The war ended the wrong way for a variety of people, many opposed for none too attractive reasons. No wonder the peace was a surly one.
This time though, because we’re so far down the line, it is less easy to discount the thrown-up hands, the disgust.
It is possible to believe that a form of modified, reduced IRA has helped to hold off renewed violence. It is harder to maintain the case that a petty, pretend legislature is the mainstay of peace.
Stormont has been a money-pit for the under-performing and the self-important, defiantly non-transparent, not least an arena for ultra-conservatives to gang up on what they like to call ‘moral issues’. Who would weep if the shutters went down?
The answer is a considerable number of its inhabitants and their baggage-trains, their employees with all those mortgages and spin-off incomes.
What we’re hearing is some of the most attached corkscrewing themselves into indignation while keeping one foot in the door.
Plus predictable attempts, from party figures with safe seats in Westminster, to stake out a sod or two of moral high ground while making life harder for the present DUP leader.
Sinn Fein’s varied responses, from fractious to pompous, are evidence enough of awareness that collapse of the northern ‘project’ in these circumstances would not go down well with the southern machine.
But the northerners know better than to turn on each other. Denis Donaldson’s lonely death hasn’t been much mentioned but is in the internal memory-bank. Old scores, fresh revenge: something like this was always possible. The Markets and Short Strand live and die in each other’s pockets.
George Hamilton had the decency to start his own attempt to address the situation by pointing out that it began with two violent deaths, by naming the dead and by recognising the grief of their families.
Beyond that the PSNI Chief Constable was straight into analysis, after the requisite mission statement: ongoing investigation, wouldn’t compromise or jeopardise by unnecessary comment. He kept the ringing stuff for later, the ‘we will go where the evidence takes us’.
Some heard what he had to say as primarily a try at playing down events, others as a mix of doing his best for the Provos and making difficulties for them. The fairest assessment may be that he tried to be straight.
A continuing organisational structure and armed ‘Provos’ adds up to a queasy reality. The lasting damage has mounted up bit by bit over years, in the repeated killings, the suspicion of other criminal enterprise, laundering of money, property.
Is that an unavoidable phase in the evolution of a secret army, a murderous armed force, or evidence of poor policing? The Chief Constable stayed away from thoughts like that.
He did point out that the majority of paramilitary groups retained some of their structure. That brought little comment, but then loyalist paramilitary groups have always been a transient blip on unionist radar.
The most political point Hamilton made was that police see the continuing Provo structure as a force for ‘a peaceful, political republican agenda’. (Nobody could argue a similar case for continuing loyalist structures.)
Yes, a form of the IRA exists, says Hamilton, but not as it was. That sounds about right.
One tiny mercy is the long overdue decommissioning of ‘they haven’t gone away you know’. Yet again nobody believes Gerry Adams, but at least his new version surely won’t be repeated. Even the tin-eared Sinn Fein president must know better than that.
The argument that a measure of IRA continuity was essential to take the bulk of the organisation away from violence was accepted by several of Hamilton’s predecessors, most notably by the last of the RUC chief constables.
Martin McGuinness for a time played with the soundbite of an old boys association, suggesting without saying it that the ideal would be ageing gunmen sitting around in dingy clubs talking about when they were young.
There was also a painful point nobody rushed to deal with, that the Sinn Féin apparatus was never going to absorb all the pensioned-off operators - not that they would have a pension either. Festering resentments were always likely, as well as evolution.
What the Markets and Short Strand are like to live in at the minute is one thing. It would be an exaggeration to describe much of the public reaction elsewhere as outrage.
Fake anger, dogged resignation: this unlovely peace has few cheery fans. Much like the north, pre-Troubles .
