It's trendy these days to be anti colonialism, but as soon as you mention ireland all the support fizzles out. Fucks up with that? Most young people hate tories, hate british empire, etc etc, but then you say IRA and everyone gets scared. It's not even like my generation has an emotional attachment to it either - it's before our time
Bro i'm also a dumbass from texas but I really appreciate your thoughtful (and frankly, personal) answer. I had never considered ireland was still tangled in the fallout of the Troubles, and i can't help thinking I've missed the nuances of the situation from my outsider perspective.
Do you have any good, comprehensive resources on the issue? I would love to read and learn more.
Two very good but very harrowing books would be Children of The Troubles by Joe Duffy and Freya Clements and Lost Lives by by Chris Thornton, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney , David McKittrick. Children of The Troubles tells the stories of some of the 180 odd children killed during the troubles through interviews, and Lost Lives provides a incredibly comprehensive account of the deaths throughout the Troubles that paints the broad picture of the whole conflict. One of the main things growing up and still to this day was hearing every few weeks on the news about another "Legacy" case about some poor family looking for closure on a family member who turned up in a bog or just straight up disappeared 30-40 years ago and never recovered from it.
Most people outside of Ireland, even those who know Irish people, often don't realise it because of how, growing up in Northern Ireland, much of it is unspoken, taken-for-granted, knowledge that you don't really need to talk about because everyone already knows it. Which results in alot of outsiders simply never hearing about it. (This applies less to Americans and more to people of the UK, who you would think should know a bit about the country right across from them)