By Tom Lamia
THE LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY. Photo by Tom Lamia.
As I settle in to compose something short, meaningful and topical each month, a historical reference often intrudes on my thoughts. Last month it was “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” My subject was to be the travails of good intentions gone wrong in the use of direct democracy. This month the title phrase above would not leave my thoughts. Why?
It took a Google search to put aside any immediate connection. Several dilemmas interfere with my sleep these days: COVID; Trump; Partisan Politics; Putin; Nuclear Destruction—the array of awful issues over which I have no control, but which nevertheless weigh on me. The phrase is from a music hall song written and sung by an Irishman in 1912 to describe the feelings of fellow Irishmen stuck in London by the need for employment, but who long to return to their Irish homes. It soon became a British soldiers’ marching song after 1914 and the start of World War I. As time and events passed, the appeal of the song has become the hope for better times among those who suffer from disadvantage or dismay. It is a song of longing for better times that will one day come.
Tipperary is the bright light of day after darkness. We have plenty of that darkness today. That the light will return is not forsaken, not even doubted. The song expresses confidence that, though a long way to go, Tipperary will be reached. The roadblocks and challenges will not be incidental and the ways and means of getting past them are not now clear, but the path is ultimately open. Whether by effort, ingenuity, patience or simple good fortune, we will get to Tipperary.
This metaphorical journey is appropriate to the dilemmas of Putin, Ukraine, NATO and the pathway to avoiding Nuclear Destruction. The current state of matters is frozen in time, as it has been since Einstein remarked that he “did not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Another of his observations on the subject was that if the world were to be destroyed it would not be the work of evildoers but of good people who do nothing. We have time and adequate warning to do something to forestall Putin, a particular evildoer, but it will not be without horrible risk. It will take unity and resolve; qualities that we possess, as shown by our history.
On a less catastrophic scale, we also have time to do something about shoring up our constitutional democracy. The confrontation in Ukraine between the courage of its defenders and the evil menace of the Russian invaders has revealed and perhaps removed to a large degree the sophomoric pursuit of political one-upmanship in Washington as our midterm elections approach. The misinformation and misleading distractions do not sit so well in the face of threats against us by an enemy that has shown its intent and capacity for harm.
As has been said for millennia in the context of organized life and society throughout the world, ”the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.” They are grinding now in Washington and elsewhere in efforts to find justice for the country in the matter of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, the corruption and foreign interference in the presidential election campaigns of 2016 and 2020, and what can only be described as the psychic terror of the Trump years. If there was wrongdoing there is time to discover and correct it in courts of law. Let that be done on the long way to Tipperary.
