Whoever said that you could not fool all of the people all of the time had obviously never visited the north.
You will, of course, ask for evidence to support such an outrageous criticism of our politics and society, so let us imagine for a moment that there are to be two elections here tomorrow.
(Yes, two elections - one for the Protestants and one for the Catholics. If you would like more information, read Chapter 1 in 'Educating Karen Bradley'.)
In the event of those two elections, the DUP would easily win the Protestant poll and Sinn Féin would romp home in the Catholic contest. In a normal society that would suggest that these two parties have the most robust economic policies, a solid record in the ethics and efficacy of government and unparalleled leadership in facing the challenges of Brexit.
Sadly none of that applies here (particularly the bit about ethics and efficacy). Instead, in the past week, as the two parties' MLAs continued to collect their £50,000 annual salaries for abstaining from Stormont, their leaders invented two predictable political scams.
Sinn Féin put up posters (expensive glossy posters - thousands of them) and the DUP proposed building a bridge to Scotland. Yes, a bridge. To Scotland. (No, I do not know if it will be an independent Scotland, but if so, the bridge will require customs posts.)
Our education system is bankrupt, our infrastructure is disintegrating and the health service is falling apart. The two solutions to our social and economic chaos from our two most popular parties are posters and a bridge. Fooling at least most of the people, all of the time has become our political norm.
So which do you want to discuss first - the posters or the bridge? OK, we will do the bridge.
The idea, proposed by Paul Girvan this week, is another DUP diversionary stunt, in the tradition of Ian Paisley, who built his sectarian career around the dramatically irrelevant. Proposed in the party's 2015 manifesto, Arlene Foster revived it this summer (to 'cement' the links between us and Scotland, she said) and asked the Scottish Orange Order to support the idea. (Will it become their traditional route across the North Channel?)
She forgot to tell them that the sea is about 160 metres deep, except in the middle where it plunges into a 300 metre-deep trench, into which Britain has dumped an estimated one million tonnes of chemical and conventional munitions.
The lunacy of the scheme was confirmed when Boris Johnson said it was an idea worth considering. (As London mayor, Boris spent £46 million researching a garden bridge over the Thames. The idea was later abandoned.)
Meanwhile SF was putting up posters advocating no border and calling on us to defend the Good Friday Agreement - a contradictory message since the agreement enshrined the border in international law for the first time. (Wouldn't Donald Trump just love it here?)
Their posters also demanded no Tories and no Brexit. Sinn Féin is the one party which can oust the Tories by attending Westminster. Instead its MPs claim parliamentary expenses for not attending parliament, preferring lamppost politics instead.
(To take money for not going to one parliament appears opportunist. To take money for not going to two parliaments looks like an investment strategy. This is the same party whose presidential candidate accused President Higgins of wasting public money.)
The party's opposition to Brexit apparently contravenes the IRA's Green Book (if it is still green), which opposes imperialism and foreign ownership. Demanding an end to Brexit also represents a complete reversal of SF's 40-year opposition to EU membership from 1973. The posters are presumably intended to divert from all that, a bit like the DUP's bridge.
Mind you, it is hard to divert from the RHI inquiry. It revealed that former finance minister, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, apparently sought advice from those believed to be close to the IRA on how to handle the growing financial scandal, because he believed the peace process was 'imploding'. (Who did he think the IRA might declare war on? Moy Park? The Ulster Farmers' Union? Anti-agreement wood pellets?)
In fairness, he did not leak civil servants' emails, unlike his DUP ministerial colleague, Simon Hamilton. These people represent our two dominant political parties, which suggests that in the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln (now I remember who it was) got it wrong about not being able to fool the electorate.
In his day, things were no different here. Sectarian politics fooled everyone then too, just as it has been doing every year since. Anyone fancy a poster about a bridge?
