Paths of Glory/Seven Samurai

Hearing Stanley Kubrick’s voice on the new Criterion edition of his coruscating anti-war melodrama ‘Paths of Glory’ is like listening to a ghost; not because the director has been dead for over a decade, but because he said so little in public when he was alive.  It’s one of the characteristic delights of a marvelous disc that provides thoughtful context for a film that was so dangerous to Gallic pride that it couldn’t be seen in France for over twenty years after its first release in 1957.  It’s a powerful, painful experience to watch; a story of true horror - on the Front, and in the chateaux occupied by sneering generals playing chess with life while Kirk Douglas tries to save his men from the evil that distorted notions of honor breed.

As is so often the case with Kubrick, the actors aren’t embodying characters, but playing archetypes - you watch Timothy Carey falling apart after being faced with his own death, and realise that he was cast because he acts the way most of us would - his face is crumbling under pressure, his voice a childish moan; it’s like a high school theatre performance.  And that’s not a criticism: it’s the strength of ‘Paths of Glory’ that the people in it - with the exception of the generals and Kirk Douglas - feel like you and me.

Kubrick’s philosophy of glory underwrote his entire career: the question of what makes  a real man surfaces in narrative arcs as diverse as that of Quilty in ‘Lolita’, Barry Lyndon, Alex Droog, and most transcendently, Dave Bowman in ‘2001’.  ‘Paths of Glory’ feels like a template for everything else Kubrick made: men sitting in large rooms and talking, men and violence, men and women, opulent ballrooms, classical music, resistance heroes unable to defeat authoritarianism.  Ego and power, and the echo of formalised feet dancing at parties taking place during wars.  So the function of ‘Paths of Glory’ is to invite us into an appreciation of the director’s later work, while forcing us to think about the idiocy of relationships between people who aren’t allowed to admit doubt.

Like ‘Seven Samurai’ (below), also released by Criterion this month in a magnificent Blu-ray edition, overflowing with genuinely fascinating special features, ‘Paths of Glory’ confronts the economics of death: men who think they are in control haggling over the lives of others, playing with them ‘for sport’.  It’s a short, compact film, which gets under the skin of its star, who in one of the special features - a 1979 BBC interview - reminds us that there was a time when actors were actually expected, and willing, to talk intelligently about themselves.  You feel Douglas’ compassion for his men; and his powerless position in the war game.  You don’t need to remember much about the absurd context for the First World War to experience despair when a man is executed while on a hospital stretcher.  You don’t mind the comedy bad guys because the story is so insane that they seem ironically to fit into its scheme, prefiguring the generals in ‘Dr Strangelove’.  And when it ends, with the heartbreaking, national boundaries-transgressing song from Christiane Kubrick, the actor credited here as ‘Susanne Christian’, a young woman whom Stanley met at a masked ball (there’s a Jungian coincidence for you) you wonder if the director didn’t look back on this film as being his finest declaration that the only thing worth fighting for is love.  Kubrick got a wife, Kurosawa got a profile in the West; the rest of us got two of the greatest films ever made.

Bowie Knife

The first scene of Nagisa Oshima's 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' (new on DVD and Blu-Ray from Criterion) is occupied with the horror of a soldier being forced to cut his intestines open as a punishment for being in love with another man.  The last image of the film is the smiling face of a soldier the night before his execution, beaming a greeting of filial affection to a former enemy.  We're in a POW camp run under the auspices of the Japanese military, where Allied soldiers are half-subjected to, and half-ignored by an honor code that proposes self-disembowelment as the response, it appears, to just about any infraction.  In between the attempted seppuku and the smiling greeting, the adorable Tom Conti reflects poetically on the mutually assured idiocy of war, Ryuichi Sakamoto gets angry, and then gets healed while his fascinating and eventually ubiquitous score overplays but not so much that it bothers, and gorgeous burnt light provides a mystical hue to what is ultimately a nightmare that becomes a dream and then finally a reality the audience always wanted: reconciliation between people who were otherwise ready to kill each other.

But not before David Bowie saves the world.

This is probably the least actorly of Bowie's screen appearances; his portrayal of callow/shallow and ultimately penitent youth is all the more resonant because he seems out of place in the movie: we know him to be something other than either the rigid Japanese or the sentimental English colonel; his off-screen status as chameleon works because he's more like us than anyone else in the movie.  He wanders through a context in which violence is sexualised, men are murdered for loving each other, and everyone is fantasising about being somewhere else.  It's probably the most erotic war movie ever made; it's a perfect companion piece to the thematically similar 'Bridge on the River Kwai', whose British Colonel is the antecedent for Sakamoto's character here: both men obsessed with honor over humanity, both undone at the last possible moment, both the points of deepest frustration for the audience.  The formal beauty of the compositions could overwhelm the point of the film: a kind of insider's apology for, or at least critique of, his nation's particular brand of nationalistic idiocy, which here is probably best summed up by the institutional nonsense of lying about killing.  Not far off my homeland's own nonsense, nor that of the day I'm posting this, when a holiday is observed in the US, marking the arrival of a genocidal maniac who no doubt believed God and his queen had told him to love the natives by burning some of them alive.  Oshima and co-screenwriter Paul Mayersberg evoke Columbus and any number of other pioneers of the sacralising of violence, by having Conti's character exclaim, 'Damn your gods.  It's your gods who have made you who you are,' at the point where he realises that he is to be killed to preserve a sense of order that was psychotic to begin with.  And it's in the confrontation of the madness of the scapegoat mechanism where 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' takes on the deepest core of the human tendency to spiral downward into mutually assured destruction.  Regret for the past is why men war with themselves today; an unthinking assumption that someone must be punished is why we kill each other; and the film locates such regret and assumptions in nothing more complex than the cruelty of boys who become men without changing.

But it neither labors nor over-philosophises its point; Oshima trusts us to get it - the first scene is so memorable precisely because it starts half way through where you'd expect.  We're right there - in an attempted imposed ritual suicide; there's no introduction, no preparation, no consolation for those of us who want our war films to pretend that war isn't murder.

At the end, I'm left reflecting on three things (beyond the easy admiration for the remarkable career of producer Jeremy Thomas, who in the splendid interview series on the Criterion disc seems to prove that he hasn't lost any thirst for making films that are both aesthetically compelling and politically humane): How childhood trauma can both cause us to dysfunction within adult relationships, but might also provoke us to live differently; to avoid the suffering we caused others, or was caused to us when we thought we didn't know any better.  On the role of sexual repression as a foundation for violence; and how a well-placed kiss could end conflict between people.  And finally, as Thomas says, how certainty is often the enemy of peace, for in war, 'we are victims of men who think they are right'.  'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' sounds, at first glance, like a humorous title; but it's not, and it could not just as easily have been 'Happy 4th of July'.  It's a film that begins with a man being forced to torture himself to death, and ends with the anunciation of what, for Rene Girard, perhaps the thinker most capable of explaining why scapegoating kills us all, would consider nothing less than the axis of history.  Along the way there's blue light, Bowie's blond locks, Conti's smile, Takeshi's ambivalence, Sakamoto's rage.  And a war film that sometimes feels like science fiction, sometimes like romance, sometimes like nothing you've ever seen before.

Tyler Clementi and Me. And You.

Of course I never knew Tyler Clementi, the young Rutgers student who took his own life last month in a tragedy so unfathomably horrific that it doesn’t permit adequate attempts at description.  The story that has emerged so far is that Tyler was enjoying a romantic moment with another guy, while his roommate secretly streamed the encounter live on the internet.  Shortly after Tyler found out, he jumped off a bridge. Of course I never knew him, but his story demands a deeper listening than has yet been promoted or presented by our culture’s spokespeople.  This is not just a story about one man and two acquaintances whose idiotic prank appears to have caused such fear of exposure that Tyler felt he had to kill himself.  It’s a story about all of us.  And we all need to listen to it.

On the basis of what we know thus far, I think we can guess this: Tyler Clementi died as a direct result of a culture of sexual shame in which institutionalized religion is the major investor.  I am angry, and I am going to say something harsh and direct, but I am willing to take responsibility for it.  Please feel free to respond if you wish.

If you have ever affirmed homophobia by not intervening to challenge the snide remarks that all of us have heard, you may be part of the reason that Tyler Clementi is dead.  And most of the time, I myself have not intervened.

If you have ever used ‘us’ and ‘them’ language to divide sets of people into ‘normative’ heterosexual cultures, and ‘others’, you may be part of the reason Tyler Clementi is dead.  I spoke of ‘us’ and ‘them’ for most of my life until a friend challenged me; I still find myself slipping into old rhetorical habits, for our culture is so deeply wedded to the myth that our identities depend on dividing and conquering.

If you have ever disrespected, dehumanized, or belittled a person because of their sexuality, you may be part of the reason Tyler Clementi is dead.

I think I am part of the reason that Tyler Clementi is dead.

We often say in ‘progressive’ religious circles that we want to ensure that we have a ‘conversation’ about sexuality, that we want to create a situation where everyone feels ‘included’; and for sure, this is a noble endeavor.  But too often the premise is that those of us who are straight are merely opening a space for those of us who are gay (or LBTQQI - but more of that later) to be told that ‘they’ are just as good as ‘we’ are.  This is not enough.  It does not allow for people who identify as LGBTQQI people to be seen as good in their (and our) own right; it does not permit a true exchange of gifts between different people; it suggests that LGBTQQI people are welcome despite their (and our) differences, not that they (and we) are just as much alive with gift, made in the image of God, and legitimate as the rest of us (and them).  At its best, this kind of conversation may lead to a better one; at worst, it is just another way of dressing up homophobia as reconciliation.

It emerges also in the context of a culture with a split persona: a religious one that almost always problematizes sex, and a secular one that almost always celebrates hedonism.  Churches often talk about sex and sexuality as challenges to be overcome; while the wider culture doesn’t seem to know what to do with sex except put it on TMZ.

Well, I am tired of the excuses we make for our prejudice, and the disguises we put on our repression.

I am tired of saying ‘we need to have a conversation’, and then not having it.

I am tired of sexuality being reduced in religious practice to shibboleths about homosexuality and adultery.

I am tired of pretending that our bodies are not part of the selves we talk about when we seek to become more human through opening to God.

I am tired of the misplaced shame I feel sometimes when I think about my own sexuality, my desires, my mistakes, my brokenness, the memories I have of humiliation in adolescence and beyond.

I am tired of not feeling free to discuss sexuality in church as anything other than a problem.  I want to celebrate it for what it has become for me: an astonishing gift from God, the space in which love between human beings, made a little lower than the angels has the potential to find its most elegant and connected expression.  The space where we may come closest to mirroring the divine relationship with the human.  The space that can produce such profound happiness, and is so powerful that it leave you feeling as if you've been ripped  apart.

The story of Tyler Clementi is not just about a young man and his roommates' stupid prank.  It is a story about cruelty, and dehumanization, and fear, and the lack of an understanding of how human relationships can promote the common good instead of individualistic gratification.

It is a story about the role that bad religion - most of it Christian - has played in creating a culture of shame around sex and sexual identity in America, and the distortions of human happiness that pass for healthy religious practice.

It is a story about our complicity in this bad religion, and in these distortions.

It’s a story about the end of privacy in the internet age: which could be a good thing, because we may now finally be compelled to tell the truth about ourselves: that we are broken and beautiful at the same time, and that none of us is fully who we claim to be.  We are stumbling pilgrims trying to figure out what it means to be human.  And if I tell you the truth about me, then maybe you might feel safer to tell me the truth about you.

And so, what will we do with the story of Tyler Clementi?

I’d suggest a handful of signposts.

Focus your judgment in the right direction. We should recognize that desire is confusing at the best of times; perhaps especially during the transition from adolescence into adulthood.  The same goes for learning how to behave with maturity in relation to others.  So while what Tyler’s roommates are alleged to have done was stupid and cruel, we should not direct our anger only at the two who apparently put the video of Tyler on line.  They are a symptom of a dehumanizing and childish culture.  They are not its cause.  And if we only concentrate on them, we will repeat the typical mistake of scapegoating, and never face the issues within ourselves that contributed to them thinking nothing of their actions.

It Gets Better If you find personal resonance with the fear of sexual humiliation, check out Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign here.

Come Out, Whoever You Are The semantic gymnastics that have been one of the gifts of the sexual rights movement are so changeable that I’m never quite sure how many letters I need to type to be sure I’m not excluding anyone.

L(esbian)G(ay)B(isexual)T(rans)Q(ueer)Q(uestioning)I(ntersex) is a pretty good start; but another category has been privileged to join: A(lly): which, although its status is ambiguous in the cohort to which it wishes to orient itself, to my mind means anyone who cares enough to commit themselves to be educated about the structures of injustice faced by people whom the dominant culture defines as sexual minorities.  Ally can be a patronizing concept, of course; but I think that the more people who don’t identity themselves (or ourselves) as LGBTQQI consider the A label, the sooner we will experience conversation about sexuality as something that is good for us all, rather than merely stigmatizing socially constructed minorities.

Beyond that, I’d like to suggest a new category.  After A comes E, because E(veryone) is affected by our sex-negative culture.  We may all have been stigmatized because of our sexuality; especially those of us raised in the church.  We are not sure how to make sexuality ‘fit’ with spirituality.  And so we live in a constant state of struggle or denial.  Those of us who are straight could learn from those of us who are gay.  Those of us who are straight might indeed yearn to be invited into a world where sexuality has been such a source of struggle that its stewards have had to learn to transform it from an invitation to suffering into a source of strength.  E(veryone) belongs here.

Like I said, I am angry today, and so I apologize if I have gone too far.  Or, actually, perhaps I’m not sorry at all.  Maybe I’m going to get angrier.  Maybe I need to.  I certainly need not to forget Tyler Clementi, a young man who died because our culture made him ashamed.

I’m sorry, Tyler.  I wish I’d known you.  I’m sorry that I have been part of the reason you were humiliated.  I am sorry that I have been so divided within myself that even though I know what it’s like to experience sexual humiliation, I held onto my own homophobia because it felt safer and more known.  I owe something to you.  I owe it to you to be honest about myself, to stop dehumanizing others, and to do everything I can to make sure that your place in history is simple and clear: that you would be the last.

The Thin Red Line

Two films released by the Criterion Collection this week focus on men at war.  We'll discuss Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line' on the next episode of The Film Talk, and below; later in the week I'll post a piece on 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'.  These are two of the most compelling films released on DVD this year.

When I first saw Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line', it was the turn of the century, Bill Clinton was still in office, the Twin Towers were intact, and the film seemed to be about the past.  The distant past, to be sure: a film that begins with a reptile submerging and ends with a plant growing on a beach seems to exist a long time before we did.  The nearer past, ostensibly: it takes place in 1942 during the early Guadalcanal Campaign (although you'll look in vain for the caption that appeared on the print I saw over a decade ago to indicate it; Malick, it seems, has had that removed from the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD release: he wants the movie to exist outside time). This is only appropriate, as it aims to be a poem about the primitive roots of violence, the lack of maturity among men who see the world only as a fight, the power of love to sustain even when it is broken, the tragedy of human beings caught in a web that they think dictates that only violence can be the path to power in this life.

Voices of men mingle over images of nature, John Travolta pulls rank on Nick Nolte, ironically mirroring the tragic missing-the-point skirmishes between some blogospheric film critics, Jim Caviezel auditions for Jesus' last day by playing out some of his early life, prayers are sung and sound like food.  Watching it now, after what may be the defining decade of our generation has passed, it's impossible not to think of 'The Thin Red Line' as a film about the here and now.  Jared Leto sends men to their deaths not knowing why or what he's doing, and perhaps not even caring; how was I to know, in 1998, that this was a prophecy about the man about to steal the White House?  Bodies are on fire and I hear the voice of Max von Sydow in 'The Exorcist' invoking the notion that evil is allowed to happen to make us believe we are unlovable.  Youth is wasted as guys accidentally blow themselves up; identity is formed through 'having your own war'; loss is made flesh as its stewards are 'mocked with the sight of what we might have known'.  Terror rules the world.  And then, there's light.  And trees.  And a new, untouched space, underwater, unaware.  A place where poetry underwrites the state of things.  The paradox of 'The Thin Red Line' is that it makes you feel at peace even as it confronts you with horror. It opens up a space of wonder amidst decay, serving as an awe-striking religious shibboleth.  It's not a war film.  It's a warning: of what we are like when we make the economic and political purposes of life depend on an avoidance of the transcendent.

Bloody Sunday Follow-up

My ‘Bloody Sunday’ article from last week received a critical comment from a reader, and I wanted to respond. I wrote to the commenter - Taicligh - as follows: No response to critical comments is likely to satisfy entirely either your criticism or my defensiveness ;-)  But I hope you can see my response as an opportunity to continue dialogue, rather than to shut it down.  I apologise in advance for what I've got wrong this time round - we are all frail and faltering, and looking toward the same light.  I hope we can keep talking.

To take each of Taicligh’s points in turn:

>wow, you're certainly not biased.

I’m sorry that my article gave rise to such a critical response; it was not my intention to entrench division; the article was actually an attempt at expressing a broader view of things than is often seen in conversation about divided societies; one that would endorse the Bloody Sunday enquiry, respect the pain of the families, and endorse the British Prime Minister’s apology while suggesting how the context could expand beyond (and because of) this single event.  I’m sorry also that my article seemed biased and insensitive.  At the same time, I’m not sure that biases can ever be avoided in writing about something so powerful as the history of a violently divided society.  What might be better would be if we could all acknowledge our the existence of our biases, and dialogue in the knowledge that none of us has a monopoly on truth.

>let’s see, how many orange paramilitaries refuse to disarm? i was living in dublin during 9/11, and that october the IRA disarmed. what were the main loyalist groups reactions? not us. we’ve got britain on our side.

1: The International Decommissioning body has, in fact, confirmed that all loyalist paramilitary groups have decommissioned their weapons.  They did this by stages over a period of time, beginning in 1998.  Loyalist paramilitary decommissioning was confirmed as complete by the start of 2010.

The IRA’s complete decommissioning was confirmed in September 2005; Sinn Fein was in government with Unionists within just over a year and a half after this.  Such time lapses were characteristic of the peace process, it having originally been stipulated in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement that parties would seek to use their influence to bring about decommissioning by May 2000.

You are right, however, to say that there was more public pressure on the IRA to decommission than on Loyalist paramilitaries.  This may, as you suggest, have had something to do with residual Protestant ambivalence toward Loyalist violence, and the fact that Unionists had more to fear from Republican violence than that of mainstream Loyalists (although Unionist politicians agreed that decommissioning needed to happen on both sides); but it was mostly due to the fact that Sinn Fein wanted to become partners in the power-sharing government, whereas Loyalist political parties did not have enough seats in the assembly to grant them a position in the government.  Part of the reason for this lack of support is that Protestants did not vote for parties directly linked to mainstream Loyalist paramilitary organisations in the same numbers as the Catholic community voted for the party linked to the IRA.  The sudden and untimely death of David Ervine, the leading moderate Loyalist politician, probably also contributed to the reasons why Loyalist decommissioning took longer.  The chief reasons that there was more pressure on the IRA to decommission was the potential role of Sinn Fein in government, and the fact that the Loyalist paramilitary groups did not appear to represent significant enough numbers of people to be eligible for a role in government.

> the *massive* and *egregious* civil rights violations against gaelic irish/native irish/"catholic" irish people in NI for centuries is not brought into context properly here.  oh no, it's the IRA that's to blame for it all. 2: You’re right that the article does not fully contextualise the situation.  But this is merely the consequence of it being impossible to name every dimension of the conflict in every article I write about it.  Far from ignoring the divisions and injustices in Ireland and northern Ireland, I have worked to promote understanding about these issues.  The book that I co-authored twelve years ago on the history of anti-Catholicism is an attempt at a relatively comprehensive outline of the systemic and individual injustices against the Catholic population of the island, for instance; the book that I’m co-authoring now is a history of the role of the churches, Catholic and Protestant, in the peace process.  I participated the earlier book as someone who would be perceived to be a Protestant from a mixed background, as an attempt at facing the shadow side of my own community.  I do not think that ‘the IRA is to blame for it all’; nor do I think that it was all the fault of agents of the state.

>yes, using violence as a means to achieve a political platform is wrong, no if's, and's or but's.  however, for decades the average irish "catholic" person in NI felt that there only protection was found in the IRA.  being a "protestant" i doubt you'd understand that.  the police, the military, the foreign occupiers, the orange paramilitaries & the greater size of the population they "represented" were all against irish "catholics". Of course I agree about the immorality of using violence as a means to achieve a political platform.  There was no justification for the use of the violence by the IRA, even by the most open-ended interpretations of ‘just war’ theory, on a number of fronts - but this one fact would be enough for me: non-violence had not been exhausted as a means for resisting oppression before the IRA formed itself and started killing people, police, soldiers, and civilians alike.  This happened.  It’s not the whole story, but it happened.  Of course the Loyalist paramilitaries were also utterly wrong in their use of violence; and the treatment of northern Irish Catholics as second class citizens, backed up by repressive security measures was absolutely indefensible.  Had I been in my mid-teens or older in the late 1960s, I hope I would have become sensitised to the divisions in our society, been taught to listen to others, and had the courage to join the non-violent civil rights movement, and to work for a long-term non-violent strategy to bring about its goals.  I wish more people had done that.  I wish the leaders of the US civil rights movement had been able to be more deeply involved in training our own civil rights activists, as some of our local leaders surely wanted.

But we must deal with history as it is, and not as we might wish it to have been.  The fact is, the civil rights movement did not achieve enough traction as a non-violent movement to sustain itself long-term in the face of the overwhelming Unionist opposition to its goals; and the events of Bloody Sunday were so shocking that the movement did not recover.

However, I don’t accept your proposition that the average Catholic person in northern Ireland felt their only protection was found in the IRA.  The majority of Catholic people did not vote for Sinn Fein until after the Good Friday Agreement was signed and the IRA had largely ended its combative activities; most instead voted for the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the non-violent party established to address social injustice and bring about a united Ireland by peaceful means.  The majority of people in the Irish Republic had no IRA sympathies whatsoever.  The IRA came into being when some people decided that they were unwilling to pursue the path of non-violent resistance.  Most people in northern Ireland completely disagreed with this position, both morally and strategically.  It demeans a large number of my Catholic friends to suggest that they supported the IRA, an organisation that was willing, among other things, to blow up shoppers at bus stops, shoot businessmen dead in their gardens in front of their families, and detonate a bomb that killed 11 people attending a religious service.  Of the people I have been close to who were directly bereaved by the IRA, perhaps the most striking and horrifying story belongs to someone I used to know whose father was strapped into his vehicle, forced to drive to an army checkpoint, and blown up by remote control.  He was a Catholic.  It demeans the larger part of his community to suggest that IRA support was typical of the ‘average’ Catholic.  And it demeans those who supported the IRA to say they were only motivated by blood lust.  Like I said, it is impossible to write about this topic without seeming biased.

As for my own personal experience of the conflict and injustices in and about northern Ireland, it’s difficult for me to respond without seeming churlish or defensive.  But I’ll say this, briefly: you’ve made assumptions about my background that are incomplete.  You may have no idea what suffering was caused to me and my loved ones by either the IRA, Loyalist paramilitaries, or the British Army or Northern Irish police (RUC).  You may have no idea what risks I may have taken to be involved in peace-building.  You may have no idea how much my mental health may have been challenged when I was involved with others in dialoguing with people who might previously have threatened us.  I don’t say this to be snarky, but merely to reflect on how easy it is to allow political prejudices to overwhelm personal empathy.  And at the same time, I have no idea about your life experience and pain; I’m sorry if I’ve said anything here that offends; and I’d like to hear from you again. >so, in retrospect, there's far more to the story.  but, again, let's alleviate the loyalists of any wrongdoing, as with "great" britain.  and we can justify "great" britain stealing land that they had any right to and say "protestants were there long before...".  well guess who was there long before them?!?!  good gracious.

4: I did not cite the fact that Protestants have been in Ireland longer than Anglo Saxons have been in North America as a means of justifying everything or indeed anything that has been done in the name of Protestantism in Ireland.  It was merely to show that the argument that the ‘British’ should leave is an impossible ask; as inconceivable, or at least as misdirected as suggesting that the only way to get justice for the Native American population of what is now the United States would be for every white person to go back to England, the Netherlands, or Germany.  There may well be some understandable logic to that suggestion, but there are probably better ways of resolving the questions of historic and contemporary injustice.  I don’t know why you think I was trying to absolve the British in general or Loyalists in particular from responsibility: my original article clearly referred to horrific Loyalist violence, and was primarily an enthusiastic endorsement of a British Prime Minister apologising for an act of monstrous injustice perpetrated against Irish Catholics.

Being Protestant in northern Ireland over the past forty years did not necessarily mean to be consciously engaged in perpetrating injustice; and being Catholic did not mean to be a member of an underclass equivalent to, say, the experience of black South Africans under apartheid.  There was discrimination, to be sure; there was a lack of equal rights, of this there is no doubt; and worst of all, there was violence perpetrated by Loyalist paramilitaries, repressive security tactics by Army and police, and a blind eye often turned by Protestant leaders.  But sectarianism - and the violence it bred - was a two way street.  We ignored, belittled, and harmed each other.  The IRA killed more people than any other organisation, and so some say they are mostly to blame; while its defenders would say that they had more reason to engage in violence, due to the state-sponsored injustices.  I would say that both are wrong.

>i was hoping to find this to be a great article by a writer i had previously found enjoyable via the god's politics email list, but you've certainly lost a fan. I’m grateful that you enjoyed my writing before!  I hope we can dialogue further.  One of the glories of the internet is the facility it affords strangers to talk with each other; one of its shadows is that it’s too easy for blog posts, and comments, to be written in haste and produce more heat than light.

To that end, let me state my biases, inasmuch as I can, faltering toward the light: the unequal society that prevailed in northern Ireland since its inception in the 1920s was unjust, and unjustifiable.  No one should have endorsed it.  The violence used by both Irish Republican and Ulster Loyalist groups was also unjustifiable, and, at times nothing less than a manifestation of evil.  The repressive tactics of successive British governments were unjustifiable too.  The motivations for people who joined paramilitary groups or the police or British Army may have come from all kinds of places, including a mixture of the honourable desire to serve and protect, fear of the other side’s violence, and group cohesion.  And tragically, there may, for some, have been no more complex motivation than the desire to kill.

But these things are neither the whole story, nor do they matter as much now as they used to.  We talked to each other, and decided to stop using violence as a political tactic.  We share government together.  We have human rights and equality legislation that, if applied elsewhere, could transform the world.  And we have our wounds, and our memories, and the desire for truth.  The Bloody Sunday enquiry opens up possibilities for change in our society as it establishes a precedent: that a common vision of facts (or at least the beginnings of such) can actually be arrived at, and that sometimes one side of a story is more factual than another*.  Don’t you think that those bereaved by the IRA deserve the same kind of acknowledgement received by those bereaved on Bloody Sunday?  And wouldn’t it be quite something if the current Deputy Prime Minister of northern Ireland could offer the same kind of apology for some of the IRA’s actions as did the Prime Minister of Great Britain?

*To those readers who have now written me off because they think I don’t understand postmodernism, three brief responses:

1: You’re right: I don’t understand postmodernism.  To say that I did would be rather a modernistic statement, don’t you think?

2: The place of facts in the debate about truth needs to be re-asserted.  That’s one of my truth claims.

3: The Bloody Sunday enquiry was a kind of community hermeneutic, if ever I saw one: 12 years of people telling their stories in public, filtering into a process that attempted to get to a larger story that could liberate the community that told it in the first place.  I don’t imagine that Derrida would object to that.