Voting in Ireland (Part 1)

Lessons from "The Godfather"

There are several great scenes in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic movie, The Godfather. Anyone who has watched this film will have their own favourites. Mine is when Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone sits in a darkened room meeting guests at his daughter’s wedding. That opening scene is the first of several masterclasses in screen-acting that Brando gives throughout The Godfather.

But this article is not about movie-making or acting, however fabulous they are to watch. I have a different reason for discussing The Godfather - in particular another scene, this one dealing with the meeting of the Five Families.

It is the late-1940s and Brando as Corleone is in a New York boardroom addressing a gathering of his fellow Mafia leaders. They want to expand their criminal enterprise into the lucrative drugs trade, but Corleone has been holding out. This has led to serious conflict between them. One of the senior Mafiosi sums up his beef with Corleone: “He had all the politicians and judges in his pocket but he refused to share them.”

Corleone makes it clear that his opposition to drugs is not based on any stirring of his conscience. He and his associates have been enriching themselves through other illegal operations like gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging. So Corleone has no moral scruples about extending his activities into the drugs trade. He is concerned though and that is why he refused to support his associates. He worries that he will not be able to maintain control over his minions in the police and the judiciary when they hear that their paymasters are peddling narcotics.

In the end however ‘money talks’, and Corleone accepts a big slice of the takings in return for his cooperation.

I remembered that scene in The Godfather when I was thinking about Irish politics. It seems to me that those American gangsters and our own politicians have a lot in common. In the Five Families meeting, the true nature of Vito Corleone and his associates is revealed. They are like battlefield commanders discussing tactics in their war against the enemy, i.e. ordinary Americans. Leo Varadkar’s March 2020 speech was a de facto declaration of war by the State against us the people. It took a while for that to sink in. Indeed I am not sure if the full import of that moment has really registered yet. But it will.

Varadkar’s declaration was a lot more than an example of corruption in the Irish political system. Indeed ‘corruption’ is the wrong word. It implies that an essentially honest setup, temporarily tainted by a few ‘bad apples’, can be cleaned up and traditional integrity restored. I used to think like that, but not anymore.

In the four years since Varadkar’s speech I have come to the conclusion that there is no difference between our political parties and those Mafiosi. They are both symptoms of a deeply-embedded criminality that permeates our society. They are all criminals. Our political class resembles a bunch of vultures deciding how best to strip the flesh from the bones of their victims, just like the Five Families in The Godfather.

Historically the criminality practised by governments here mostly remained secret. It is very rare for signs to appear indicating what is really going on, but they do emerge occasionally. Examples include the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes scandal and the Mary Boyle disappearance. However, if such stories receive any publicity at all, they are usually sidelined and forgotten. Our ‘leaders’ are then free to continue their crimes undisturbed. They can prosecute parents who try to prevent their children being vaccinated, or saddle us all with a financial burden that can never be repaid, or poison the public water supply with chemicals, like chlorine and fluoride.

Ordinary people in this country have been softened up for decades, centuries even, through these and countless other crimes. We are like cattle tended and fed until it is time to go to the abattoir. That moment arrived in March 2020 when the Taoiseach delivered his infamous speech warning us of “big changes in the way we live our lives”. That speech quickly led to a consensus across all political parties that the government’s “unprecedented measures” were justified. Like the Five Families at that meeting, they might have argued over details, but their overall objective was the same: to ravage the people for their own benefit.

In such a scenario it is wrong to imagine that anything could be changed by switching one government for another. It would be like hoping that life in the ghettoes of New York could be improved if, say, the urbane Emilio Barzini were to replace Vito Corleone as head of the Five Families. If that is untrue – and it is - then how much worse is it in Ireland where the political parties in government do the bidding of their masters and mistresses, i.e. the ‘legitimate’ Mafia in Europe and elsewhere who pull their strings?

That is why I do not vote in elections now, whether local, national, or European. To do so would be to engage with the Combine, to choose to fight on their ground not mine. That I will never do.

It is one thing to opt out of formal elections, but what about referendums to alter the Irish Constitution? Is that document not our best protection against government tyranny? Surely we should ensure that the Constitution reflects our true values? The only way to do that is by voting, isn’t it?

Hmmm…!

More in Part 2.