Rough day online...

I really should stay off the internet, because the horror that's building in America is reminding me too damned much of the buildup to The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Which lasted from 1968 to 1998, and killed thousands.

Protestants treated Catholics like shit for decades, refusing to give them even the minimal rights they wanted -- 1-man, 1-vote; decent housing; access to jobs. It reached the point of no return when the People's March calling for those rights was attacked on January 4th, 1969 at Burntollet Bridge. There, with the help of the Constabulary, Protestants attacked peaceful marchers, injuring dozens.

That led to a back and forth that built up to the Battle of Bogside, in August 1969, when Catholics refused to tolerate the insults and discrimination any further.

The British Army was brought in after days of fighting, ostensibly to protect Catholics from Protestants...but wound up taking the side of Protestants and demonizing and attacking Catholics. This gave rise to shoot-offs of the IRA...PIRA, OIRA, INLA, who fought back with bombings and murders and it went back and forth and back and forth and didn't stop until the leaders of both sides finally grew too old and tired to fight, anymore.

And Catholics were given pretty much what they asked for in 1968. Years of death and destruction that could have been avoided by people willing to talk to each other. But Protestant stupidity and stubbornness sabotaged every attempt to end the chaos. And I do lay the main responsibility on them, especially a loud and evil Presbyterian minister named Ian Paisley.

The part that hits me most is, the British Army was blaming the IRA for everything that happened, even before it was a workable organization. It was weak and disorganized, and labeled with the moniker I Ran Away...until it formed into the only group willing to truly defend the Catholic Community from the hate and destruction of the other side.

That is so damned much like how the DoJ blames ANTIFA for the pushback against their tyranny...an organization that does not exist. And like Protestants were allowed to do just about anything they wanted, by the the British Army, same happens with the MAGAt Class.

There was arrest and imprisonment without warrant, interrogations by torture, inhuman confinement conditions, almost all against Catholics...and that bullshit is being parroted by ICE and the DoJ against anyone they please. Citizen or not. White or minority.

The lead in A Place of Safety, Brendan Kinsella, experiences all of this between the ages of 10 and 25 -- the riots, the slaughters, the bombings, the chaos, including arrest, torture, and accusations from both sides that he's working against them. And I fear all of that is going to happen here.

We already have one side rejoicing in the terrorism of the ICE/Gestapo and calling for people to be killed, just like Protestants did in Northern Ireland. Uniformed thugs wander the streets of Chicago and Portland and LA and DC, attacking whomever they want, like the Army did in Derry and Belfast. And the powers that be celebrate this while the opposition is limited to a few voices with little support from their own party.

How long before there are massacres like Bloody Sunday in Derry and in Ballymurphy? Pam Biondi, Kristi Noem and Karoline Leavitt seem willing to champion that while blaming everything on an idea that is not an organization, but by its very name opposes the fascism they want to force on us all. All in the name of the most vile of men, ever. A convicted felon who's molested children.

It's scary.