“If reasonable people don’t address reasonable voters reasonable concerns then unreasonable people will, and unreasonably…”

I like this:

You could also quote the Yeats poem, “The Second Coming.”:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The left, simply put, have failed their traditional electorate for most of the 21st Century. They become obsessed with wokeness and identity politics and completely abandoned the poor and the working class. Rather than dealing with the practical issues of working people, they instead tore each other apart. The Right looks for converts, the Left looks for traitors. Even more troubling is that many on the left actively despise the poor and working class. They consider them racist, uncouth, and the dregs of society. This was highlighted with Hillary Clinton and her “deplorables” comment, was it any wonder that people did not vote for her when she has such contempt for them? It is absolutely no surprise then that there traditional demographic turns to the right and to people who promise them quick-fix solutions.

This is most acute around the issue of immigration. Many people have perfectly valid concerns around immigration yet they get labelled as racist, xenophobic, etc if they dare to utter such views in public. When the left will not discuss the issue constructively, they leave the field entirely to the right.

At the May 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, only 239 candidates ran for 90 seats across Northern Ireland’s 18 constituencies (5 seats per constituency). What right have we to complain about our politicians when so few of us will ever put ourselves forward and instead we continuously critique the ones that do from the sidelines? And I include myself in all this.

Or indeed in any of our workplaces, organisations and our other interests, how many of us sit back and let other people do things and then complain about the results?

In simple terms if all the good people sit back and do nothing, then is it any surprise that the complete dicks have all the power?

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
— Albert Einstein

Brian O'Neill

Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.