I love my country and my ethnicity. But there is nothing wrong with criticising your own people and your own country. A lot of Irish people are insecure because we want to believe that everything is getting better since we did away with the British and with Catholicism when it's clearly not the case. A lot of things have gotten better but a lot of things have gotten worse as well. We have convinced ourselves that replacing British imperialism with American and EU imperialism has benefitted our country - telling us that Washington and Brussels are just as bad as London makes a lot of Irish people uncomfortable. As you know, Irish people have a habit of shoving uncomfortable truths under the rug, because acknowledging them forces us to do things we are not used to doing. We are also terrible at admitting we've made mistakes.

That's why Irish people get butthurt when you point out to them that they're doing something stupid.