The Day After St. Patrick’s Day
There is a line from a not-so-great movie with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, by an Irish terrorist (Pitt) hiding in New York, discovered by a NY Cop (Ford.) The movie was “The Devil’s Own.” I remember watching the show with my parents, as Brad Pitt murmured his lines in an Irish brogue. My Mom understood every word, but my eighty-nine year old father struggled to hear through the Irish accent as Pitt said: “Don’t look for a happy ending. It’s not an American story. It’s an Irish one.”
My mother was an O’Connor, her father a cooper (barrel maker) born in County Kerry, Ireland. She grew up in England, but in the years before World War II she described stories of Irish cousins, fighting for independence from the British Empire, hiding from the British soldiers. As she said, “I saw the world through rose colored glasses, and my politics were a little rosy too…” and just maybe a little green.
We look at our politics today, and think how divided our land is. There seems to be no room for compromise or discussion: Trumpers versus Resistance, pro-birth versus pro-choice, Second Amendment versus gun control. We are a nation that seems to be facing insurmountable fractures; even if the election of 2020 changes the Presidency there will still be a substantial number of Americans who will feel they have been cheated.
But on the Day after St. Patrick’s Day, as I, Martin O’Connor Dahlman, nurse my St. Patrick’s weekend headache and my voice recovers from songs of Revolution (it’s good to be retired) I think about how bad things could really be. It wasn’t just when my mother was young in the 1920’s and 30’s; the conflict in Ireland lasted until 1998. It was a war among people with everything in common: a shared island, language, culture, and history. But it was that history dividing them: a history of religious warfare between Catholic and Protestant, so bitter that it lasted from 1642 until nineteen years ago – 357 years. It makes the two years of Trump World seem puny.
Catholic and Protestant: they even agreed on most of the religious tenets. Theirs was an argument about “process,” one that cost 3500 lives in just the last chapter, the “Troubles” from 1969 to 1998. Bombs blew up stores and churches, the IRA (Irish Republican Army) versus the “Unionists” and the British military in the streets of the cities and the small villages of Northern Ireland. And yet, even the “troubles” ended peacefully – though it was an “Irish story, not an American one.” At least as long as the current Brexit deal doesn’t upend the twenty-year peace; a real concern on the currently open border between the Republic of Ireland (in the European Union) and Northern Ireland, a part of the departing United Kingdom.
So when we look at the forces that divide us here in America; forces of hate and discrimination that seem insurmountable, we need to remember that we can overcome this era, just as we have overcome divisions before. We are a nation divided, but for most this is not a matter of religious process, but of those who are afraid of the future, and those who look forward to a changing and growing society. It’s a matter of facing inevitable change, or trying to turn the clock back.
Unlike the “troubles” in Ireland, we are a nation that has found a way to overcome our differences. Only once have we resorted to warfare, and while violence is a part of American culture, it isn’t a preordained outcome. We are a nation dedicated to becoming “A More Perfect Union.” It is in that constant perfecting that we have written the American experience, and with work, we will continue to do so. We Shall Overcome, and face the future together.
After all, this isn’t an Irish story, it’s an American one.P
