BREXITEERS are just about the sorest winners there’s ever been, aren’t they?
It has to be asked. Why are they so sour when they’ve got exactly what they wanted?
It’s as if a county won the All Ireland and the captain’s speech was a litany of barbs about all the other counties.
RTE’s coverage of the party, held at the moment the UK left, was marred not by overly boisterous, deliriously happy, celebrating Brits, but angry people shouting and swearing about the Pope, Chelsea, the Queen and Jeremy Corbyn.
Not in a joyous way, you understand. In a bitter way.
And this was Brexiteers at the very moment of Brexit.
It’s bizarre. It’s as if Liverpool finally win the Premier League and all their fans celebrate not with tears of joy but with angry recriminations.
Shortly before this, chief Brexiteer Nigel Farage and his companions had exited the European Parliament by waving miniature Union Jacks and looking sulky and annoyed. And, yes, angry.
Again it was bizarre. They looked like toddlers at a party they’d organised for ages and were bored with as soon as it started.
Like children it was the setting up of the game they liked best. Once the game started, they all realised quite quickly it was pretty rubbish.
Social media is clearly not a place for the faint-hearted or for anybody thinking the world might be a place of subtlety and nuance and it is not a place to be taken too seriously.
But again looking at the comments beneath an Irish Post Facebook posting of a column I wrote saying farewell to Britain on leaving the EU it was hard not to think the same thing.
Why are those Brexit people so angry, so annoyed?
Isn’t it those they despise that they call sensitive snowflakes?
And yet pass a critical comment on their victory, their Brexit, and they come over like the most tender souls there’s ever been.
Even in their moment of triumph be careful what you say. They get upset very, very easily. And again, so, so angry. Even though they won.
My God, what are these people like when they lose?
And why are so many Americans, Irish American or otherwise, so annoyed by an Irish comment about a British event? That is simply bewildering.
I know Donald Trump, despite being one of the most powerful people on the planet, despite being at the apex of the world, likes to spend his spare time pretending to be a Twitter troll living in his parent’s basement, but he’s just a one off, isn’t he?
Of course, what we are all going to find out soon is what Brexit actually means. What it will be actually like.
What will Brexit Britain be? What will it be like for us on the other side of the Irish Sea? What shape will our future relationship take?
Your guess is as good as mine.
But, do you know when you’ve had too much of a good time at a party you’d waited a long time to go to?
You know, you’ve drank too much, laughed too much and it was one of the best nights you’ve ever had. But you still wake up feeling pretty sickly, don’t you?
It was brilliant but by God the next day it hurts.
Well, imagine being at a party you’d waited a long time to go to and you drank too much, didn’t laugh and like everyone else there you just got angrier and angrier. That hangover’s really going to hurt, isn’t it?
Strangely enough The Irish Post published a letter around the same time as all those Facebook comments from a man in his eighties originally from South Armagh but a long-time resident of England.
He was highly critical of a column I’d written and disagreed with virtually every word I’d put down.
Yet, his well thought out, intelligent letter, could act as a lesson in civility to those whose anger outpaces their thinking, who think good manners is a sign of weakness.
Because in the fraught days ahead it is important to remember that we can disagree, you know, we can oppose each other and yet do so decently.
You don’t really prove anything by being the harshest or the angriest or the most insulting.
Unless, of course, that is all you have.
If so, then shout away, keep mouthing off about the Pope and Chelsea and the Queen long after the cameras have stopped rolling. But just remember. Everyone’s stopped listening.
