Do you remember the Oklahoma Brouhaha? The thirty-year war between Episcopalians and Baptists in Oklahoma. It began in 1970, and thousands of people were killed. The Baptist Republican Army committed terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Episcopalians.
The US Army was called in to establish peace, but it was seen as an occupation and only made things worse. People were dying in Oklahoma but also in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. The Governor of Texas was complaining about all the Oklahoma terrorism and wanted to close the border with Oklahoma.
Oh, you don’t remember? Were you asleep during history class? No don’t worry, it is not a super fact you didn’t know about. The Oklahoma Brouhaha never happened. I made that up.
Yesterday I started talking to my daughter about The Troubles, the war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland that started in 1968 and lasted for more than 30 years. I don’t remember how the discussion started.
My daughter knows history well, much better than most adults I know, but she had still not heard about The Troubles. Her face looked like yours would if you thought I was serious about the Oklahoma Brouhaha. How could this have happened so recently in a peaceful, prosperous and beautiful European country known for its friendly and happy people, great pubs, cute gnomes, and fairy tales?
I can add that an acquaintance of mine survived a bombing of a hotel by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1984. He frequently talked about it. Another acquaintance of mine used to be a member of the IRA. Therefore, I have a small personal connection to it.
I on the other hand was flabbergasted that she did not know about The Troubles. But it makes sense. Half my life I was watching the news every day about the war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (on Swedish TV), but once peace was achieved, and Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley shook hands, I didn’t hear a peep about it ever again. How could someone in their 20s know about it?
Peace is Boring News
Peace is boring News. Peace is not even news. No news is good news. The same goes for other topics, such as the environment. Environmental disasters and environmental threats are news, and it should be, but an environmental problem that has been solved is no longer news and will be forgotten. One example of that is the super fact post I made yesterday “By 2018 the emissions of ozone-depleting gases had fallen by 99.7 percent”. What else have we forgotten about?
I guess my point is first of all, we forget, and secondly, that it is important to remember that bad news gets attention because it is interesting. Therefore, it is important to remember that there’s a lot of good out there that we forget about.
Below is a youTube video showing Irish comedian David Tynan O’Mahony (born in Dublin), stage name Dave Allen, making fun of Reverend Ian Paisley. Reverend Ian Paisley was a hell and brimstone preacher who agitated against Catholics (it was hate speech), not just in Northern Ireland, but against all Catholics.
For example, he called the pope the anti-Christ. I should add that Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams the leader of the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (Sinn Féin) eventually shook hands in 2007 and came to an agreement. The tone was much different then, but that was long after this YouTube video was made.
The video below is not inflammatory, just very funny. I should mention that as Dave Allen is imitating Ian Paisley it sounds like he is saying “naatching of teeth”. That is “gnashing of teeth” in a north Irish accent. The ending is priceless with perfect comedic timing and effect. The video is 2 minutes and 42 seconds long.
I have one more video if you are interested. It is the Cranberries singing “Zombie” a famous song about the war in Northern Ireland. My daughter knew this song. She just didn’t realize that the song was about the war in Northern Ireland.
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Wonderful post 🎸🙏
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Thank you so much Satyam
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HI Thomas, an interesting way to start a post. I bit like the teacher saying the lesson of the day would be sex to a class of young teens. Haha. Anyhow, what I want to say is that your daughter would have been educated in America and the historical focus would be different from that of Europe. If she’d been educated in the UK she would know about The Troubles. When I first went to the UK in my 20s, there was still concern about IRA attacks on London so it was real and there are plenty of people in living history who where impacted by this terrorism.
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Thank you Robbie. Yes it was a quirky start, but it was an attention grabbing joke, perhaps a bit click-baity. I can certainly understand that it is fresh in people’s mind in the UK and Ireland. However, both in Sweden and here in the US it used to be on TV all the time and then people stopped talking about it once there was peace. I just think it happens a lot with news. Bad news is interesting but good news isn’t interesting. That’s why the Chinese curse goes “may you live in interesting times”.
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You are right about news.
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Thank you Robbie
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Hi Thomas — I think you’re right about the problem of peace being boring. I was just thinking yesterday in reference to Leipzig, where there is an awful 27-story monument to a horrible Napoleonic battle but right next door, where they had the Messe, a trade fair held almost every year for about a thousand years, which led to the exchange of books and technology all the way from Scandinavia to Rome and Santiago de Compostela to Moscow, there isn’t even a signpost. Best, Ben Bennett Voylesbennettvoyles.de Tel. +49 151 62967276 Winterfeldtstr. 39 10781 Berlin, Germany
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Thank you Ben. I think that is another good example. The paradox is that bad news is interesting, and we need to know it, at the same time as we need to remember that most of the human condition is peace and every day occurances that are boring news but makes us happy. There needs be a balance between being well informed and being sane. Thank you for stopping by Ben.
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My naive father took us to Belfast on a family holiday in 1976 or 77! His grandmother was from Belfast and he wanted to meet his cousins. It was very scary for a little kid from small town Manitoba, Canada. I think we were the only tourists, and I remember his cousins and their friends didn’t really know what to do with us! 😊 Maggie
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He took you to a war zone on vacation. That could be a movie, hopefully a comedy. I can understand how that would be scary, and I can understand why you were the only tourists. It certainly sounds like an intense experience.
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I know, it’s crazy! I have very strong memories from that time, likely due to how intense it was.
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I can certainly understand that Maggie 😱
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I was thinking that Cranberries song the whole way through the post. So glad you included it. What’s troubling me, is all that has been left by the wayside or forgotten- Before- our attention spans were whittles to two seconds by social media. Today news doesn’t matter tomorrow… very thought provoking post.
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Yes I am afraid our attention span is shortening. It is so much we don’t know and so much we’ve forgotten, the good as well as the bad, but the bad gets our attention, which it should, but we need to be aware of where we put our attention. I also like that Cranberries song.
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I’m old enough to remember The Troubles, Thomas. It was about that time that I also read Trinity by Leon Uris. I still remember that book; it left quite an impression. You’re right that good news doesn’t get as much press. It’s too bad since all we hear about is the worst of humanity – it get’s depressing! That Ozone chart was rather impressive. Some Good News!
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I did not read that book but I remember hearing a lot about it. I have to read it one day. The paradox is that we need to be informed, so we need to know about the bad news, at the same time we have to remember what our focus is so that we can balance it with all the good that we don’t hear about. Sweden and Denmark fought 11 wars. That’s history that is important to Scandinavians, at the same time Swedes and Danes get along just fine and have for 150+ years. The bad news need to be known but realistically it should not dominate our thinking and feeling. We need to seek shelter from a tornado but most of the time there is no tornado.
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Great post, Thomas! A famous journalist quote is: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
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Thank you Dawn. Wow, that’s a good quote
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This was a fun and interesting post Thomas. And truest words – no news is good news. If it’s not sensational, it’s boring. 🙂
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Thank you so much Debby. News need to be interesting and peace, prosperity and thinsgs going well, just isn’t very interesting. We need to know the bad, but should not believe that’s all there is.
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A good way of putting it Thomas. 🙂
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Thank you Debby
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🙂
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Lulu: “Our Dada was just about ready to go look up the Oklahoma Brouhaha, because it seems like the kind of thing they might gloss over in American history class! Kind of like the very real Tulsa race massacre that so many people only found out about from the TV show Watchmen a few years ago!”
Charlee: “He is of course familiar with the Troubles and what that song ‘Zombie’ was about and he just figured everyone else must be, too. Just goes to show how things that were once current events become history and fade into the background …”
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Yes you are right Lulu and Charlee. I knew about the Tulsa race massacre, a truly horrific event in which likely hundreds died. It is not pleasant history but we should not forget about it.
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I wasn’t aware about The Troubles, this is a good article Thomas, for those who didn’t know about. A good reminder that peace shouldn’t be taken for granted. We had our own troubles in the communist Romania era around same time..
Sometimes people only read the WOW news, don’t you think? But I prefer the boring ones😊
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Thank you so much Christie. It is easy to forget when things calm down. I certainly remember what happened in Romania with Nicolae Ceaușescu, the revolution and everything. My son’s waterpolo coach was at Ceaușescu’s final speech at the Revolution Square in 1989 and he was being shot at but crawled and escaped and he went to the American embassy. He got asylum to the US and later on became the Waterpolo Coach at the school where my boys went. BTW he is a Romanian Olympic gold medal winner in Waterpolo. He left the US a few years ago to go back to Romania.
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There used to be so many Olympic medal winners before ’89🥰 Many people left Romania after the revolution, for a better life. But interestingly, I heard that many have returned to their native countries from Canada too in the last 3-4 years (many Romanians too). Unfortunately, Canada is no longer what we came for, but at least we hope there will be (a boring) peace on the entire North American continent😊
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Like Mihai. That is interesting.
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I’m surprised your daughter didn’t know about The Troubles, Thomas, but on the other hand, we are much older and lived during that time. You’re right, good news is boring, and it’s always the bad that stands out and leaves an impression. Thank you for that Dave Allen clip! My husband and I watched his show regularly in the 70s and also saw him live in Toronto once. We laughed so hard, our jaws were aching the next day. 😀 And Zombie is such a famous song, I thought everyone knew what it was about as well.
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Well I was surprised too. She knows history pretty well, mostly American history but also world history, but she didn’t about something that I thought everyone knew about. But as you say, she wasn’t born when this was going on and since Peace was achieved it hasn’t been talked about much. Oh you saw him live (Dave Allen). That is great. I wish I had done that. About Zombie, I was very familiar with the song but I did not know what it was about until now. The thing is, the Dunning-Kruger effect goes both ways. You underestimate who much you understand when you only know a little and conversely if you do know something you underestimate how little others know. That’s why you are surprised that I didn’t know. Thank you for the interesting comment Debbie.
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And I didn’t know anything about the Dunning-Kruger effect. 🙂 Interesting! Thanks for the education, Thomas. Heading off to do more reading about that…
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I’ve made a post about the Dunning Kruger effect. It is not a super fact, just information. However, it is an interesting effect. Basically, people who know something, but very little, about something tend to greatly overestimate their understanding of the topic. They even made a graph for it showing confidence to peak close to the knowledge of zero/nothing, and then the confidence falls to close to zero as people find out more about the topic. Then it starts to rise again as they become experts. Basically, the most confident people are those who know the least, and then experts come in second having confidence too but not as much confidence as the know-almost-nothings. The people in the middle, who have a solid background on the topic but not enough to be experts are the least confident. It is a real psychological effect. The explanation is that people who something but very little about topic, simply don’t know enough to realize how much they are missing. As their miscomprehensions are crushed as their knowledge grows, their confidence is crushed as well.
However, the Dunning Kruger effect have another side, which is rarely talked about, and that is that people with a lot of knowledge on the topic tend to overestimate the knowledge of others. A classical example is the professor talking to a class thinking that everyone can follow him, but nobody understands what he is talking about, because they are lacking the basics of the topic. Anyway, a long rant. It is an interesting effect.
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Nice article 💯💜
Blessed and Happy afternoon 🌅🌎
Grettings 🇪🇦🌎
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Thank you so much pk world
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