US President Donald Trump long ago recognised the payback potential in taking extreme positions against civilised
opponents.
Before he was elected, he directed his spewing bile against rival Hilary Clinton. “Lock her up”, was his chant, echoed with vehemence and, like it or not, ignorance by many of his supporters.
Attacks on the “dishonest, fake” media were on his stir-it-up playlist too, but they have a new priority now he is secure, for the moment at least, in the White House. He persists with his tirades, despite warnings he is putting journalists’ lives in jeopardy.
His behaviour falls outside the norms of our permanent negotiation with each other, one that if it is to succeed must remain decent and dignified.
Britain’s former foreign secretary and shameless Brexit opportunist Boris Johnson played a similar card when he, in a newspaper column, described in deeply offensive terms Muslim women who choose to wear a burqa.
Johnson did this in the full knowledge he would face criticism, but criticism that would be far outweighed by the support he would get from the insular, nasty and nativist wing of the Conservative Party in a looming leadership contest.
Both men reached a crossroads where the road signs pointed to shock-jock demagoguery or the kind of leadership that can create a worthwhile legacy. Sadly, both chose the shock-jock option.
Ireland faces a similar choice on Saturday week, when Pope Francis begins a short visit. We can go the shock-jock path or we can welcome our visitor with dignity and respect.
Despite the impossibly long charge sheet against Irish Catholicism and the Vatican’s hidden hands, Pope Francis is the figurehead of the religion a great number of Irish people still hold dear. The welcome — or otherwise — he is afforded will be an expression of how Irish people opposed to Catholicism and its influence in our society respect their neighbours who hold a different, more traditional view.
That relationship is strained, albeit unintentionally, by two democratically-endorsed amendments to our Constitution that fly in the face of Catholic teaching. Those victories should not provoke the kind of triumphalism that leads to the high-octane protests that might be seen at a Trump rally.
Even an organisation as self-contained and opaque as the Vatican is fully aware of the anger its representatives have provoked. It may be tempting to organise large-scale, high-intensity protests, but that would change little other than deepen the division already obvious in this society.
Attractive as the idea of waving a placard at a papal mass might be, sustaining positive, working relationships within this society is far more important and far more challenging.
Let’s not follow Trump and Johnson’s appalling example.