But WHY are Americans obsessed with Northern Ireland right now? I mean you had to have noticed. Especially since we know next to nothing about the place (something which hasn't been lost on the locals).
"But, they LIVE in Ireland.. right? I mean that sort of makes them Irish?"
Doesn't it?
Well, no, it doesn't, and even a cursory examination reveals this. But Americans have an overwhelming fondness for the Irish (As many of us are descended in whole or in part from Irish who came here in the 1800s), and we've always equated the Irish with pugnacious fighting spirit.
So when we hear Northern Ireland, yeah.. you can put it together from there.
But this doesn't quite answer the question. See, I kept finding myself saying something along the lines of "We don't know exactly what's going on, but we're very enthusiastic about the whole affair". Because we are.
The one thing Americans DO know anything about Northern Ireland is that it was home to a decades long guerilla campaign between various rival factions. And I am not going to get into the weeds about any of that. Except to say that Americans seem to believe that the people Northern Ireland have an almost built in ability to wage asymmetrical warfare.
When America thinks Japan they think Samurai, when America thinks England it thinks Redcoats, and when it thinks about you it thinks Guerilla Fighters.
Whether accurate or not, that's the mythos.
And so when it came to light that the people of Northern Ireland had begun to resist the imposition of European tyranny, to reject the invaders, and to move from the realm of social media and voting booth to actual warfighting in any capacity Americans took note.
We want Europeans to fight back against what we view as a kind of suicidal dystopian orthodoxy, an orthodoxy that works to eradicate the natives via the machinations of the bureaucracy and quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) replace them with foreign borns who despise the very nation they now occupy.
And for the first time in forever it not only looked like it was happening, but it was the ideal people for the job. If, to our minds, anyone could resist en masse, it would be the people of Northern Ireland.
Again, this belief is largely a romanticized view of things, but it's WHY Americans reacted the way they have. Why they have become so invested in what is otherwise a pretty small player on the world's stage.
Because it feels like it could be the spark that ignites something far larger. Because we're hoping it does.