As a nation, we are becoming more and more confused. Our international standing goes from strength to strength, the Celtic Tiger leaps about like a scalded cat (basically what it is), but when ordinary householders get a minute's peace and sit down of an evening to consider questions of national and personal identity, they find that instead of being reassured by burgeoning wealth, they are assailed on all sides by cultural commentators issuing dire warnings about what we have become, and how our heads have been turned by prosperity.
It is obvious we are not comfortable with success. And we no longer know who we are. According to Ms Olivia O'Leary, we are the New Americans. In a recent BBC radio programme, Ms O'Leary announced that "poor, Gaelic, Catholic Ireland has turned into a racy, Americanised State, with an unholy interest in making money and a level of US investment so massive that some people call it the 51st state."
Can it be true? Was it for this the Wild Geese spread the grey wing upon every tide? And what can we do about it?
This kind of cultural trend is often very hard to resist, so if we are indeed the 51st American State in all but name, maybe we might as well go for it, and have the thing properly ratified by the US government.
The benefits, from State troopers to eight-lane highways, will surely outweigh any drawbacks and minimise the admitted embarrassment of joining the United States so long after the stragglers of Hawaii, Alaska and Arizona. "What kept ye?" will be the friendly mocking question we can expect to hear from our new fellow-countrymen in the US, but we can deal with that.
Meanwhile, as if we were not sufficiently confused, Fintan O'Toole has been telling us in this paper of the two Irelands which exist here (not including the Northern version). One is "a very small place, an intimate society in which everything overlaps and everybody is connected" and the other a much larger Ireland, dealt with by the State "as a far-flung people, out there somewhere in the rough hinterlands."
So as far as Americanisation is concerned, then, we might as well face up to the fact that when the dust settles, and ratification of Ireland as America's 51st state is official, we will still see some striking cultural divisions. As one new State straddling the two Irelands, the new American State of Ireland will be a microcosm of the northern and southern states of the US.
The invisible Mason-Dixon line is likely to be drawn horizontally across the newest US State, probably from Bray, through Mullingar, Longford, Kinnegad and right across to the western seaboard at Kinvara.
The area north of this line will then become synonymous with style, sophistication and political chicanery. It will be a rather grand place in which to live. Regrettably, snobbery will be a factor. It is likely that the Lowells, or their equivalent, will talk only to the Cabots, and the Cabots only to God.
The south, meanwhile, will be somewhat less sophisticated, and more friendly, though there may be a lot of disenchanted people there, living roughly in remote cabins with dogs tied up in the yard. Huge lads from north Kerry might be seen from time to time driving large jeeps with elks strapped to the bonnet, while swigging Budweiser at the wheel.
The hillbillies of Tipperary will be a law unto themselves and homemade liquor will flow freely, especially in the "dry" counties. The Baptist religion will get a new lease of life. For the most part, this Irish south will be, like its American counter-part, a state of mind. Yet it will be able to boast, like the American south, of its graciousness, its rich, drawling modes of speech (Cork and Kerry filling in for North Carolina and Georgia) and its literary and political history.
It will have some huge timbered houses with verandahs, and red-haired belles lolling in rocking chairs, sipping mint juleps while chattering animatedly of Saturday night's forthcoming Country Club dance. A new laidback life will develop along the Blackwater delta, and the province of Munster will become Ireland's Mississippi. It is a two-nations theory that can only enrich us.
