Basically they have placed their faith in the unfolding of history to deliever a world increasingly to their liking and when that does not happen, or indeed the opposite happens, it causes painful cognitive dissonance.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsD6XEsILYg&t=398s
i cannot remember a time in the last 50 years when we were free .
but we had greater freedom prior to the TV
the TV came locally in 1962 and in 3-4 years 70% had a telly .
many of the elderly could not be bothered -- my father was Fianna fail as was my mother --he was a personal friend of Jim Gibbons who was at my sisters wedding .
and yet he would get on Sunday the Sunday Express a English paper and the FF Irish press each day to keep up with things and he depended on the fianna fail family to look after us intellectually and physically .
the RTE news was sacred and never doubted .
the gay byrne show was unmissable by my parents and it was the only time in the week that they willingly and gladly left the sitting room and were transported to montrose where they could almost touch the interviewee .
the genius of gay byrne who would turn like a tramp/ lachico leaning against the wall of your local dance hall and give you a sly wink and a knowing smile--- could communicate pages in an Irish way to the Irish ,
all around him were stiff BBC wannabees honing their stiff austere kensington accent for an audience which had moved on past Pathe news clipped speech sneering at the Irish in our local cinemas .
the 60s in Ireland were revolutionary and wages doubled and the Irish started to travel -
-miniskirts were gloriously stared at and some women had a very minimal intellectual understanding of life and the carnal depth that even young men could appreciate,
and they gloriously got it wrong by a few inches and forgot about getting in an out of a car /seat/ church pew and we got a treat at times and said in church after an hour of cracked /medieval/unloving/ undecipherable Latin---- there is a god .
what we looked at and what we heard was quickly turned to propaganda and various political groups TOOK OVER - RTE and were identified as workers party or labour party in the media .
people being hired were no longer hired for their skills but for their political activism -- and this was commented on in the press and Dail each week .
no mention was made for decades about the influence of America on our lives and it was welcomed like the latest Walt Disney movie /cartoon with its crooning signature tune which promised enchantment and set you up to plug your head in to whatever they served .
the mustachioed kindly pipe-smoking middle-aged Walt Disney was a smiling American dream -- little glimpses of him and others drawing stills of what would be magic later on the screen elevated him to sainthood in our eyes which had yet to read the term conspiracy theorist which was not invented until Kennedy was dead 10 years or more .
it was the killing of Kennedy which awakened the skeptic in us all that--- all were were told--- was not good for us and somebody other than the elected government held power BEHIND THE TV AND PARLIAMENT .
