Isolated, insulated

Of all the people in Ireland of whose existence I am aware, there are none as influential as Mary O'Rourke. Mary O'Rourke is one of the few people who has, on a number of occasions, entirely changed the way I look at a particular issue or problem. This is essentially because, in the rare occasions that she says something I agree with, I will immediately reverse my opinions so that I disagree with her. If this seems capricious, then you don't understand the scale of Mary O'Rourke's idiocy. It's one of the worlds natural, elementary truths. The sun will rise. The tides will flow. Mary O'Rourke is a daft old bat who is always wrong about everything.

Most recently, Mary O'Rourke DOB has voiced her opposition to a new Oireachtas report recommending that political parties should have a quota of female candidates. O'Rourke's response is straightforward; “I think it’s discrimination of another kind. You just have to have a big brass neck and go out there and do it. There’s no other way.”

This, of course, is always what people say about any sort of affirmative action; that it's just another form of discrimination. This is obviously true, but it misses the point; if you reach a status quo that is, in some way, inequitable, then it's more or less impossible to change it without employing some form of discriminatory measure. It's why I always preferred the term "positive discrimination", because at least it's honest about that reality, while "affirmative action" sounds like the Newspeak that it is.

The issue is that we live in a world that tips its hat to various squeaky-sounding concepts, but doesn't do anything to actually further them. "Equality" is one of the best examples. You might remember the mini-shitstorm that erupted when Michael McDowell* stated, in a fairly uncontroversial manner, that a measure of inequality was necessary to drive a society. Even as someone who would happily drive nails into the back of McDowell's spinal column as a retribution for his very existence, I couldn't really see that he had done anything particularly terrible; he'd just stated what was obviously government policy**.

The problem with loosely referring to these words is that people forget what they mean. It's now not uncommon to hear people refer to equality and universality as if they're the same thing, when in fact they're anything but. Universality does nothing to redistribute wealth - that's sort of the point of it. Equality is, by its nature, a corrective measure and it will fuck some people over; however, it's designed to fuck over people who, frankly, can take it. This is why we have a progressive tax system, and medical cards.

(Incidentally, this is pretty much the difference between liberalism and actual left-wing thinking. Left-wing politics accept the idea of collateral damage, and wrestles very much with the question of what's acceptable. Conversely, that's something liberalism flinches from; the reason I hate self-proclaimed liberals is that they believe in saving the world by being very nice to everyone. This sounds like a rather nice idea, but we don't all live in Traken***.)

The concept of universality probably sits better with us, if we look upon it instinctively. Much as we like the sound of the word, "equality" isn't all that appealing in the long run. The problem lies in the fact that universality makes a society more unequal, because people in better economic situations tend to be better at taking advantage of whatever scheme may or may not be going. To take an obvious example, the grants available to insulate your home / change your boiler / grow watercress in your sink from the SEI are overwhelmingly taken up by the middle-classes. Someone in a freezing cold flat with fuck-all money is exactly the type of person who would benefit from a bit of insulation on the walls, but they're also the type of person who probably doesn't even know the grants exist.

There's an obvious response to this, which is "Well, that's their problem." The fact remains that universal measures don't promote equality. Much as we try to eradicate poverty-

Ah, there's an instructive phrase. Eradicate poverty. Forget "helping the poor", we're eradicating poverty. Nobody minds fighting a war against something bad. We've long since accepted that you can fight a war against inanimate objects (anyone for "on drugs"?), but it's a recent development that you can fight a war against abstract concepts. Terror? Bring it on! Poverty? Yeah, we can kick the shit out of poverty. And its dad.

Unfortunately, engaging with the poor and vulnerable is a tedious business, and that's exactly what "equality" requires us to do - whereas universality is passive, and doesn't require any meaningful engagement at all. If you work in a dole office, you come face-to-face every day with people who are long-term unemployed****. Many of those people are just fucking awful, and the fact that they've been socially trained to be aggressive isn't much of a comfort when you're being sworn at. Making grants available on a website is an easy thing to do, because it ensures that you only have to deal with the sort of people who actually want to improve their homes. Nobody's prepared to go to Tallaght with a clipboard and actually sell the idea to people who aren't really interested in it. Good god, we'd have to talk to poor people. We'd have to leave our comfort zone.

In terms of O'Rourke, her objection is rooted in the same terms. There might be two or three victims of positive discrimination, an able councillor or two who sees a less-capable woman get to run for the Dáil instead of him. That's still a small price to pay for the massive benefits that would accrue from having more women involved in one of our most destructively masculine institutions. However, it would also mean that O'Rourke would find herself operating in a very different - and probably less comfortable - environment.

If we're talking about universality and the poor, then it's worth making the point that our neoliberal society is entirely about universality. Everyone, nominally, has exactly the same opportunities. People from well-off backgrounds are just better-positioned to take advantage of those opportunities, and the corrective measures we put in place are minimal. A universal society doesn't take account of huge swathes of our culture who are terminally disengaged, disenfranchised, and ignored. If you watch The Wire, you'll know exactly what I mean, although this superb interview between David Simon and Bill Moyers makes it crystal-clear.

To borrow Simon's rhetoric; these are people we don't economically need, and they aren't stupid, they get it. That's fundamentally what abandonment is all about, and why it can lead to self-destructive behaviour by an entire social class.

If you want an example closer-to-home, you just need to look at the rise of the BNP in England*****. What was surprising about Griffin's long-awaited appearance was just how pathetic he was, a slimy toad of a man who seemed completely incapable of any sort of coherency. He wasn't representing a tiny, insignificant party; if the UK had a similar PR system to Ireland, then those boys would have an MP or two to their name. The people who vote for Griffin, though, are ordinary working class white families. They haven't been victimised, they've simply been ignored; forgotten, disenfranchised, written off as an economic dead-end.

Yeah. They aren't stupid. They get it. The grand point that the high-and-mighty politicians missed was that these people are so desperate, so unwanted, and so disenfranchised, that they'll cling to any ideology that makes them seem, in some small way, important. Even if it means voting for that fucking loser.

If there's any picture that should be adorning the walls of every MP and TD in the UK and Ireland collectively, it's of the faces of those disenfranchised people. Ugly, hate-filled, bitter, defeated, and so tragically ignored. The caption below the faces should read "If you like to talk about equality, then that also includes me."


* Yeah, sorry, I know it's nice that you don't have to think about him any more.
** And hasn't it worked out well?
*** If you don't recognise the reference, then you win no point for guessing where it come from.
**** Until about a year ago, anyway, until all the marketing executives started having to go there too. Now the dole offices are full of people try desperately to blend in, dressed in paint-spattered tracksuit bottoms, their eyes desperately screaming "I don't belong here. I've got an iPhone."
***** Which is usually about eleven years ahead of us in social trends, so the INP should come into existence around 2014.