Below is the original version of my huffy-puffy letter published in today's Irish Examiner. It is dedicated to a wise old bachelor of solid farming stock who has fond memories of being kept warm on cold winter nights by a worn-out blue garment bequeathed to him by his father. Ryle Dwyer’s attempt to balance the books on political betrayal is itself a betrayal of objective journalism. His selective nuggets lack context and give legs to lazy thinking that dismisses all politicians on the basis that one is as bad as the other. This lies at the heart of the apathy that informs our political debate and is one of the reasons why it is difficult for enlightened politicians to engage with the electorate in a meaningful way. The sleveenism that has infected Irish politics since the foundation of the state finds its roots in a single act of treachery which Mr. Dwyer alludes to without quite naming it as such. In skirting around Eamon de Valera’s great betrayal of our nation in 1921,