The Banality of Evil
Last Saturday I attended a ‘Member’s Workshop’ of the Green Party, held in Mullingar. I came away dejected, nauseated and alarmed.
Dejected because after two years of crisis, misrepresentation and poorly concealed subterfuge the membership of the Green Party still have not woken up to the extent to which FF are running rings around them and the leadership of the Green Party. The talk was still of partnership even as members asked why the famously re-negotiated Programme for Government was being ignored while the ‘Croke Park Agreement’ is apparently sacrosanct.
Nauseated because the membership and leadership are engaged in self-deception and hypocrisy on many levels.
The membership present wanted to reject all cuts without offering any alternative strategy for funding ourselves short of more borrowing while at the same time failing to show any understanding of the mechanics of international bond markets and while happily describing those they wish to borrow from, to support the lifestyles they have come to believe themselves entitled to, as ‘speculators’.
The leadership described the 2011 Budget as a responsible and fiscally sophisticated measure that would convince the bond markets of our probity despite the fact that it has been described by many independent observers as ‘baloney’ and despite the fact that none of the Governments assertions over the last two years have lasted longer than 6 months. Further, NAMA was described ‘working’ despite the delays, the profit revisions, the changes of parameters, the rejection by the bankers and the imposition of tougher remits by the supervising authorities.
Alarmed by both the attempts of the organizers to silence or evade questions from critics, by means of changes of rules and abandonment of agendas, and by the docile acceptance of this by the majority of the attendees. In an organization that was famously unruly and outspoken, this was a sad sight to behold.
Hannah Arendt is rightly famous for her quote about the ‘banality of evil’. It is clear to all now that the good people of the USA have completely been brainwashed by their self-marketed ‘exceptionalism’, which allows them to believe that they are inherently a force for good in the world, and therefore that “it can’t be torture if we are doing it”.
It has taken me too long to realize that the membership of the Green Party suffer from the same affliction. They believe that they are good people who have everyone’s best interests at heart and who see the world as it truly is. Consequently, they can cope with massive amounts of cognitive dissonance which allows them support and enable the bankrupting of the State and the debt enslavement of the next generation in order to maintain the ‘reputation’ of FF and the wealth of property speculators.
Many times have I heard the mantra “We are in Government and we are doing good things”. This may be true in their own departments but it comes at the cost of supporting and enabling wholesale theft and the murder of the hopes and dreams of several generations. Many times have I heard people say, with a straight face, in workshops and policy formation meetings, words to the effect of “I don’t know what I am talking about but I have a opinion on this…….”.
The other great line that the Greens trot out and which is a measure of the degree and speed of their seduction by FF is the one from the late Seamus Brennan about “playing Senior hurling now”. Clearly, sports are not the Green’s strong suit as they have completely failed to grasp the distinction between being ‘on the field’ and actually being ‘in the game’.
This country is accelerating towards the end of the line and the 450 Green Party members who could have stopped the theft last October in the RDS but who, through vanity, cupidity and stupidity, chose to stay on in Government and back NAMA will, wake up very soon from their power-crazed hallucination amidst the wreckage of the State.
Only then will they realize that , like the Germans before them, they have blood on their hands.
