My mother’s best friend emigrated to the United States shortly after the end of the Second World War.
She left behind a childhood on a remote farm high up in the hills of Donegal, moving to Long Island in New York where her new husband had found a job as a barman.
Life was good for them.
Within a few years her hubby owned his own bar in Port Washington, and as the years went on photos would arrive of well-fed and well-dressed kids, and later of them with mortar boards as they graduated from university.
And those kids did well. Two became wealthy accountants and another a captain in the NYPD.
By way of contrast, we were living in an Ireland where mass emigration was our biggest export.
Work was scare, pay was low, housing was poor, healthcare basic, and our chances of getting a third-level education were up there with getting on Real Madrid’s starting 11 in a European Cup final.
It was an aspiration for many of my generation to get to the States and make it big there.
Today, my disillusionment with America, the land of all my teenage hopes, dreams and aspirations is complete. The evidence suggests it has become a pretty despicable society on many, many levels.
A few years ago myself and the missus went for a drive deep into south-west Donegal, and feeling the need for some fresh air and exercise, we stopped off at the beach at Fintra, outside Killybegs.
It was a beautiful fresh Sunday morning in early spring and one of the other walkers we happened to meet was an American professor who had worked at one of the Ivy League colleges back in the 1970s.
He was a fascinating man to talk to, having been part of Jimmy Carter’s team in his run for the presidency in 1976.
As Trump had just taken over the presidency, I asked him what his opinion of the new man in the White House was.
He made a comment I remember very clearly: “I always worked on the basis that in my country a high proportion were bigots and racists, maybe 15 to 20 per cent. What I had never anticipated in my wildest imaginings was that it was nearer 45 per cent.”
He firmly believed that Trump had run a campaign based on division and racism, that the election of Barack Obama, a black man, had been the catalyst for a kind of silent backlash from white America. And, he suggested, Trump rode to victory on this sentiment.
It would seem a lot worse is coming down the track in ‘Trump II’, as some of the people who will be in his cabinet don’t even come close to fitting the description of loose cannons.
His choice for health secretary has zero medical or public health qualifications and is an outspoken vaccine sceptic.
His first choice for Attorney General, now withdrawn, had allegations of sex with a minor and illicit drug-taking facing him.
His pick for defence secretary is a Fox News presenter who has never held even minor office, and who has in the past lobbied for US troops accused of war crimes in Afghanistan to be pardoned.
And, for me, topping the list was his choice for Director of National Intelligence, who has spoken warmly about Russian president Vladimir Putin and who, after meeting Syria’s President Assad, denied that he had used chemical weapons against his own people.
This despite overwhelming independent evidence that he had.
Not that the Democrats win any kudos for political integrity or decency ether.
President Joe Biden’s description of the International Criminal Court’s issuing of an arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as ‘outrageous’ was, well, pretty outrageous too.
And the fact that this was quickly followed by a statement from Trump loyalist Lindsay Graham threatening any ally – including the UK, Canada and the EU – that he would introduce sanctions against them should they implement the ICC’s ruling, bordered on a kind of political gangsterism. Talk about threats, bullying and intimidation.
The hypocrisy of the Americans, both Republican and Democrat, is off the charts.
When the ICC issued arrest warrants against Putin on St Patrick’s Day 2023 for war crimes in Ukraine, there was universal praise from the US.
So, why the two-tier morality in regard to Gaza?
I would argue what the Israelis are doing in Gaza is way, way beyond anything the Russians have done in Ukraine – 2,000lb bombs dropped on defenceless civilians, hospitals/refugee centres/schools attacked and destroyed, systematic denial of food/water/medicines to 2.3 million people held hostage inside the world’s biggest open air prison.
All that would seem, at least to most people, war crimes – but not, apparently, to the Americans,
So for me, the illusion of the last vestiges of the Hollywood version of America as the defender of liberty, the bastion of democracy and free speech, the land of the moral high ground, is long gone.
And, in a big way, I am sad about that. Really am.