Pleasantville

You can imagine my shock on Saturday afternoon when, as I flicked over to BBC World and the usual newstime images of rioting were broadcast into my room, my complacency was jolted first by a preponderance of tracksuits and Celtic football shirts and then by the realisation that I recognised the street and the white Ford Transit vans with "Garda" on the front and sides.

Oh my god! This wasn't Palestine. It wasn't outraged muslims protesting cartoons in middle-eastern countries. It was Ireland! It was Dublin! It was O'Connell Street!

I imagine everybody's complacency has been shaken by the weekend's events. I had completely forgotten that there was a segment of the Irish population outside the loophole of Ireland's political classes. These are people who don't blog on whatever Kevin Myers writes in the IT about the 1916 rebellion. Nor do they write letters to the editor about it. Sinn Fein has been strong in Dublin's inner-city for decades now - ever since they supposedly sorted out the heroin problem there. Firebrand republicanism mixed with disenfranchisement and marginalisation is a heady concoction. As Sinn Fein move further towards political respectability it is all too likely that they will leave many erstwhile supports behind, for whom the "struggle" would always be of more interest than the progress. Today it's the supposed affront of Orangemen parading through Dublin's capital streets. How ideological is the rioters' braun? How promsiscuous is it? Could it be harnessed in the future for bigotry of a more sinister nature? What of the Gardaí? Did they really not have any intelligence on it? Have 14 people suffered injury thanks to the Gardai's complacency? What happened to the Irish media on Saturday afternoon? Could not even destruction on O'Connell Street and burning cars on South Leinster Street rouse it from its lethargic complacency? And what of complacent middle-class Dublin that just went on with its shopping and with its chattering over pints in opulent bars? When did we become so detached as a nation? When did that happen?