Good Riddance

I grew up with Ian Paisley on my TV, I grew up with the 'Troubles' and Bloody Sunday and pub bombings, shopping centers (malls to you yanks) being evacuated and motorbike death squads and young British soldiers being exploded by dark swarthy terrorists in the middle of the night. Seems however much I am removed from that life it's remnants and memories sustain. Paisley is such a remnant and memory, his grey suits and dog collar, the apoplectic delivery, the armagh-geddon rhetoric and the condoning of brutal reprisals, I remember it all, I was as frightened by him as I was the IRA in their balaclavas, NATO jackets, guns thrust in the air as another martyr was buried with full 'military' honors.

The catholic 'martyr' likely died in a shit stained cell after brutal beatings and interrogations by the protestant RUC, at the time it was a story mostly left untold until a more enlightened era, that Paisley was a brutal warmongering sociopath was also, mostly, left unsaid and as much as Gerry Adams was/is the political face of the IRA an ultra Irish Nationalist criminal enterprise, Paisley was the political face of the UDR or UDF both ultra Unionist/Nationalist criminal enterprises. As I grew older and began to understand the dynamics of the "Irish Problem" I always snorted indignantly as Paisley repudiated Adams for his ties to the IRA while denying his own ties to organised violence. After all Paisley was a man of god he could not condone violence, he said, but look into his black lying eyes and you saw another man of god, using his ordained grace to wield the power of life and death over his minions and his enemies alike.

Only later in his life did Paisley show one ounce of humanity, he ratified the accord that would bring a tenuous but, so far, lasting peace to both the North and South of Ireland. Maybe I'm naive in thinking that his concience finally caught up with him and he realized there had to be peace or whether he looked around him and saw the writing on the wall for him and his political ilk and ceded power to the more pragmatic approach necessary to guarantee Unionist survival.

Either way... Paisley, stay retired.