It is time for nationalists and unionists to reassess their political situation, writes Fionnula O'Connor.
THERE WAS a collective shiver of nervous dread and old-remembered horror on Monday night when a booby-trap bomb fixed to a policeman's car lacerated his legs.
When Martin McGuinness visited the man in hospital, he said the bombers were "without mandate and represented no one". Yet when McGuinness led the IRA's bombers most people thought the same of him and the IRA.
Though today's unimaginable utterances are striking they have limited effectiveness as inspiration. Sinn Féin's difficulty in finding the right words for those who still put bombs under cars is only the sharpest point of the dilemma. Ill-will and apathy hold back a thorough transformation of politics.
Eileen Paisley's impromptu speech at the Boyne calling a blessing on Ireland north, south, east and west may have been the hit of the event, but the most surreal elements of the new era probably irk more people than they impress. All some can see is a squalid deal between two parties representing the "extremes" of Northern politics.
Republicans may be trying hard to relegate the pictures of themselves as gunmen, and whatever about his party the outgoing DUP leader made an about-face in office at least in terms of language. A section of opinion still takes a lofty tone. Theirs are the voices deploring the powersharing Stormont as an entrenchment of sectarianism.
By these lights, the awkward facts of a segregated society are all that count. It is a world from which they wish to be dissociated. And it is, of course, perfectly reasonable to wonder why a peaceful society wants scores of "peace walls", some recently reinforced, or why the overwhelming majority of Northern children are educated separately from each other according to the religious affiliations of their parents.
All rational enough, yet the argument woos only the least informed and smites the ears of natives with a terrible clang of superiority.
The reality immediately beneath some images of apparent progress is largely unaltered. It is unarguable that although Northern Ireland is peaceful it is not at peace with itself in the way of healthy societies like, perhaps, the Republic.
But the sniffers and scoffers who see only fraud in powersharing have, and had, nothing better to propose. Stormont needs close scrutiny, true. Critics who dismiss the present for its very unlikeliness list its failings as inevitable because an unlikely combination lies at its heart. They might be asked to start building an alternative.
The complainers should stop belittling established parties in the local arena, and look to creating their own. Since most are ostensibly radicals of anti-conservative bent, presumably they would like an alternative to what they decry as the pettiness and hidebound outlook of the four big parties.
Or they might barge into Alliance, and give it a shake.
They could ask hard questions of those who pride themselves as the cross-community party, too fine for the business of competing Protestant and Catholic nationalisms, adept at totting up the cost, for example, of providing separate school systems.
Get on a high horse, and you have to be ready to jump. Is Alliance unionist or not?
Some time ago a figure then prominent in the party suggested it was effectively agnostic on the union - the people's servant. It would decide against the union if and when a Northern majority declared for unification with the Republic. Is that still Alliance doctrine?
Or the Superior Tendency might trek off to SEA and join the Socialist Environmental Alliance, Eamonn McCann's latest venture, an umbrella for environmentalists and latter day socialists. If he'd have them, McCann could tell them about the world of small, left-wing groups, and how much energy seeps away over the years with nothing to show in terms of votes or numbers, though you may avoid the compromises that inevitably accompany growth and what the world deems success.
Unionists and nationalists need to reassess.
Fianna Fáil's noises about Northern organisation may have sent the SDLP into a tailspin. They could do with fresh energy from bad-mouthers who mock but at most vote occasionally.
Unionists derisive about the incoherence of the Ulster Unionists but repelled by the DUP might think harder about both. Ulster Unionist leader Reg Empey has dithered between mocking funding for the Irish language, for example, and urging Catholics to accept that unionism is resolutely pluralist.
Ian Paisley has performed somersaults and verbal gymnastics. As he bows out, Peter Robinson could be doing with stiffening against the backsliders and what might be his own recidivist instincts.
Bombers, bigots and those who excused both were a bad lot, but many have taken huge steps. Too few people have given struggling parties too many hours for too long. Those who lazily vote the same way because that's the way they always vote, are overdue a rethink about the political world.
Decent politics is not an entitlement.