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AN INTERVIEW WITH NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI author of The Prince (HE KNEW HIS POLITICS)
Eds: Hello Nic. Welcome to the 21st century.
MAC: Is it really, I thought it was a reenactment of the feudal age.
Eds: What’s going on in the afterlife?
MAC: There’s not a lot going on for a prince: unlike your times when my writings would be modern classics.
Eds: They are, in their way. We actually coin your name to describe political machinations of dubious import.
MAC: Grazi. Though your politician’s go much further than even I envisaged.
Eds: Really. We seem to get along with them OK.
MAC: Exactly. Even in my day there was at least Papal opprobrium of such despicable, duplicitous and ruthless behaviour. Though you claim to be more developed, your ignorant revisionism leads easily to unethical times. The politicians are running roughshod over any ethics and morals in pursuit of their own and their cronies’ wealth and power. Even in my day, we had at least to appease the lumpen proletariat…
Eds: Interesting choice of words, Nic.
MAC: Indeed. We had Sondro Botticelli, with his wonderfully buxom and angelic figures to distract their attention from the self-serving – dare I say it – Machiavellian deeds.
Eds: You did anyway. However, we have technology, war and nationalistic jingoism of sport to distract. It’s very effective.
MAC: Yes, but I would have hoped, after the rationalism and enlightenment, you would have developed better than you have. You still have Royalty, for formalism’s sake, and your art is so reductively materialistic and elitist, I can’t quite believe it. And your banks are even more powerful and despotic than even the Medici’s.
Eds: Yes, well, at least we’ve been in space.
MAC: Yes, and you’ve become lost in it as a result. You seem to have reacted badly to seeing the immense nothingness out there: you had a look and recoiled in terror and became obsessed with economics. Also, you have become afraid of thinking, in any philosophical sense. It’s rather tragic, really. Whatever did you think when you so-called voted in that woman with the worst excesses of Virtu.
Eds: We are into change.
MAC: No, you’re not. That period was the time when there was as close to democracy as you may have ever had, yet she ruled like an ancient despot. And the situation has gotten steadily worse since. There’s been a steady decline in your morals and ethics but this is the only change. Just look at the history of the Industrial Revolution; your industrial relations are akin to those now. The moral vacuum since you lost faith in yourselves – or so you thought god – is tangible in the practices of government and their conspiratorial acolytes around the globe.
Eds: It’s all based on economic necessity.
MAC: That’s what you must believe in order to make sense of, or rather to deny sense of your own lives as individuals. The art of princely control is exactly telling you a patent untruth, that some members of society are beyond reproach and others are not worthy to enjoy consideration of human dignity. The illusory nature of your reality is archaic in its principles.
Eds: We’ve got better music than your day.
MAC: Hardly, ironically you haven’t got much lute these days…
Eds: Everyone’s a smart-ass!
MAC: Exactly. Where do you think you get the term Classical music from? It’s from times like my own. Although patronised by some of the worst examples of human beings; hold on a minute, that’s certainly not unique to my time, some of the best tunes mankind has ever made were turned out.
Eds: But have you heard Pop music?
MAC: Sadly, yes. On that note I must be excused. Arrivederci.
Passing News Bites
Mortgage arrears scheme
Fine Gael Councillor Michael Murphy has welcomed the Government’s provision of free, independent financial advice for homeowners in difficulty with their mortgage. Ah, hem Michael what you fail to highlight is this scheme will only be available for a fraction of those with mortgage difficulties.
The scheme is no more than waffle and hot air. It will solve little or nothing already time to bin it.
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Ireland a Review
Ireland has been an astonishingly corrupt society with rampant political criminality at the top of Government and zero accountability since the 1960s… it’s the spoofer, the wide boy, the unscrupulous chancer and con man that have thrived.
I really begin to think that as a nation we enjoy this purgatory called Ireland.
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Kenny wants to ‘squeeze maximum’ out of deal
Next, he will want to squeeze water out of a stone. Maybe a true son of Fin M’Coul somehow I doubt it more like the fairy at the end of the garden.
Yes, Prince of Vested interest I will do all you ask.
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Secret donor promises €500,000 to help Quinn’s legal action against the former Anglo Irish Bank.
Could this be somebody with property abroad? Maybe rather close to the family. Will the donation be legal, will it be taxable?
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