My wife and I arrived in Rosslare
harbor one bright fall morning in 1970. No was around
to check passports, so we simply lifted the trestle,
walked into Ireland, and stuck out our thumbs. A farmer
moving his cows to pasture greeted us. “Top a
the morning to ye,” he said. For a moment, we
thought we might be acting in “The Quiet Man,”
but I don’t look much like John Wayne, and Kathleen,
though lovely, was not Maureen O’Hara.
There were few cars on the roads,
and those that did pass were crammed with mom, pop,
kids, at least one priest or nun, and a couple of
dogs. People waved and shrugged in commiseration,
wishing us the best with their cheerful smiles. Passing
through run down villages in the West, we could almost
hear the cries of starving children coming from abandoned
houses. What happened to the people who lived in those
wee hovels? Were they forced to work on famine roads
until they dropped dead from exhaustion or starvation?
Had they converted to their oppressor’s faith
in order to save their children from an early grave?
Perhaps they had sailed away on coffin ships, never
to be seen again. Wind roared in off the North Atlantic
and when it rained we huddled inside of those ruins,
feeling the presence of a million ghosts, hearing
the lament of a people starving next to granaries
stuffed with food that would soon be exported to England.
I fell in love with Ireland not because
it was a poor country, but because the people Kathleen
and I met carried themselves with a quiet dignity,
because we were made welcome by a naturally generous
people who shared what they had and asked nothing
in return. In Ireland, I never worried about being
short changed. Actually, people seemed rather shy
about asking for what they were owed. When we asked
our hosts about a key to their door, they laughed.
“It’s there,” they said, pointing to
a key stuck into the front door lock. “And that’s
where it will be when you need it.” When we questioned
the good judgment of young women who were hitchhiking
on the outskirts of Dublin, the response was politely
indignant. “And why should they not? They’re
going home to see their families now they are.”
Over the years I have returned to
Ireland many times, walked its beaches, conducted
Writers Workshops, spent evenings with friends in
great pubs, and served as an international observer
in Belfast and Portatown during the marching season.
I have watched the West rise out of the doldrums of
neglect, stretches of ruin replaced by tidy towns
with bustling shops all bright and well stocked. I’ve
watched the Celtic tiger grow more confident and more
determined to transform a small rural country into
an industrialized, urbanized, capitalist nation.
While it may be showering Ireland
with Euros, the new prosperity seems to be sucking
something vital from the character of an ancient people.
Each time I return to Ireland, Dublin looks and sounds
and feels more like New York City, parts of Galway
have begun to resemble an American strip mall, and
towns like Tralee, County Kerry, appear to be on a
competitive—who can carry home the most packages—shopping
binge. If the Quiet Man were to return to Ireland
today, he would surely wonder why people are moving
so fast, where they are all going, why so many people
are driving oversize cars on undersize roads while
chattering away on cell phones—talking, one assumes
to other drivers in oversize cars on undersize roads
speeding to some important deal-making destination.
Yes, Ireland is starting to look
and feel like the hyperactive, frenetic workaholic
country in which I live and work. But why, I keep
asking myself, would anyone care to emulate a country
where billionaires parade their ostentatious wealth
before 30-40-50 million impoverished citizens, where
wealthy politicians absolutely refuse to create a
national health care system, choosing instead to allow
45 million people to survive without health insurance,
where unscrupulous robber barons like Donald Trump
are exalted for being ferociously ambitious and insatiably
greedy, and where desperate welfare mothers who dare
to hustle a buck under the table are cut off public
assistance and even hauled off to jail.
In the United States of America,
tens of millions of people are squeezed into poverty-stricken
urban ghettoes, while Native Americans and the rural
white poor have been left to eat rocks. One of every
American children goes to be hungry, more black men
are in prison than in college, and guns kill thousands
of innocent Americans very year. In the U.S.A., politics
is a game played by and for the rich, who send working
class men and women around the world to kill and die
for Wall Street warlords and multinational profiteers.
Beautiful parts of the United States
are being destroyed in the name of progress, avaricious
developers are cutting down orchards, bulldozing woods,
and spreading concrete over the habitat of birds and
beasts; highways are smashed through lovely towns,
cities have been ripped apart by freeways, family
farms are being subdivided into ugly stretches of
oversize look-a-like houses and fast-food shopping
malls.
Ireland hasn’t reached this
stage of capitalist greed yet, but it is obvious and
not just to me (other visitors have said similar things),
that the champions of capitalism expansion are on
a major and very destructive roll in this country.
The capitalist binge in Ireland will undoubtedly escalate,
some people will get rich, and others will feel better
off for a time. But Ireland is a small country. Unlike
the United States, which can afford to pave over New
Jersey but still keep Montana in layaway, Ireland’s
resources are limited. Americans, and I’m sure
tourists from around the world, are drawn to Ireland’s
undeveloped beaches, its winding roads, open countryside,
wild bogs, clean air and fresh (not factory farmed)
food. I’m not suggesting that Ireland base its
economy on tourism, but only that this gorgeous land
be preserved for future generations.
Every American school child learns
that capitalism and democracy are synonyms, and every
day the empire’s propaganda machine tries to
sell this lie to people throughout the world. After
all, only the most boorish politician would rely on
gun-toting enforcers to control ordinary people. A
“market economy” (translate unbridled greed)
is an altogether cheaper and more effective way to
persuade people that the best world is one in which
everyone competes—the “survival of the fittest
model—against everyone else for limited resources.
I really hope that the Irish people
will stop the Celtic Tiger from turning Ireland into
a theme park—straight roads filled with crowded
tour buses that rush from site to site, grand hotel
to grand hotel, gift shop to gift shop, shopping plaza
to shopping plaza, disgorging weary-eyed travelers
who will fly on to the next international hot spot
that, no surprise, looks and feels and sounds so very
much like the one they’ve just visited.
Some Irish readers might say, “Sorry
yank, but if you don’t like Ireland you can stay
home.” Fair enough, but the problem is that,
after so many visits, I still love Irish music and
Irish literature. I love the aroma of a turf fire,
love to see sheep wandering the roads, and to hear
the sea crashing against cliffs. I love watching fishing
boats bop into bay with their catch, and to hear the
wind howling and the rain lashing at night. I love
drinking good Irish tea by the fire, listening to
good story or a lively row.
I grew up poor, and lived for many
years on the streets of New York City, so I do not
idealize poverty, but each time I visit Ireland it
appears that the Celtic Tiger’s appetite is growing
by leaps and bounds. And I can’t help but wonder
if anyone will reign in this carnivore before it clones
itself and, in the name of progress, turns this beautiful
island into a charming Celtic shopping mall.
