Is there some strange magnetic field engulfing this island which distorts common sense and causes hallucinations? What else can explain so much of our behaviour, which no doubt makes common sense internally, but to outsiders must resemble the conduct of Somalis after an overdose of khat. On the one hand we have a political grouping which in its own eyes is so perfect that its ard-fheiseanna resemble a choir of angels and a communion of the saints, and which clearly thinks that it should as of right be in government in the North running things like hospitals and schools - yet which adamantly refuses to do anything whatever to ensure the imprisonment of the Omagh bombers who so filled those hospitals and so depleted those schools.
Abbeylara inquiry
On the other hand, we have a young Catholic male shot dead by police officers in the Republic. Such a killing in the North would have prompted the Government here to demand a full and open inquiry. But the inquiry into the killing of John Carthy in Abbeylara, Co Longford is to be entirely secret, with no assurance of a public report at the end of it. Not the least curious aspect of this tragedy is that the Garda firearms unit involved hadn't even finished its firearms training with the Army. Can this really be true: that 30 years after the Northern Troubles began, the Garda Siochana still has not a fully trained unit of marksmen to be deployed at sieges and shoot-outs? How much more of an archaeological epoch is required before we get these little tiny details sorted out? And which will we get first - a fully trained Garda firearms unit, or Luas?
"You ask that I call upon citizens to give information, if they have it, about the Omagh atrocity," said the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, in his letter to Victor Barker, whose son James was a victim. "There are historical as well as contemporary reasons for not doing this. Not the least of which is our continuing concern at the criminal justice system in the North, and the existence and role of the RUC, which must inevitably be involved in any prosecution even if information is given to the Gardai."
Gerry Adams is, of course, entirely right when he says there are reasons to feel continuing concern at the criminal justice system in the North, not the least of them being that there isn't one. Almost all the killers, butchers, bombers, torturers, knifemen and kneecappers have been released unconditionally and will not return to jail regardless of whether or not the paramilitaries they have the signal honour of belonging to return to war. But I suspect this is not what Gerry Adams meant in his letter. What he meant is that there is no atrocity so vile, so monstrous, so disgusting, so inhuman as to warrant assisting the RUC.
Moral responsibility
No doubt he really means this. No doubt he speaks not just for himself but also for his republican constituency. But how on earth do he, his constituency and also both governments in Dublin and London seriously believe that there is an ethical or political basis for putting such a party, as of right, into the governance of Northern Ireland? How can such a grouping be entrusted with the moral responsibility of government when it prefers to see the Omagh bombers go free than to assist the RUC in any shape or form? It's not hard to see that it is simply impossible. So it's no longer a question of decommissioning guns; it is as much a question of decommissioning the role of oxymoron as a means of ending the troubles. Paradox is a weapon which cuts with two edges: you cannot sheath one edge without sheathing them both. Sinn Fein can be accepted into government; but only when, unconnected to any paramilitary body, it accepts the political realities of democracy. What democrat could sit in cabinet and share power with a politician who has a standing army outside the cabinet doors and who refuses to countenance any assistance whatsoever with the forces of law and order, no matter how wicked a deed has been done?
Neither law nor order lie that way: only chaos and anarchy. For when oxymoron - that is, a contradiction in terms - ceases to be a mere literary device and becomes a political tool, instead of the normal political Hegelian interaction of action followed by reaction followed by synthesis you get the Einsteinian one of matter meeting anti-matter, followed by boom.
Opinions hardening
Real oxymoron, rather than the pretend-oxymoron of most coalition governments, is a political impossibility. Armed republicans opposed to every single aspect of the justice system cannot share power with unarmed unionists who actually fetishise that justice system. Such arrangements are simply impossible, especially at a time when it seems that opinions are hardening on both sides. Is it not quite extraordinary that in Omagh, of all places, Sinn Fein, the party which will do nothing to bring about the apprehension of the bombers who butchered the town, handsomely won the recent local government by-election, putting the SDLP to the sword in the process?
Is it only in a bizarre and lop-sided political culture such as ours that almost nobody seems to think this is all perfectly amazing? Or is just me? We have just over three weeks to find out.