It's quite stunning how unnuanced any conversation about "the troubles" in the north remains.

Its almost always through the prism of the desired intended impact the conversation will have on specific parties today & very little about set of circumstances of the time.

As someone who grew up in that hyper-violence, the cold clinical political calculations in the conversation today seem to want to avoid engaging with the reality that a civil rights movement was brutally suppressed by a sectarian state carved out post partial independence.

Its entirely possible to not have supported the PIRA campaign, but also understand the set of circumstances of why some people resorted to up arms in the context of the time. The air of authoritarianism existed both north and south. The culture of violence did too.

And sit that alongside the decades-long untangling to remove organised murder from the streets.

That was a bunch of work, regardless on your stance on the GFA. But I don't sense much literacy around that in 'the discourse' today.

What is much stronger is the desire to rewrite history into a particular uncontested form. Which if you are paying attention is precisely what genuine non-sectarian post-conflict society is *not* about.

Indeed in mimics aspects of unionism in a sectarian state.

Twitter is a terrible place to try and flesh some of my thoughts on this. Though that's never stopped anyone before I suppose.

I'll come at it another way. From 1972-78 a gang responsible for the murder of over 120 people was run & protected by the official organs of the state and British security. They picked off our rural communities in the murder triangle deliberately targetting non-republicans.

My parents used to put opened wedding presents of sheets and blankets over the top of my cot for fear of the windows being blown in by a car bomb, or gunshot. Youth workers used to blackout windows in the parish hall during kids band practice so as to lessen the risk of attack.

Helicopters would drop soldiers in the field behind the house and they would tramp up the fields into the garden, often kicking the shit out of flowers. They regularly sighted machine guns as we queued for primary school bus. Some would taunt about neighbours killed.
I'm 6 or 7

This raises something valuable. I wouldn't say what's going on is lazy journalism, but the news cycle and rote practice and work pressure seem to make the unnuanced call-response stuff on radio and TV the easier journalism. Aside from implicit bias. https://twitter.com/PMacoscair/status/1336444475443458048

For clarity I mean the converasation about the north in the south.

Its only growing up in the north gave me any expectation of adults in the room when it came to mediatised political conversations :) https://twitter.com/nedicus/status/1336445224554520584