It's safe to say, despite it being an ongoing thing for the first third of my life, I have never actually understood what Ireland's "THE TROUBLES" really were.

Me.

Someone who has seen BOTH "The Banshees of Inisherin" and "Belfast".

But after spending OVER FIVE HOURS with some lovely northern Irish folk, some of whom are murderers, I've got a much better picture of The Troubles in my head than the Anglo-American biased news projection that was only mentioned/ mattered when parts of England itself was ker-sploded.

Which leads us to what the whole thing was about -- what it is ALWAYS about:

Imaginary competitive human bullshit.

Like, the whole GET OFF MY LAND thing with England I can understand and get behind, but the whole HOW DARE YE HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT THE SAME RELIGION YE CUNNY BASTARD WHO LIVES ACROSS THE STREET DIE DIE DIE that got the whole thing started is, to put it bluntly, stupid.

All the dumb, biased fucks (read: every single Patty & Mary O'Sixpack on either side of the imaginary competitive human bullshit) who initially found it all a fun way to kill time and cheer on their home team are as much to blame as anyone who starting a milita --IF NOT MORE GUILTY!!!

So, yeah, by the time it went from chucking insults & rocks to tossing grenades at funerals and trying to blow Dame Maggie "The Snatch" Thatch up while she was sleeping, the general dumb fuck public that initially thought hating thy neighbor was in the Bible right next to the explicit laws about divorce were pretty fecking tired of everything, but also numbly accepting of a world where going out to just get a drink, groceries, or seeing a movie with your best gal meant there was a 50/50 chance you weren't coming home.

If that all doesn't sound like the direction EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH is headed, if not already well in the middle of, then I don't know what to tell you about all the dark days ahead...
Ignorance is Bliss, friend. Enjoy.

It didn't help this was all done by MY PARENTS generation --classic Boomer shit right there-- and way too easy to imagine a world where family friend Russ Borgendale died on hunger strike in prison after shooting up a Ben Franklin in the Catholic part of Coon Rapids.

It's way too easy to imagine where this is all headed now with Vaseline Neck on trial in every county, state & jurisdiction in the country, Dark Grandpa filling his diaper on the worlds stage, fires filling the skies & streets, oceans becomimg jacuzzis, fresh water levels dropping to beyond concerning levels & the pre-strike greenlit movie about the 90's Magic the Gathering boom starring Jason Bateman, Tiffany Haddish & Sir Ian McKellen to be written and directed by AI being put on indefinite hold.

But unlike the folks in this who managed to resolve things in the end with TALKING, it's just a race to the finish line now.
Wrong as many as you can on the way out the door.
Leave nothing behind but the fresh scent of BRUTE.