Palestine

Zohran Mamdani and the death of Irish New York

When asked about a united Ireland earlier this week, Zohran Mamdani admitted that he “hadn’t thought enough on that question.” The Mayor of New York then recited a stiff set of platitudes about “solidarity” in language that he repeated word for word in his St. Patrick’s Day address.  There was an incongruity between his comments and his attendance at the James Connolly Irish-American Labor Coalition’s annual luncheon, where he schmoozed for selfies with Sinn Féin politicians. There was incongruity, too, with past mayors like Ed Koch and David Dinkins, the latter of whom lobbied for Irish republican prisoners. Context is everything, though, and both the city and the Irish national

Do politics matter at all?

It is likely that the ordinary man, not being an ideologue, would agree as he grows older with Arthur Balfour’s famous epigram: “In politics nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.” This is only partly to do with sub specie aeterni, etc. For the rest, there is the simple recognition that politicians always make politics (and the questions and policies with which they concern themselves) out to be much more substantial and consequential than they actually are. The “democratic process” consisting of popular debate and involvement in the form of public demonstrations, solicitation of opinion by the polls and private and public organizations, print and electronic journalism,

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