I WAS FORTUNATE to spend a week and a half with family and dear friends in my beloved Boston earlier this month.
During my stay, there were heatwaves, unusual here and typical there, on both sides of the Atlantic. The temperatures were well above average in Ireland and very uncomfortable for the unaccustomed. It was downright savage in the north-eastern United States.
There were several days on which it was 35 degrees Celsius with awful humidity making it far more uncomfortable. I cannot recall warmth like that in my youth and it is difficult to ignore or refute the impact of climate change.
Beyond the extreme summer weather and prior to considering the significant political events that unfolded while I was on holiday in my home place, a couple of things struck me about a changed city.
How much?
First is that the cost of virtually everything – except for petrol, which has declined rapidly of late, yet remains a source of consternation for motorists in the US – is sky high. Some of this, of course, can be attributed to recent global inflation. But the countless Irish people who fondly remember their time in Boston would be shocked at the price of eating and drinking out, in particular.
A leisurely lunch for two with a couple of beers can’t be gotten for much less than a hundred bucks, once a 20% tip is included. On a brief outing to the famous Black Rose pub in Faneuil Hall, an Irish customer was summoned back after putting a 20 dollar bill on the bar for a pint of Guinness and a large bottle of cider. It wasn’t enough – and that’s before tip!
Salaries have definitely increased – dramatically in lots of instances – but I still don’t know how they do it. Other than on rare occasions, those on lower incomes cannot venture out to socialise. Especially with the current parity between the two currencies, most tourists from the area must regard dining and imbibing in Ireland as a bargain by comparison.
Boston Irish
Second is that, although Boston’s Irishness isn’t as omnipresent as it was in decades past, the widespread rumours of its imminent demise are premature. It was as strong as ever on visits to the Irish Cultural Centre in Canton, where GAA matches were in full flow notwithstanding the oppressive heat; to the new headquarters of the Irish Pastoral Centre in Dorchester, where dedicated staff told me about their extraordinary outreach efforts to retired Irish emigrants and the new undocumented who continue to chase their dreams in a familiar city 3,000 miles away; and to pubs in Quincy (to take refuge in the air-conditioning, naturally), where Irish accents drowned out patrons speaking in the vernacular.
For me, whose “reverse journey” was inspired in many ways by the Irish milieu I grew up in and around in Boston, it was heartening to see and hear. Just as I have made their home mine, there are plenty who, despite the obstacles thrown up by unduly restrictive immigration laws, are making my home theirs.
Turning to politics, the FBI executed a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and seized 11 sets of documents, one of which is characterised as top secret/sensitive compartmented information.
The search, or “raid” as Trump described it, was authorised by the notoriously cautious US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has been criticised by liberal Democrats for not pursuing criminal charges against the 45th president more aggressively and signed off on by a federal judge.
Motivation
There has been incessant speculation since. What were the feds looking for? What did they find? If a guy like Garland allowed it, there must be something, right? The bottom line is that the legal process will play itself out.
But unless there is a revelation in the relatively near future, Donald Trump should be able, at least temporarily, to spin the search to his political advantage in his own inimitable style and to the delight of his adherents.
And his staunchest supporters showed again that they are resolutely in his corner in a Wyoming Republican primary for the deep red, sparsely populated state’s sole seat in the US House of Representatives last Tuesday. Incumbent Liz Cheney, formerly a member of the GOP congressional leadership and the daughter of George W Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, was positively crushed by her challenger, Harriet Hageman, by a margin of 37 percentage points.
Cheney’s crime in the eyes of most Wyoming Republicans was not that she abandoned her conservative principles, but that she accepted President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, condemned Donald Trump’s behaviour on January 6th and served as co-chair of the committee tasked with ascertaining precisely what transpired on the day the Capitol Building was under siege.
Many asserted that, in focusing on the activities of the committee in Washington, she was not paying sufficient attention to the concerns of her constituents. That may have helped to motivate some who voted for Hageman. Trump is a revered figure in Wyoming, however. He annihilated Biden 70% to 27% there. His robust endorsement of Hageman and repeatedly nasty attacks on Cheney were clearly decisive.
Future for Cheney?
Cheney knew she was done in advance. In her concession address, she promised that now “the real work begins” to combat the “conspiracy and the lies” about the 2020 elections and that she “will do whatever it takes” to deny Trump a second term in office.
She has been lauded by admirers in the media. Commentators speculate that she will make her own bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Her acolytes are deluding themselves if they think she will be a factor. Liz Cheney is a fringe dweller in 2022. Her impeccable credentials don’t matter. In a transformed brand of American conservatism, she is not recognised or respected.
Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, summed it up on Fox News: “This entire primary season culminating with the crushing defeat of Liz Cheney shows that the Bush-Cheney-Romney-McCain era of the Republican Party is over. The party that didn’t really care about illegal immigration… that spent trillions on wars that were not in the strategic national interest of the country… they cared about multinational corporations, not American workers. They never took the media on and never took woke left politics on. That’s over.”
And rebuffing the notion that it’s all about Donald Trump, another cheerleader, Scott McKay, writes that “we need both Trump and (Florida Governor Ron) Desantis. Because what’s required is a broad and deep political movement that’s able to elect a long string of leaders all the way up the chain of political offices, from city councils to the White House. That movement is what will protect base Republican voters from having to support the Liz Cheneys as a last resort against Democrat control.”
Scorn Hemingway, McKay, et al if you wish. But they are in tune with how tens of millions of people feel this August in America.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a law lecturer at NUI Galway and a political columnist with The Journal. His book – “The Bostonian: Life in an Irish American Political Family” – is published by Gill and available online and in bookshops.
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