Sooner or later, everything crosses the Atlantic to wash up on Ireland’s shore. Generations of us have scavenged among the flotsam for blue jeans and bluegrass, hamburgers and Black Friday, the Kardashians, Mickey Mouse and Lisa Simpson’s accent. But the tide has turned across the water and now here comes the jetsam.

If you want to know what the latest assassination attempt on Donald Trump has in common with road closures in Ireland by fuel price protesters, University of Chicago academic Robert Pape provides an answer. It’s not brain rot (“all hell will reign [sic] down” Trump threatened over “the Straight [sic] of Hormuz” while scarce diesel went up in smoke from blockading vehicles in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Wexford and Offaly).

Nor is it the contagion of vulgarity (“open the f***ing Strait, you crazy bastards”, Trump demanded while protesting contractor Christopher Duffy declared in Ireland: “There’s not a f***ing oil truck moving in this country until we get what we want. We have the country by the balls.”)

What ties events on both sides of the ocean together is an increasing toleration among the middle classes for individuals taking matters into their own hands, even to the detriment of others.

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Ireland has not exhibited the acceptance of political violence the US has seen with the murders........

© The Irish Times