Having “the talk” ….. January 30, 2017
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
My son asked to go to the Anti Trump Protest on Thursday…. his mother had already declined but it is currently under review and with homework done etc etc he may be allowed go on Thursday…..
I was at the protest in Dublin at The Central Bank when Trump was being inaugurated. A fluid crowd of a few hundred. Elsewhere people watched the Inauguration , maybe pronounced what a fuckin lunatic Trump was or just ignored it all.
Well we thought Trump was going to be bad, but this bad… so quick? We wonder what is next ? and then after that and after that!! It’s hard to imagine him not using the nuclear bombs at some stage over his term, why? ……… because he can.
Some poor Country somewhere is going to be obliterated.
It has obviously alarmed an awful lot of people and whilst my son wouldn’t be political, he would be aware that his father goes to demos etc…. I really think that there will be a massive crowd there on Thursday, despite the slightly awkward location. Genuine alarm at what Trump is doing has the possibility of bringing out a new wave of people unfamiliar with protests and needless to say the dislike of Trump is being used and exploited by all sorts of parties ….
I got an email today from Ivana Bacik and Labour about Trump and urging me to go to the demo organised by United Against Racism at The American Embassy on Thursday. I was amused , it takes Trump for Labour to be seen in a favourable light! … and also that United Against Racism are an SWP front.
Now we’ve done the sit downs to tell my son the facts of life, how to respect women and so on …..None of which prepared me for having “the talk”…. explaining to him what an SWP front was…..
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
did you tell him Trump was going to nuke somebody?
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No I’m fairly sure it’s a widespread fear.
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your son already thinks Trump is going to nuke somebody?
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Yes he does….. I’ll be having him dig the bunker in the back garden over the next while!!
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Some poor Country somewhere is going to be obliterated.
Yep, it looks that way.
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It should be a good crowd on Thursday. Followed by the never-happys complaining that what we’re protesting isn’t our business.
On UAR, the main hook for the group / front (delete as appropriate) seems to be the campaign to End Direct Provision. Is there a similar or more effective group focused on ending DP that would be a better time-and-effort investment for those so-inclined?
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I honestly don’t know if there is a better or different group with regard to direct provision. Fair play to UAR.
The point about UAR was more about Labour which have spent the last six years bitterly attacking the far left suddenly happy to promote something organised by a group with a lot of Far Left members.
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At a time like this it barely matters who’s printed the placards. I remember the BBC News in the late 70s explaining the size of an Anti-Nazi League march by saying that the SWP had been doing a lot of organising. The most they did was catch a wave – and if that wave hadn’t been there they could have organised their socks off & built nothing more than (fill in SWP front here).
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We were also chatting with our 14 year old at the dinner table last night about Thump. She was similarly concerned about the possibility of nuclear war. We had to reassure her that when we were her age that the world was in the middle of a Cold War where the likelihood, or at least the danger, of nuclear war kicking off was a constant in the background of our lives, but that we had survived and that the danger had passed. To be honest I’m very torn between maybe putting too much pressure onto anxious young shoulders in the way that we discuss these sorts of questions, because lets face it that as Lefties of whatever hue we do tend to have a pretty bleak assessment of capitalism’s future, and the opposite effect of perhaps normalising what is actually a horrible process going on at the moment. It’s difficult to get that balance right as parents I think. Kids of that age do have a lot on their shoulders and they’re not necessarily as resilient as adults in coping with those pressures. All part of growing up I know, but as a parent one does tend to struggle with finding the right approach.
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