Taking an expedition to sunny California
There is hardly a film made in the last one hundred years where an Irish or Irish American actor was not involved.
Any thinking man would have to wonder why a smart thinking man like Paschal Donohoe would want to give up a nice cushy job in the Dáil to take up a role in the World Bank Group in Washington DC. Now, I have no doubt that, generally speaking, Washington is a nice place to live, especially if you come from Dublin Central which is hardly the most salubrious location to be found - even in Dublin. That statement should not be taken to reflect on the good Dublin people of the area. As my many readers will know I have a particular affinity for the Dubs, especially those of a GAA persuasion, despite the fact that they have been such a thorn in the side of Mayo’s football ambitions in the not so distant past.
No. The reason I would question Paschal’s decision has more to do with Washington than Dublin. That revered President of the United States of America has felt it necessary to send in (bring in?) state troopers to clean up the place and has given ICE a mandate to root out any undesirables. Some of his Icemen have taken his instructions a little too literally and have taken to shooting rather than rooting out the undesirables. One would have thought that a man of Paschal’s quiet disposition and gentle demeanour would have preferred some place less contentious in which to live and work. But, maybe he is working from home.
The reason I’m dwelling on Paschal a little is that I am planning a little visit to the United States myself with a view to establishing just how the people of America feel about the current situation in the world and, more specifically, how they see America. One of the problems with the world today is that it is full of so much nonsense and fake news that it is hard to know what to make of anything. There is a view that has gained a lot of traction in this dear old emerald isle that America is full of headbangers, that nothing else can explain why the people of America would have voted for Mr Trump.
Much of that sort of thing is generated by the Democrats. They are Fianna Fáil, if you like, to Fine Gael’s imitation of the US Republicans. Like Fianna Fáil, the Democrats see things very much through their own biased spectacles and while they claim intellectual and moral superiority over their neighbouring Republicans, they very often overdo things and even engage in nasty falsehoods.
Without any evidence whatsoever (to date!) they try to tar the esteemed President of the US with the Epstein paedophilia brush just as the Republicans have tried to smear the Democrats and especially Obama. There is no difference between the two. It is a sad fact of life that politicians are generally two-faced and not known for the stiffness of their backbones.
That applies to the FFers and FG. Mary Lou, who is a paragon of virtue, will discover in time - when she gets her hands on the levers of power - that politics can be a dirty game. By the time she does become Taoiseach and that day is edging closer with every passing hour, she will not have the affable and charming Micheál facing her across the Dáil but, more likely, a FF or FG Rottweiler who won’t have regard to the fact that Mary Lou is a lady of civil disposition and entitled to respect.
So, as I said, I am going to go on a fact-finding mission myself. I’m off to sunny California. I’m going as a tourist and I’m going with an open mind. I’m going with the conviction that the number of headbangers in the good old USA is no more or less, comparably speaking, than the number we have here in dear old Ireland. I’ve been to California previously and I have come to the conclusion that it is somewhat more liberal and open minded than other states.
Those of us who learned a little about California in national school know it was colonised by the Spanish who established a series of Catholic missions all along the Pacific coastline. So we have lots of towns (cities) with the prefix San or Saint in English San Diego, San Francisco, San Selmo, San Andreas (the fault line!), San Louis Obispo, etc, etc. I plan to base myself in Los Angeles (The Angels) where the Dodgers baseball team is based. I’m not a fan of baseball but, as the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do.
California is an economically viable state and is ranked in the top five strongest economies in the world so I’ll be interested to see if there is any poverty to be found. I suspect that not everything is rosy in the California garden and I won’t be surprised to find that not everyone is equal.
I know from history that the Mexican labourers who are the backbone of the agricultural economy don’t really get a fair rack of the whip and there’s a certain individual in Washington (no names, no pack drill) who would like to whip them all back down the road to Mexico. But the sensible people of California understand that they would probably starve without the Mexican labourers so they accept the need for migrants.
Los Angeles, of course, is full of Irish people. Irish missionaries took over from the Spanish and rose in the ranks of the Church to dominate religious life. They were later involved in scandals that almost destroyed the Church, but that’s another story. The Irish were to the fore in the Gold Rush which made a city out of San Francisco. Irish labour was to the fore in the building of the Union Pacific railway connecting California to the East Coast.
An Irish engineer, William Mulholland, designed and constructed the aqueduct bringing water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains 230 miles to LA enabling the growth of the city. The Collison brothers of Stripe fame and Irish technicians underpin Silicon Valley. And then there is Hollywood. There is hardly a film made in the last one hundred years where an Irish or Irish American actor was not involved. And of course there is no need to mention Saoirse Ronan, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Farrell or Jessie Buckley.
So, I’m going armed with some useless facts and of course I have been reading the musings of Dr Liam Heffron, my next door columnist, on his Hollywood experiences as he sought to make the breakthrough to film fame. I find it useful to learn from someone I know, or to be more exact, his people whom I know better as local sensible hard working GAA people. There’s far less BS to shift through when you know the people to trust.
It is also the case that I have established friendships with a few people out there. Some are Irish, some have Irish in their DNA and some are ordinary American people with Native American blood, some with German, Italian and DNA from all over the world. America truly is a mish-mash of extraordinarily diverse cultures and the amazing thing about the people is that, by and large, they remain committed to America even when they despair of those who govern them.
I’m looking forward to the expedition even if I don’t much fancy a ten/eleven hour flight and hopefully, if I can find a spare computer out there, I’ll relay, for your edification, some of the things I experience. It could be that I’ll be in the middle of the mid-term elections. I don’t pretend to understand the US electoral system but while the mid-term elections don’t happen until November, there is a lot of weeding out to be done as potential candidates try to get their name before the public for that November date. It’s worse than proportional representation.
This is by no means planned as a fact finding mission. It is more of an observational tour. We will see how it goes.
Travel broadens the mind. Yes, I know mine could do with a bit of enlargement.
