by Paul Kavanagh
One of the great difficulties about writing about the Cringe is that it’s not easy to section off and divide up into easy to digest bite sized chunks. The Cringe is like a malignant tumour that spreads within a body infecting every part of the system and weakens and debilitates from within, but it can’t easily be distinguished from normal healthy tissue.
Cringe is not really a good word for the phenomenon. The word cringe implies something people are consciously aware of, something that they realise they’re doing and feel fear, shame or self-loathing as a result. But that’s not what the Cringe really is. People who have full blown cases (and I can think of a couple amongst Unionist politicians) are not suffering from it in any way. They’re quite happy, and on a personal level are perfectly well adjusted. No one ‘suffers’ from their own Cringe.