Schrodinger's Cat is a well-known theory in explaining quantum mechanics where an imaginary cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive atom. For a time the cat is both alive and dead because you don’t know until you open the box whether, in fact, he is dead or alive.
It sounds like a metaphor for a Brexit deal between Britain and the EU. At any one time, it appears both alive and dead.
From the British point of view, all that is needed to keep it alive is to chuck the silly backstop, allow an Irish border and the cat is alive and well and prancing with the only land border between Britain and the EU sealed.
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For the Irish and the EU, that cat is dead, stone cold gone, without life, a corpse.
Removing the backstop means a return to a hard border and the very likely resumption of The Troubles. The European Union and the Irish are at one on that.
The Good Friday Agreement, the hard-won treaty that brought peace to Ireland, takes first priority. It is heavily based on an open border. It cannot be negotiated. The cat is dead.
The British border in Ireland during the Troubles.
The insufferable arrogance of the British government has brought us to this point. Theresa May is a junior varsity prime minister surrounded on all sides by showboats, malcontents, right-wing zealots and a press and social media intent on demonizing the Irish for wanting to hold on to peace at all costs.
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The leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has revealed himself as a political simpleton doing everything except the obvious which is holding out for a second vote on what was a disastrous referendum. That is the solution wanted by the vast majority of his party and the one that millions took to the streets to seek not too long ago.
The lack of recognition of the disaster waiting if a border is restored on both sides of the House of Commons is hard for the Irish and Irish Americans to bear.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, in the House of Commons.
The arrogance of the Ulster Unionists in demanding a hard border as their price for supporting May will not be forgotten by Northern nationalists.
The prospect of a united Ireland has suddenly dramatically increased as even the most moderate nationalists can now surely see the level of ignorance displayed by the English overlords.
They can also see that two decades of peace has done nothing to blunt the ignorance and triumphalism of Ulster unionism, once again baring its fangs.
The era of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley as the Chuckle Brothers in power-sharing government together seems like eons ago.
Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were nick-named "The Chuckle Brothers".
Utterly ignored by the Democratic Unionist Party is the fact that a handsome majority of the people of Northern Ireland voted against Brexit, as did the people of Scotland. The will of the people in those countries has been usurped by the dead weight of English nationalism.
Watching the Colonel Blimps parading every night on British media, treating the Irish border issue as a mere minor matter, is galling. The sooner the coming nationalist majority in Northern Ireland occurs, the sooner the only sane solution to the border question will be solved.
That is a united Ireland or nothing. In fact, it has always been thus.
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