Fine Gael restores its approval rating

FINE Gael last week party collectively patted itself on the back at having won public approval for the way it responded to the coronavirus crisis. And, it merited the acclaim.

The party had been trailing Sinn Féin and the F&Fers but, then, thanks to Vlad’s Churchillian-style spiff on coronavirus and the health emergency, it suddenly was back out front.

According to a Business Post-Red C Poll, the party now enjoys 34% support, an increase of 13% on the election result. Two months ago, in the general election, the Blueshirts finished in third place behind Sinn Féin.

But, sadly, for the mainline party, Mickey Martin’s Fianna Fáil, the omens were not kind.  Like a spectre appearing in the mist, the message was simple: impending and unavoidable doom beckoned!  The polls were indicating a drop in support to 18%. In other words, the Soldiers of Destiny were experiencing what James Joyce would have described as a scrotum-tightening political event.

Worse still, whereas once the party could boast of having the best political brains in Christendom, it was humiliating to be edged out of the novel ideas department by a Greenie all-party ‘national unity’ plan.

And to rub salt in the wound, even Sinn Féin got a 3% boost, despite the black-out imposed by a right-wing media (Indo-Sindo) on any favourable mention of the republican party.

Extreme aversion

Of course, comparing Sinn Féin to something that the cat dragged-in is par for the course for the FF-FG jazz band, which gives no sign of changing its tune of extreme aversion, repulsion and loathing towards republicans.

A ‘unity’ government, however, might change things and might remain in power for some time after the plague crisis ended. It’s being suggested that Ms Mary Lou McDonald and friends eventually might fit in as respectable politicos, ones that Vlad and Mickey could trust. But, under current circumstances, and while they represent that vile (so the story goes) outfit, Sinn Féin never!

Perhaps political psychologists – those geezers dedicated to understanding political behaviour from a psychological perspective – might one day explain Fine Gael and Fianna Fail’s attitudes towards Ms McDonald. They see her as a deluded representative of humanoid creatures and not as leader of the most successful political party in the country.

Their attitude could even be described as an expression of the Alice in Wonderland syndrome – a brain condition that causes distorted perception, disorientation, temporal lobe epilepsy and alterations of body image.

Because as far as Vlad, Mickey, and their lot are concerned, they would rather negotiate with any other party and independent TD  about forming a government than touch the republicans with a forty-foot barge pole.

Women less likely?

Interestingly, the ‘wimmin’ (a legitimate, feminist verbal deconstruction to avoid use of the end-word ‘men’ in women; geddit?) are worried at what medics refer to as the ‘gender impact of Covid-19’ in ‘low and middle-income countries.’

It seems that women appear to be less likely to die from Covid-19. According to the experts, more men than women are croaking ‘potentially due to sex-based immunological or gendered differences, such as patterns and prevalence of smoking.’

But, as the virus spreads, the adverse effect of the pandemic will be significant. School closures already have had a significant influence on executive-type ‘wimmin’ in the United States where they’re finding it difficult to take jobs outside the home due to a shortage of ‘home helps,’ nannies and maids. This is largely due to travel restriction difficulties being applied to female foreign domestics.

Consequently, the serious task of caring for children in America will shift from the paid economy of babysitters, nurseries and schools to the unpaid economy of the home, and to Mom.

Because coming down the line is the decision-making moment for couples who will have to decide which will be the stay-at-home parent. And then the hands of he/she will be full: tending self-isolating members of an extended family, arranging school classes on the internet for the children, making meals and cleaning the house.

It will be a return to the barely remembered way of life of the grandparents: one breadwinner, much more housework and much less leisure time. And one salary on which to survive!

Which, of course, will bring stress, financial difficulties, inevitable domestic violence and increased consumption of the demon drink.

Oh, and because of the closure of schools, there will be an increase in adolescent pregnancies! Thanks to the Coronavirus epidemic, it looks like the woman’s place in the home is back in the kitchen! (Never!!!)

Wisdom of Trump!

But, then, there’s always a Trump philosophical observation to cheer us up. His reaction to the world being consumed by the coronavirus epidemic?

He paused for a few moments as a profound insight made its way through his cavernous brain and then uttered these immortal words: ‘If it were up to the doctors, they may say … “Let’s shut down the entire world” … but this could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with.’

A former White House adviser who worked on past pandemics commented: ‘We have mobilised as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it. But now this fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly.

‘He’s preaching recklessness. He is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or when they contradict his parallel reality.

‘This isn’t a political problem that he can easily spin his way out of.  He’s facing a lethal virus. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.’

The scientist’s comment would have made a fine a political obituary for an unmitigated eejit who refuses to acknowledge that coronavirus is a highly-contagious disease. If Trump had any cultural background, he would have known that its terrifying capacity to kill revives the historical memory of the old days when something like it was called the Pestilence, the Great Plague or the Black Death.