Southie: A Mirror Image of the United States

Posted on by mtc9393

South BostonI’ve written over the past two days about South Boston and how its relationship with the Boston media has never been good because of the media’s animus toward it. I’ve pointed out how the many good things its sons and daughters have done are overlooked by the media in order to present it as a place where mostly evil exists. It has been subject to the type of media coverage that only looks for a wart on a little toe and not at the beautiful of a face that is presented to others.

The lead newspaper in Boston, the Boston Globe, has made clear its distaste for Southie for many years recently putting out a story under the headline “bad old Southie.”  The Globe considers  itself a progressive newspaper. The manner in which it treats all the people who are from Southie with a wide black brush is noteworthy because it explains, in part, the reason we have Trump in the White House.

There are many thousands upon thousands of Southie-like neighborhoods which range across a large swath of America where hard-working people feel demeaned, ignored,  or left out. They feel they are not represented by either party having had a go with both Democrats and Republicans and coming up short. As a group without representation in a two-party system: Republicans main concern the rich; Democrats catering to anti-tradition secularists, they have no one to turn to. Not unexpected is that within these communities a large increase of opioids use exist caused by the despair. They are lured into expecting help by false prophets seeking to profit from their desperation.

These are the people with traditional American beliefs and values that they wish to preserve.  For this many have been tarred by progressives who run some of the top newspapers in the country in conjunction with the Democratic party elitists who cast general aspersions at their neighborhoods. The people living there, including those who hold the same beliefs as the casters, rebel. When an entity attacks your family or friends, then that person becomes persona non grata. When such an entity looks for support at best the people will abstain.

The America they knew seems to have disappeared. Many in these neighborhoods see their neighbors attacked for their beliefs or being foiled by despair. Looking at no exit, seeing no one recognizing their plight, they succumb to support one engaged in legerdemain.

They turned to Trump because he wasn’t Hillary. She chased them away when she called them“deplorables.” In families you may disagree over a candidate but few think their relative “deplorable” because he or she holds a different viewpoint. When the Globe suggests the people of Southie are “deplorables” it may fleetingly please some readers but it strongly alienates those who know these people.

The Democratic candidate Hillary (planning to run again in 2020) who aside from insulting many Americans projected an aura of entitlement. That is something that turns average Americans off (remember Jeb). She was crippled by the albatross around her neck named Bill (remember the tarmac meeting with Lynch) as well as the Clintons greed making them look like they liked money as much as their opponent making that issue a wash.

Trump was a deplorable candidate. Many wanted neither. Both he and Hillary had historically high unfavorability ratings. We were recently reminded: “The contest was settled by those who viewed both Trump and Hillary Clinton negatively. These pox-on-both-houses voters made up 18 percent of the electorate, and went 47 percent to 30 percent for Trump over Clinton, with most of the rest opting for third-party choices.” 

That 18% is 22 million voters. Of that Trump got 10 million; Hillary 6.5 million; and neither 5 million. Those were the people from the Southie-like neighborhoods in America. Those are the people America has turned its back on. If they walk away who will be there to defend America?

35 thoughts on “Southie: A Mirror Image of the United States”

  1. Greetings:

    Kevin Weeks has said that he personally witnessed Whitey strangling Deborah Hussey. I think he is telling the truth here. He doesn’t have a motive to lie. He has no reason to protect Steve Flemmi. I cannot come up with any reason why he would be making this up. I don’t know if Whitey strangled Deborah Davis but I would bet that he did strangle D. Hussey. I think Weeks is telling the truth here.

    Weeks is clearly lying when he says that he doesn’t know who is in the backseat of the car (with the ski mask) for the Halloran murder.

  2. I have actually heard as well as studied the likes of Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Robert
    Kiyosaki, and numerous others and also have
    never had any person’s words hit me in the same way Kotton’s do.
    Perhaps it’s simply me, but I don’t assume so.
    I recognize that Kotton motivates numerous others, and also he establishes an excellent instance for others to comply with on how
    you can end up being effective in service.

  4. The Irish Travelers (tinkers) have been officially designated a distinct ethnicity in the Republic. I’m greatly interested in their dialect, Shelta. If anyone’s interested in hearing Shelta used, rent the Brad Pitt movie “Snatch.”

  5. A DNA check should be administered to Khalid. His demonstration of “a touch of the poet” demands it.

    1. Hutch:

      I’ve always got an eye peeled for the big galoot. He’s got a reckoning coming. DR’s running around Florida, or, Cali. Being there for his comeuppance would be an honor.

  6. I’ve known the lead singer of The Dropkick Murphys since he was a little yard ape. I use to baby sit him and drink with his dad. They have some great old Irish songs but the genre is loud Gaelic punk, so its not for all. Still, it gets ones blood flowing. The Shipping Up To Boston theme in The Departed is them.

  7. I liked this version of the Patriot Game (deleting Dominic Brendan’s verse about shooting police, but including his verse about Connolly)

    Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing
    For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing
    It banishes fear with the speed of a flame
    And it makes us all part of the patriot game

    My name is O’Hanlon, and I’ve just turned sixteen
    My home is in Monaghan, where I was weaned
    I learned all my life cruel England to blame
    So now I am part of the patriot game

    This Ireland of ours has too long been half free;
    Six counties lie under John Bull’s tyranny
    But still De Valera is greatly to blame
    For shirking his part in the Patriot game

    They told me how Connolly was shot in his chair
    His wounds from the fighting all bloody and bare
    His fine body twisted, all battered and lame
    They soon made me part of the patriot game

    It’s nearly two years since I wandered away
    With the local battalion of the bold IRA
    I’ve read of our heroes, and I wanted the same
    To play out my part in the patriot game

    And now as I lie here, my body all holes
    I think of those traitors who bargained in souls
    I wish that my rifle had given the same
    To those Quislings who sold out the patriot game

    1. Blue is also the colour most associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Ireland is dedicated to her; she is Our Lady, Queen of Ireland. In the revolt of 1641, Owen Roe O’Neill dedicated the war to “Saint Mary” and the army standard was her and the Christ child on a blue flag.

      1. Henry:

        Good history. Never knew that. Perhaps that is why you don’t see any blue in the Communist flags.

    2. Ed:

      Blue is an expression of a mood as I suppose is green. What’s great is that we can wear any color we want in America. One St. Patrick’s day I wore a green Kentucky colonel bow tie to court. Would not have done it if I did not know judge and no jury was impaneled. So you may wear blue but I’ll have my green on. http://www.absoluteties.com/kecobogr.html?utm_source=googlepepla&utm_medium=adwords&id=158887169527&gclid=Cj0KEQjw76jGBRDm1K-X_LnrmuEBEiQA8RXYZ1_JieIXxYjQw7Ka9DM7h8Vhe0yDzbozkXlIPW_5mIIaAoQA8P8HAQ

  9. Want to know about Ireland now? Here are the books to read
    A Minister, a historian and 13 Irish writers select the modern works – from Ross O’Carroll-Kelly to Donal Ryan – that capture for them the state of the country.
    http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/want-to-know-about-ireland-now-here-are-the-books-to-read-1.3004212

    Adrian McKinty is one of Ireland’s best writers of crime fiction. His most recent book “Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly: A Detective Sean Duffy Novel” was published last month, the 6th book in the Duffy series. “…another mordantly witty mystery novel from the reliably excellent McKinty.”

    McKinty’s blog comments on the holiday tomorrow:

    FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2017
    Some St Patrick’s Day Thoughts
    Like Cinnabon and Napalm the modern St Patrick’s Day celebration, of course, is an American invention. Every year about this time American media outlets trundle out some sad old sentimental Mick to talk about his or her “Irish childhood” even though said author really grew up in Chicago or New Jersey. These articles are always an embarrassing mess of cliches (kind of like St Patricks Day itself) and they used to get me worked up and irritated. The bad writing still annoys me but I’m a lot more tolerant about the sentiment these days. I’ve had a paradigm shift in the last couple of years and now I think: so what if you were born in Chicago or Boston or the Bronx and your family has lived there for the last 150 years, if you want to call yourself Irish, go ahead, don’t let me stop you. And if it really means that much to you you can even say that you’re proud to be Irish too, (although why you’re proud of an accident of birth is beyond me). Wear the green hat, smoke the pipe, talk in an awful accent, knock yourself out, just as long as you don’t try and pass off a four leaved clover as a shamrock then you’re fine by me. (I hate the four leaved clover mistake so much that I’ve ranted about it in two different novels, an aside in Dead I Well May Be and a long (and hopefully funny) gripe that begins Falling Glass.

    Read the rest: http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com/2017/03/some-st-patricks-day-thoughts.html

    1. Henry:

      Great post. I suggest McKinty like you and I have mellowed a bit with age and have become more tolerant. We are not the only one as I see in in the comments here by other people. Although, there are some, especially among the Irish, who sadly go the other direction.

  10. You are right. Trump won because he wasn’t Hillary and he wasn’t an establishment Republican. As far as those great old neighborhoods Southie, Savin Hill etc all good things come to an end. Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay tells it accurately. Nature’s first green is gold. Her hardest hue to hold Her early leaf is a flower. But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief. So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay.

    1. Doug Schoen, Democrat Party ‘consultant’ and not from Southie:

      “However, if Democrats want to win back power they cannot do so by moving further left, resisting Trump at every move, and taking to the streets.

      “Put simply, the Democratic Party is on life support and there is a quiet, but ruthless, war being fought over its future.

      “While the Democratic Party is driven left by anti-Trump activists, protestors, and Senators such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, America itself remains a fundamentally center-right nation.

      “A fundamental belief in national sovereignty and individual responsibility, married to cautious skepticism of government and deeply held moral convictions, continues to govern how most Americans think about politics.

      “Trump’s ascendance is rooted in America’s preference for center-right policy. As the Democratic Party shifted ever leftwards under Obama, it suffered net losses of 11 Senate seats, 62 House seats, and 10 governorships since 2010, as well as nearly 1000 state legislative seats.”

      http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/02/13/dirty-secret-smart-democrats-know-but-wont-admit-about-trump.html

  12. Let’s let the poets have their day.
    But then again, not the whole day:
    I read of a billionaire named Chuck Feeney who gave almost all his wealth away. A poor lad born during the Great Depression in New Jersey. A Korean War Vet. A father of four sons and one daughter. A liquor salesman. Today at 86, he lives in a small apartment in San Francisco; he rents; he still has $2 million left, having given to charity over $8 billion during his lifetime. Warren Buffet (who has pledged to give 99% of his wealth away; which will be less than Feeney who already gave away 99.975%) said that Feeney was his hero; Bill Gates said the same.
    2. I don’t see the Republicans as “the party of the rich.” I see them as the party of small government, freedom for the individual, pro-life, traditionalists, conservatives, lower taxes, free speech. I see the Dems as socialists, secularists, the P.C. police, leftists favoring big government, more taxes, enforced conformity in academia and the media.
    3. My favorite Republicans: Lincoln, T.R., Coolidge, Ike, Reagan.
    My favorite Dems: JFK, Hubert Humphrey, “the Happy Warrior!”
    4. I lived 8 years in the D.C. area. Not relevant, perhaps, and not consistent at all with this post, but didn’t someone say, “Only the oxen is consistent.”

  13. A woman in a pub in Southie stood up and said this poem. She wrote it down for me.

    “I See His Blood upon the Rose”

    I see his blood upon the rose
    And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
    His body gleams amid eternal snows,
    His tears fall from the skies.
    I see his face in every flower;
    The thunder and the singing of the birds
    Are but his voice—and carven by his power
    Rocks are his written words.
    All pathways by his feet are worn,
    His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
    His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
    His cross is every tree.

      1. Henry:

        A good old Irish name: Plunkett. As a former member of the Blessed Oliver Plunkett society I can say that because it was there I learned the Irish national anthem and on a trip to Ireland happened to go to Drogheda to view the poor man’s head.

      2. Thanks. I guess I could have Googled it. So I waited 42 years to find out the origin. I’m in no hurry.

  14. The Death of Cuchulain – Poem by William Butler Yeats

    The harlot sang to the beggar-man.
    I meet them face to face,
    Conall, Cuchulain, Usna’s boys,
    All that most ancient race;
    Maeve had three in an hour, they say.
    I adore those clever eyes,
    Those muscular bodies, but can get
    No grip upon their thighs.
    I meet those long pale faces,
    Hear their great horses, then
    Recall what centuries have passed
    Since they were living men.
    That there are still some living
    That do my limbs unclothe,
    But that the flesh my flesh is gripped
    I both adore and loathe.

    Are those things that men adore and loathe
    Their sole reality?
    What stood in the Post Office
    With Pearse and Connolly?
    What comes out of the mountain
    Where men first shed their blood?
    Who thought Cuchulain till it seemed
    He stood where they had stood?

    No body like his body
    Has modern woman borne,
    But an old man looking back in life
    Imagines it in scorn.
    A statue’s there to mark the place,
    By Oliver Sheppard done.
    So ends the tale that the harlot
    Sang to the beggar-man.

    1. Khalid:

      Thanks. Very appropriate for St. Patrick’s day.

      I’ve always been moved by Yeats’s: An Irish Airman Foresees his Death:

      I know that I shall meet my fate
      Somewhere among the clouds above;
      Those that I fight I do not hate
      Those that I guard I do not love;
      My country is Kiltartan Cross,
      My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
      No likely end could bring them loss
      Or leave them happier than before.
      Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
      Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
      A lonely impulse of delight
      Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
      I balanced all, brought all to mind,
      The years to come seemed waste of breath,
      A waste of breath the years behind
      In balance with this life, this death.

      What is also nice about it is that it was inspired by the death of Lady Gregpry’s son Robert Gregory a pilot flying for the British killed in WWI. We should all try to live by Lady Gregory’s motto: “To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people.”

  15. This Ireland of mine has for long been half free,
    Six counties are under John Bull’s tyranny.
    And still de Valera is greatly to blame
    For shirking his part in the patriot game.
    I don’t mind a bit if I shoot down police
    They are lackeys for war never guardians of peace
    And yet at deserters I’m never let aim
    The rebels who sold out the patriot game[4]

    2. Yeats, yes! And, Dominic Behan, too! His literary bro, Brendan, wrote the autobiographical novel “Borstal Boy” and a fine play, “The Quare Fellow.” Brendan is also known for his wry observations:

      “If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.”

      “It’s not that the Irish are cynical. It’s rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.”

      “Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

      1. Khalid:

        “[Dominic’s] father Stephen, was a member of the IRA and had been one of Michael Collins’ “Twelve Apostles”, who were responsible for the deaths of several officers from the British Army during the Irish War of Independence. He was banned from a professional future career for refusing to swear allegiance to the British Crown after the Irish civil war.” We learned about him the other day as having a part in writing the Patriot’s Song.

  16. Last Stanza from Yeats’ Easter 1916…Now and in time to be,
    Wherever green is worn,
    Are changed, changed utterly:
    A terrible beauty is born.

    Too long a sacrifice
    Can make a stone of the heart.
    O when may it suffice?
    That is Heaven’s part, our part
    To murmur name upon name,
    As a mother names her child
    When sleep at last has come
    On limbs that had run wild.
    What is it but nightfall?
    No, no, not night but death;
    Was it needless death after all?
    For England may keep faith
    For all that is done and said.
    We know their dream; enough
    To know they dreamed and are dead;
    And what if excess of love
    Bewildered them till they died?
    I write it out in a verse—
    MacDonagh and MacBride
    And Connolly and Pearse
    Now and in time to be,
    Wherever green is worn,
    Are changed, changed utterly:
    A terrible beauty is born.

      1. Thank goodness…was tempted to try ‘There was a young girl from Nantucket’….and the center may not hold!

        Yeats sure could hit it out of the park as we ‘poeters’ like to say…his “The Second Coming” still sends chills…

        Turning and turning in the widening gyre
        The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
        Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
        Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
        The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
        The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
        The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        Are full of passionate intensity.

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