to the Internet for that.

In the late 80s and through the 90s, with the spectre of imminent destruction fading with the fall of the Soviet Union, American society turned in on itself.

An entire generation grew up being told they were special, unique, that nothing was their fault, and any adversity they faced were failings of the system, their environment etc. Anything but their own responsibility.

This generation are now the ones espousing the same ideology in colleges, media, and politics over there. Meanwhile, the divisions in their society have only deepened. Hundreds of years of actual racism have never been dealt with, politics has become so polarised that the likes of Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton are seen as viable candidates for the highest office of the land, and identity politics (again based on the notion that everyone is a unique and special individual who can be whatever they feel) furthers these divisions.

The advent of the iPhone and then universal and cheap Internet access meant that notions that would have been previously confined to rags like the National Enquirer or college bulletin boards could now be shared with the entire planet in seconds. Every crank now had a voice and the ability to have it heard on a global scale. This was accelerated massively with the advent of Facebook and particularly Twitter.

With the decline of traditional news and newspapers, formerly respectable and responsible outlets found themselves with masses of virtual column inches or 24 hours of rolling news to fill.

Given that most of those same outlets are now staffed by the same generation I referred to at the start, who have to fill those columns and believe in the ideology, suddenly what would have been in the past rightfully dismissed as nonsense is given legitimacy when it appears as a headline on a prominent news site or channel.

Then you have countries like Ireland, with a historic and very real NEED for validation and approval. With much of our mainstream culture already imported from the UK and the US (not so much Europe, which is why we don't feel as connected to the EU), and the country becoming an international tech hub, it's no wonder that some have soaked up the worst of these "beliefs" and ideologies like a sponge and are now trying to transplant them and the issues behind them into our society.

Things like BLM, actual racism, gender politics, and the likes have no place in Ireland precisely because these aren't things we have historical or institutional problems with. Equally some seem to care more about Donald Trump than the carry on of our own politicians and the mess they've made of the country (just look at how active the Trump and US-issue threads like the Iran war, Israel, and others are vs the more local issues - and even then the latter are filled with the same misplaced mindsets I've been referring to here).

We've lost our way, and we've largely lost our own identity - although considering that that identity was one of an oppressed, impoverished people for most of our history, it's probably not a surprise that many were keen to emulate a country that (again back in the 80s) we were told through the TV and movies we all watched was the pinnacle of Western society, land of the free and opportunities etc. For many it wasn't just escapism, it was a way to reinvent themselves.

So now we live with the results. A country falling apart socially while many who grew up here blindly cheer it on and rail against the rest who can see things for what they are.

We laugh at America and how far it's fallen, and we think ourselves better than many of the places previously referred to as the Third World, but we're still rapidly and enthusiastically taking on/in the worst of both.

There are darker times ahead I fear. We only need to look to the UK or parts of Europe to see where our current path leads.

Unfortunately, there are none so blind as those who will not see.