An Antidote for Lazy Thinking

"The romantic idyll of a revolutionary movement is easier to sustain when there is no danger that one's own family members might get blown up on a trip to the grocery store."

I recommend Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2019) without reservation. Author Patrick Radden Keefe is an exceptional writer, masterful storyteller, and rigorous researcher. I'm looking forward to reading more of his work. 

The murder of Jean McConville - a Belfast mother of ten - is the scaffolding on which Keefe constructs his compelling tale. But true to its subtitle, memory plays an equal role in this remarkable book. With the Troubles in Northern Ireland haunting and distorting - in equal measure - the memories of many people who lived through those traumatic years, the whole truth about McConville's abduction and murder remains unknown, even with two prominent players confessing their part in the crime. 

And the "calibrated sophistry" of Gerry Adams - who wouldn't sit for an interview with Keefe as he researched the book - boggles the mind. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, to this day the ex-Sinn Fein representative still maintains he was never a member of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army. After reading Say Nothing, I could picture Adams's delight when he first heard Kellyanne Conway refer to "alternative facts". Words to live by for a maniacal dissembler like Gerry. 

The shrewd observations Patrick Keefe sprinkles throughout his brilliant book - like the sentence from Chapter 19 opening this post - chastened me. Looking for easy answers, ignoring shades of gray, and reflexively taking sides are blunt ways of looking at complex problems. More than once, the armchair revolutionary in me has blustered about conflicts akin to the Troubles and offered glib solutions for other intractable problems that plague our world. By continuing to read books like Say Nothing, I'm hopeful I'll begin to mitigate that type of lazy thinking.