I wish all my American mutuals a very “please learn literally anything about Northern Ireland before posting about it“.
There isn’t going to be a United Ireland after this Stormont election, because there is still a sizeable plurality of Protestant unionists (who, incidentally, are real people and not spooky boogeymen summoned by the British in 1916 from corpses) and a border poll would inflame sectarian tensions and probably result in some kind of mass death.
Both Sinn Fein and the DUP have an interest in keeping the former paramilitary sides of their parties away from any sort of power, mostly because the IRA and RHC are basically just ethnocentric criminal gangs now.
While it is ostensibly Sinn Fein’s goal to reunite Ireland, in practice they won’t be immediately sending a “let’s get back together“ text to Dublin any more than the SNP will be placing road blocks at their border. They’ll probably just be governing like a normal political party.
In conclusion, please actually listen to British and Irish sources about the conflict rather than American podcasters and angry middle-aged men from Boston who only feel joy in St Patrick’s Day parades.
