Jennifer Horgan: We have set a new standard for what angry men can achieve. It's terrifying
Fuel price protesters outside Leinster House on Tuesday. Picture: Collins Photos
I am terrified by the new standard that has been set for angry men in our country, a new kind of ‘terrible beauty’, and yet another form of war.
The standard is this: If a man’s suffering is deemed awful enough, he has every right to bring society to a standstill.
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Indeed, angry men had that right last Saturday when they prevented my mother from travelling to be with her sister as her husband died. Her situation was not unique. My mother is one elderly person in an ageing population.
In an address to the Irish Medical Organisation conference, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill shared that 7,500 more over-75s attended emergency departments in the first three months of this year compared to last year. How many elderly people were affected by the blockades of angry men last week, I wonder? Too many, I’m sure.
Elderly people are one vulnerable group in a country of vulnerable groups. All were left without access to family, care, and resources last week. All because of these angry men.
I commend Fintan O’Toole for writing about the gender aspect of this self-proclaimed ‘revolution’.
Although I question his points on the class elements of the protests, he writes brilliantly on how these humans with “balls” held the country (as a bragging spokesperson put it) “by the balls”. Isn’t it always the way?
Our world is ruled by men of might, men who break things, watch things fall apart, to get what they want as quickly as they want it. Nuance, complexity, diplomacy, climate, war — all trivialities that get in their way. In this regard, the blockade sits comfortably in any playbook of war.
You might ask where this new standard for angry men leaves women? Well, it leaves them exactly where they were, because let’s be clear, this new standard is not for women, or any other vulnerable group.
You see, I am angry on two fronts: that vulnerable groups were affected last week but also that no other group could get the support they enjoyed — the beeps, the messages, the posts, the comments I heard in real life. Unlike other accounts I’ve read, I wasn’t heartened to see ordinary people out on the streets.
Can you even imagine the uproar and outrage if other suffering groups blockaded fuel supplies? If parents of children with unmet needs in our schools blocked all children from entering classrooms, as a form of ‘peaceful’ protest?
If people with disabilities prevented able-bodied people from accessing their medical appointments? If thousands of homeless people took to the streets, blocking our routes to work? If victims of gender-based violence prevented practical state exams from running?
We never applaud nurses, teachers, social workers, and carers for not turning up to work, for simply removing their labour, to protect vulnerable people and themselves. As I heard it put — this was a protest that only farmers could pull off. And pull it off they (and others) did, backed by the likes of opportunists like Paul Murphy and Mary Lou McDonald.
Deputy Paul Murphy declaring: “The people on the streets are more powerful than the people who are supposedly in power.” What about the people behind closed doors looking after the sick, the young, the dispossessed, the elderly, the poor?
Mary Lou McDonald declaring that these individual protesters, voicing unco-ordinated demands, had an inherent "right to be heard". Well, Mary Lou McDonald, does that mean I have a right to be heard about the unsafe conditions my disabled father has to endure just to attend a basic medical appointment in Cork?
Does every person suffering have the same right? If so, our democracy is a circus and our politicians are clowns.
Mary Lou McDonald accused the Government on Tuesday of arrogance, a lack of judgment, and a lack of any empathy. Was she not describing the very men who blocked my mother’s path? The one thing saving our society from chaos is that none of these other suffering groups would conduct a similar blockade because they are committed to an ethic of care.
And so, the same story plays out that has played out for millennia. Women and children and vulnerable men suffer without public support. The tough guy, willing to go that extra mile, regardless of the consequences for other vulnerable people, wins. He wins! We respect him for getting things done. We gaze open-mouthed at his big national flex of muscle.
I know these men are suffering, as so many are suffering here and elsewhere. Suffering comes in many forms. It ranges from losing a business to losing a child.
But however it gets spun, our government is not doing nothing. It is not blameless by any means.
As John Gibbons said to me this week, they have created a ‘house of cards’, an agricultural sector that runs on dirty fuel and relies on imported animal feed and fertiliser, exporting 90% of what it produces, while importing 83% of what the country consumes.
But as the Taoiseach outlined in defence of his government, we must look at where we are at now as a country, and beyond ourselves also — to the relief packages given in other European countries, that are certainly comparable to what is being offered here.
These men are suffering, but I am furious as a woman, carer, mother, and teacher, that so many people regard holding a government to ransom as heroic. Meanwhile, people who respect democracy and the law get far less support or backing.
Because it wasn’t the blockade alone that got things done; it was the public’s support that forced our government’s hand. It is a deep shame that only these suffering men seem capable of capturing our imaginations and our hearts.
A just cause is not an entitlement to any action imaginable. The right to protest is protected in our Constitution and rightly so, but it is not absolute. If it threatens another person’s right to life or safety, the latter takes precedence. For obvious reasons — for the protection of a peaceful, ordered society.
The best post I have seen on the blockade comes from a social worker online, Diarmaid Twomey, who has a frontline understanding of suffering. He wrote: “How you protest and who you stand with is crucial in this context.” These men, he goes on, “attempted to shut down the country and most crucially restrict ordinary citizens' movement. That is not peaceful and is not targeted. It's bullying of another victim group, your fellow citizens.”
He asks protesters to consider their bedfellows. The joy on the faces of far-right men, more angry, angry men, tells me everything I need to know about the blockades and this new standard of protest.
It tells me what I’ve always suspected. We respond to the needs of angry, suffering men before the needs of everybody else. This truth runs across society. It affects everyone.
The angriest of these men will have heard that message loud and clear. The very worst of them will run with it and strike again.
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