The Fighting Irish

Dublin was something I had to do for the future in-laws this past Christmas week, something for which I hope my daughter is eternally grateful—knowing how I shy away from socializing in strange settings, or any setting for that matter.

Dublin is, for lack of something else, quaint but it flashes back to something that was and is no more, and even in the brightest, bluest of days seemed dingy. But from the first cabby to the last, we heard about how Ireland bloodied the British noses in 1916. The park next to our hotel was filled with plaques commemorating this guy or that as they had put up a doomed fight; some buildings still bare the scars of flying bullets.

I’ve heard some liken Europe to a fading museum, desperately selling their souls to detach from their Western civilizational heritage, stumbling down a path of thorns as their leaders accelerate their demise. I think that’s a pretty good summation; Dublin is a fading museum.

A question was posed to a group of Eurocentric thirty-somethings by someone in my “entourage” about a publicized aid agency’s budgetary surplus. Each had some other government scheme for which to fund. The questioner asked why that money shouldn’t be refunded to the citizens who paid for it. Each shot out a look of astonishment: That’s not their money.

And that’s why Europe is fading.

The time there, for a Texan, was a dungeon of blisteringly cold mist with occasional downpour—there was one afternoon of pure blue sky for about three hours. They think Texas is in the tropics. When we left Houston, it was in the forties so I told them it wasn’t much warmer. Sometime during our travels, Houston shot back up into the eighties except on the day we returned: low forties with drizzle. Even upon my return, I still had to endure wet and cold misery. But it will warm again. I can’t say that for Ireland.

And I almost got into a fight—real life fisticuffs (a term I think the Irish use). Thankfully not with one of the future in-laws. They’re really nice people—they overuse the word “lovely” so I can’t call them that but they were full of warmth and charm, hospitality unbound.

My wife and I stopped in the hotel bar for a nightcap. I had to have a whiskey to wash away all of that socializing and I was frozen so the whiskey was a strong indicator that multi-tasking was still alive and well within me.

An attractive woman was seated at an adjacent table. She scrunched her face a lot as she clicked through a silent conversation on her phone. The cocktail waitress brought her a bigass glass of wine. I commented to my wife that it was a healthy pour and from that, my wife struck up a conversation with her. Big mistake. She was nice and cordial and then her husband showed up.

I don’t remember the exact way he was dressed—dark and dingy, like the town, but stylish all the same. The majority of city dwellers in Europe dress that way; I’m guessing because dirt doesn’t show but it may reflect their sense of impending doom. The husband’s appearance was of a mid-level bureaucrat of some anonymous corporation but reminded me of a Eurocrat—aggressive and knowledgable beyond their limited imagination.

They all start out the same: they know it all and their way is the only way; anyone who questions should be gulaged (a new word I just made up).

I don’t know for whom he worked, maybe he said but I was already bored with the conversation; it had something to do with numbers and my wife is an accountant so they seemed to have a bit in common. He was fidgety and aggressive and kept shoveling whatever proffered bar snacky thing into his mouth. He hit his drink as hard. We both ordered another.

He ascertained, quite quickly with my Texas draw, that we were Americans. I ascertained, quite quickly, that he had a disdain for Americans, Texan or otherwise. He started in on politics.

I have a hard and fast rule to never engage in politics with people I don’t know; that rule applies doubly when abroad. He immediately asked what we thought about Trump’s tweet—or X or Truth or whatever it was—concerning Rob Reiner’s murder. Trump steps in it sometimes and in this case, he tracked it into the house. Horrible response from the president. And I said so.

Of course, he was fishing.

I was jet lagged. I had just spent hours with the future in-laws. I was wearing clothes that I had just bought—€355 (about $390) for two pair of Levi’s and a tee shirt and another astronomical amount for some shirts, underwear and socks—because my luggage was who knows where, but certainly not in my hotel room. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t agitated. I wasn’t anything negative at all. In fact, I was exceptionally calm, good natured, relaxed for a guy in my position, and perfectly sober.

I’m a tall man but he probably had a good three inches or so on me; he had twenty fewer years on me as well. I’m pretty sure I could have held my own but a Texan staring down life like the blue-plate special at the local diner sometimes overestimates his abilities.

I’ve only been in three fights in my life—not including some scrapes with my brothers from time-to-time or the scuffles when playing football. I won all. If you win a couple of fights when the fight is brought to you, you tend to earn a pass from future aggressors. This guy obviously hadn’t known of my prowess from forty-five years prior.

Most of our conversation was what I thought playful banter; I don’t manage to remember playful banter unil it no longer is. About the time he stood and his wife rose quickly to intercede was when I desperately tried to recall anything that would set this idiot off. Nothing came to mind, though I yanked his chain a couple of times.

The conversation went something like this—again, I was not interested in talking to this wanker (another decent term from these misguided Anglos):

Well, what do you think of Trump?

I don’t remember what I said but it certainly wasn’t something like: America, fuck yeah!

My wife’s usual response is that she doesn’t necessarily like the man but his policies are strong—I’m pretty sure I went down that path, though I like Trump personally. He’s quite successfully a stand-up comic and most men I know tend to agree.

So, Celtic Dude pushed: what policies do you like? I should have stayed with American domestic policy; I could have made up whatever the hell I wanted and he would know no difference, but I, like Trump, stepped in it. I went foreign policy for $2,000, Alex.

I think what turned this wanker’s (yes, I do like that term) screw loose was when I told him the U.S. was attempting to turn back the post WWII era world order. When he said globalism and Europe made America wealthy, I did laugh. Yes, I remember telling him, maybe your self-serving policies made a bunch of multinational conglomerates and their soy boys rich beyond their wildest dreams, but you also left behind the workers on both of our continents to scrape by on wages that haven’t risen in purchasing power for forty years.

What gets me—and it always gets me—is when you try to bring up the normal guy to folks like this guy. Their eyes glaze over and they tend to sneer; the workers on both sides of the Atlantic are who these people disdain; the middle class, just as their socialist brethren believe, are the enemy; the world is a mess because of all of the useless eaters; it is why they push their destructive policies that strangle our civilization.

I think it was his arrogance that needed tweaking. He looked down his nose with a superiority that simply couldn’t be defended, so I told him that Trump was in the process of removing us from our role as world police (thank goodness Maduro hadn’t been taken down yet). His response was something to the effect that the world needed a guiding hand though I’m not sure that was how he phrased it. I said something to the effect that the world needed to put on their big boy pants; the world wars had been fought more than eighty years ago, it’s time to move on.

Then he brought up Ukraine.

Well, Putin is going to roll through Europe.

[laughter] Why would he do that?

Because he’s Putin.

Putin is a cruel sonofabitch that would eat his mother’s heart and soul but he isn’t stupid and so I said something to this effect:

There is not a damn thing that Europe offers that Putin wants or needs. Your continent is devoid of natural resources, you are taking away free speech and expression, your environmental policies are killing your industries, and replacing your natives with imported halfwitted barbarians from across the Seven Seas is destroying your civilization. It’s not like he’s Napoleon or Hitler. He doesn’t have wanderlust for world dominance. If he did, he would have rolled into Dublin decades ago (though I truly doubt he would have bothered). Now he’s an old man trying to do what is right by the Russian point of view. He shouldn’t have gone in but we kind of made the invitation all the same.

Somehow, my assessment of Europe was some sort of redline to this dude.

His rise wasn’t hurried or lackadaisical; it was measured and a diabolical grin spread over his face. As he stood, he made sure his height was on full display as he threw back his shoulders. It was then, panic gashing her face, that the wife shot up and in between us. Obviously, this guy tended to get into fights and probably, his disdain for Americans was a known feature to his lovely bride.

Even at this point, I didn’t see any kind of threat coming my way. I thought he was getting up because he had to take a piss. What I hadn’t noticed that his voice had gone loud. I then realized that a lot of the bar patrons were wondering if they had a ringside seat; we were getting a lot of anxious stares. Remaining seated, I smiled up at him, raised my glass and told him to have a wonderful evening—or something to that effect. He smirked and followed his wife’s lead. What a wanker.

I lost all respect for the Irish when they voted to allow abortion. This statement isn’t a moral judgement; they are—or were—a Catholic nation. Though not a Catholic, I had always respected that. Then they collectively turned their back on what made them unique, moral, upright, and worth defending. Now they pray before the alter of the Euro-globalist, those technocratic fools that have turned their continent into a wasteland of net zero climate alarmism and feel-good passive-aggressive pomposity that lacks the clarity of a good bucket of mud. They are bound to another tormentor; they replaced Britain with Brussels.