To whom it may concern;
Éireann had changed since you last laid eyes on her. Despite her various ailments, she was once a rather lively and joyful young woman. However, in her latter years, she had grown addicted and dependent on various deplorable vices which seemed to suck the energy from her being.
Initially, it was the alcohol. I admit, it was rather funny at first watching her episodes of merriment spawned by the devil’s drink, but as the years crept on these episodes turned from the happy exception to the worrisome norm. The poison ate at her very being you see, and then into harder drugs. The Opioids were her demons of choice during the latter years, deathly substances sold by shady men who were more than happy to line their grimy pockets through Éireann’s weakness. May God damn them.
These substances, as you can well imagine considering her sickly disposition, played with her mind something fierce. Initially, she occasionally forgot that her quarrell with Ms Britannia was essentially settled, prompting her to embarrass herself with gratuitous public displays that brought great shame upon herself and those she loved. These amnesiac episodes later developed into a delusion where she repeatedly thought that she herself was Lady Columbia, often causing her to imitate her in the most self-destructive ways.
These occurrences pushed her into considerable poverty before she died, a poverty which we, her closest friends, struggled to pull her from. We put so much effort into trying to rescue her from these delusions to so little effect that one wonders if we might have went about it the wrong way.
Frankly, just thinking of some of the awful things she would say to me during some of these deranged fantasies sickens me to the very core. She would say that her own people were unwelcome, and that we were defective. We were never tolerant enough of her new friends. We were never tolerant enough of the drunkards, the yes-men, the parasites and the deceivers, who all happily exploited the sickly nation for every scrap of her once substantial wealth. She always complained that we were never tolerant enough of the ones who destroyed her.
These creatures destroyed my beloved Éireann, and they will never be forced to face up to their crimes. I would have given so much to bring down the might and justice of heaven on those merchants of sin! The diseases were curable, but they robbed Éireann of her personality. They robbed her of her wealth, her dignity, and most terribly of all, her culture.
In Éireann, there was once a nation of totally unique character who stood apart from the rest of the world. By her end she was indistinguishable from them. She had copied Britannia, she had copied Columbia and she had copied Europa each to such an extent that she only served as an inferior clone by the end of her life. Honestly, in her final state, she could barely have been considered an independent being.
I need not go into a eulogy of the Éireann that was before. No doubt you have countless memories of her in happy times. However, it is my solemn duty to inform you of the truth of the final period of the Irish Republic’s existence. It was not pretty. It was not dignified. It was not just. I cannot pretend that it was.
Sincerely,
A friend
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