John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE INDEPENDENT
”Sectarianism is alive and well in Northern Ireland – and Boris Johnson is recklessly picking at the scabs
“The prime minister’s visit to Belfast this week reveals once again the mixture of frivolity and ignorance with which the Brexiteers approach the border problem”
An interesting and insightful piece from Patrick Cockburn.
Perspective on a serious problem which cannot be wished away.
Of course, Boris Johnson is very much of the same school of thought as Donald Trump: just push or bully for what you personally want, and things will, somehow or other, sort themselves out.
That's not a realistic or pragmatic way of thinking. In fact, I’m not sure it represents thinking at all.
It is a kind of religious faith, a secular religious faith, perhaps not unrelated to Mike Pompeo’s dangerously confused mix of faith, the unshakable belief that Jesus is returning for his flock and the equally unshakable belief in American exceptionalism and global dominance.
Apart from the fact that it never occurs to him that both of those are belief, matters of faith, wishes, and not facts on which to build anything for the world’s people, the two are actually quite contradictory. Jesus certainly never represented imperial interests, and he spoke of love, not dominance, and he spoke of everyone, not some.
Yet there you have it, utterly confused thinking from the mind of one of Washington’s highest officials.
Much like what we hear from Donald Trump whose words, week-in and week-end, speak of intense enthusiasms and immense contradictions. Nothing strictly Christian here, but a kiss-the-flag kind of secular religion, hugging it like someone in the New Testament trying to grasp the hem of Jesus’s garment.
We have the roaring embrace of American exceptionalism married to an attitude about everyone else as though they were, in Christian terminology, “unsaved,” and thereby unworthy.
We already see in Trump’s case, failure in virtually his every major undertaking. In China. In North Korea. In Venezuela. In Cuba. In Ukraine. In Russia.
You can’t depend on faith or enthusiasms, secular or otherwise, especially when the other parties involved in what you are attempting do not share them.
And, it hardly needs saying, you can’t depend on contradictions in anything, except failure.
And just so, Johnson’s BREXIT drive and the hard, hard realities of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
I do wish, Independent, more of your columnists and reporters held the level of understanding and intellectual integrity that Patrick Cockburn displays here and in most of his pieces.
