Michael D Higgins insists he is President of Ireland, refuses to commemorate partition

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106933#Comment_118106933

Ah well sure that's fine then.

We never thought we had it so good up here on the border until somebody of partitionist bent told us it wasn't that bad.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106980#Comment_118106980

There is objective reality and there is what people think, as in this case, they are often two different things. The objective reality is that compared to other border situations, it was never as bad as you think it was. The oppressed Irishman caught up in his own suffering still.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107020#Comment_118107020

WHo knew it was yet another macabre competition.

I can just see belligerent Unionists and Loyalists having this conversation with themselves...'sure it was never really that bad'.

Or MP's channeling Reginald Maulding and agreeing that there is an 'acceptable level of violence and death' for them.

Despicable carry on.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107416#Comment_118107416

Nobody has said it was a macabre competition.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107475#Comment_118107475

You cannot accept a simple statement that 'it was one of the most fortified borders in the Western world' without lying about what that poster actually said - TWICE and now trying to double down on it and making it a competition about who suffered most.

Despicable carry on.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107499#Comment_118107499

Well, if someone makes a statement like that, they are the ones making a comparison. That it was heavily fortified in places is true, but making a fake comparison has to be challenged when there are numerous examples of much more fortified borders. I have provided those examples, with the only defence offered being a technical one that the poster chose a limited comparison in order to make the point, which only shows up the limited nature and exaggeration of the statement.

Similarly, there is a claim that the Phoenix Park is the largest enclosed park in a capital city in Europe, or something like that, which again is a deliberately constructed limited comparison to make a grandiose claim.

Look, if people want to make grandiose claims about the most heavily fortified borders, challenging those grandiose claims (whether successfully or not) cannot be seen as making it a competition about who suffered most. Certainly not despicable carry on, unless you are classing the original overblown claim as macabre in nature.

Brucie Bonus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106966#Comment_118106966

No. Just you in this instance.

Giving a constant negative one sided twist on it is not being realistic. Playing at sides, while taking one is not being balanced or realistic.

You end here with the usual lie. Again untrue and unrealistic.

Fact is before the GFA we had no avenue to a UI. Now we do. Do you dispute that?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107599#Comment_118107599

Wow, no shame at all, have you?

I'll remind you of your attempt to dilute and express your opinion in competitive terms. Macabre competitive terms.

The objective reality is that compared to other border situations, it was never as bad as you think it was.

As I said, a despicable comment and point of view. Might get you plenty of likes from certain quarters though - those who want to dilute what was done here and what happened here.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107633#Comment_118107633

One man's constant negative one sided twist on it is another man's reality.

One man's hopeless optimism is another man's fantastic dream.

If you can't accept different views or engage with them, why are you here? I put up an article that supports my view, yet you just repeat the same uninformed rant.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107653#Comment_118107653

Are you challenging that objective reality or are you asking me to let people dwell in their romantic interpretations of the past?

Brucie Bonus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107655#Comment_118107655

More lies.

What hopeless optimisim and what fantastic dream?

Any quotes? Like in other areas, you are creating strawmen so you can try to debunk things nobody said. Empty victory.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107664#Comment_118107664

Was it one of the most fortified in the Western world? = objective fact.

You spin and dilute all you want, you won't change that fact nor what happened along it and as a result of it.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107696#Comment_118107696

No, that was a spurious claim. What is meant by "most fortified", what is meant by "western world"? Someone mentioned the DMZ in Korea, that is certainly more fortified, but is it in the Western world?

Realistically, nearly every border in Europe was very heavily fortified at some time during the last 100 years. Over that time, the Irish border was fortified for a relatively short period, and never to the same extent that many other borders were during the last century. Outside of Europe, that is even more the case. For example, we have never seriously considered building a wall as in North America.

However, you are right about one thing, no matter what I say, some will cling to the deliberately delimited comparison that they want to use to make a spurious point.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107763#Comment_118107763

Maybe you should have asked those questions if you were struggling before going off the partitionist deep end and negating/diluting what happened here?

Now that is my final word on this despicable attempt tbh.

Fionn1952

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107664#Comment_118107664

Christ Almighty, Blanch. There was precisely the square root of f*ck all 'romantic' about the border.

Perhaps if you had to deal with it on an almost daily basis, having your car searched and rifles pointed at your children to travel a few miles down the road rather than reading about it in a newspaper, you'd have a different take on just how fortified it was.

Choochtown

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107020#Comment_118107020

Well what would you consider "bad" Blanch?

I didn't live in Berlin or Korea so I won't compare my childhood and teenage years to how things were in those places in the 60s 70s and 80s.

What I do know is that during those times I was held at gunpoint several times and on one of those occasions I was sprawled across a car bonnet with a rifle pressed against the back of my neck. (British Army and UDR).

I'm over it. I wouldn't consider myself as "the oppressed Irishman caught up in his own suffering still" but it's a long way from being "romantic"

Choochtown

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106933#Comment_118106933

Very poor comparison.

Aidan wasn't trying to "escape" anything.

He was murdered in cold blood whilst walking to a football match.

trashcan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118090226#Comment_118090226

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089471#Comment_118089471

To which the obvious answer is , so what ? Proves nothing in terms of the legitimacy of how it came about.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118108017#Comment_118108017

There is hardly a border in Europe without someone complaining about its legitimacy.

The point being made is about its enduring nature. That is unrefuted despite all the bluff.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118108258#Comment_118108258

Are you suggesting now that somebody claimed it hadn't endured?

Borders endure because the stronger country can enforce it. And it is aided when the comfortable government of the smaller country largely ignore the bigoted, suprematist and sectarian state it elects to uphold.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118108315#Comment_118108315

The obvious answer is of course is to invade.... am I right? Do whatever it took, regardless of the consequences.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118110208#Comment_118110208

If you want to characterise humanitarian interventions to save lives as 'invasions' then I guess Ireland has invaded nearly as many countries as the European colonisers.

Now if you wish to lie and claim I advocated 'invasion' knock yourself out with the deflection.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118110208#Comment_118110208

I still laugh every time I think of the ridiculous notion that the Irish should have invaded in 1969. We would still be living in poverty under some UN protectorate with the country looking like Lebanon if we had been stupid enough to do so. That people are still making that claim even with the benefit of decades of hindsight is beyond GUBU.

Fionn1952

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118112777#Comment_118112777

The inability to respond militarily doesn't excuse doing practically nothing.

I'm firmly of the believe that the last thing we needed in the North was more violence, so even if it had been a feasible option, I wouldn't have advocated for it. That doesn't change the fact that there was certainly at the very least a perception of being abandoned among the Nationalist community in the North during that period. A feeling that an awful lot of people were content to say, 'I'm alright, Jack....' and pretend there weren't great injustices being visited upon their fellow Irish citizens.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118112913#Comment_118112913

And I'm firmly of the belief, if you look at the contemporaneous material, that an Irish incursion flagged as humanitarian would not have provoked the bizarre Lebanon situation referenced by those insisting on calling it an 'invasion'.

The British would not have dared attack a humanitarian intervention and indeed, may have welcomed it as a solution. Maybe not publicly though.

Such an act would have prevented the vacuum forming into which the IRA and others came. That is the disgrace of power swap history - inaction led to others deciding to take up the role of protectors of the Irish people abandoned to their fates basically.

You are right, they elected to do nothing at all of any note, except indulge in useless rounds of reactionary condemnation.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113356#Comment_118113356

Delusionary notions that you have, the idea that the British would not have repelled an invasion force into their own territory is right up there in the top ten promulgated on these boards.

You are right about one thing - evil men love a vacuum, but so do good men and real leaders so you don't blame the vacuum-creators, you blame the evil men.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113829#Comment_118113829

The 'good men' didn't fill the vacuum they should have and many people died as a result. That was evil personified if you believe in the archaic notion of 'evil'.

You would never hold them responsible for that, we know that, no point repeating it.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113869#Comment_118113869

That is just the bully's excuse - they made me do it.

No responsibility for the horrors committed by the PIRA lies with anyone other than the PIRA, their supporters and their apologists.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118114064#Comment_118114064

That's just the expected biased answer.

It was all the fault of 'themuns'.

The 'responsibility' doesn't lie with any one single person or group. There were people dying and lives being destroyed by a bigoted sectarian state long before the IRA got involved and filled the vacuum left when the constitutionally mandated government failed to protect it's people (after having virtually ignored their plight for decades.)

The primary responsibility for any society going up in flames lies with the those who had the power to stop it happening. FOr instance, never mind the Irish government, Wilson, Callaghan and even Heath knew what would happen and still took no constructive action on their side to stop it - instead they decided to bolster the sectarian bigoted state and to defend it for several decades more before being forced to do something about it.

Brucie Bonus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118107763#Comment_118107763

That's an awful lot of angered hyperbole there comrade.

Michael D was in his rights not to go. There were elements using the centenary to give the two fingers to the south and the idea of a UI. I count you among that number.

Your President was right not to mix in those circles.