Anger management?

The reaction of unionists to almost everything that they do not like is to lash out. The media is full of headlines like:

Fury over INLA display at funeral
Orange fury over Belfast march restrictions
Fury over PM's £6m for Irish language
Sinn Fein slammed for laurel wreath plan
Sinn Fein attacked over 'brinkmanship'
DUP fury at 'savage attack' by Sir Reg

Jim Allister, TUV MEP, excels at blasting and slamming:

Allister blasts sanitisation of IRA
Allister slams Executive over Crossnacreevy blunder
Allister slams Executive over water rates for Orange Halls and Churches
Allister lashes DARD over fishing fuel crisis
Allister slams Absentee MPs in Abortion votes
Allister pummels de Brun in Strasbourg

But his old colleagues in the DUP can do a bit of slamming themselves, too:

Dodds slams Parades Commission Chairman over Parade Ruling
Spratt slams failure of PSNI to tackle burglary in South Belfast
DUP anger at new Portglenone group

Unionists in general have been angry for years, about all sorts of things:

Unionist anger at calls to rewrite history and call the Troubles a war
Unionist anger at Finucane inquiry
Unionist anger over wearing of 'Old IRA' medal
Unionist anger at axing of over half North's police reserves
Unionist anger at ruling on flowers
Unionist fury at Dublin veto on Queen

And on, and on, and on ….

It seems that unionists are the Mr Angry's of northern Irish politics. They lash out, slam and blast, when things don't go their own way, like children in a tantrum.

But this is perhaps a natural reaction. One of the current theories of the grief process suggests that "whenever one's identity and social order face the possibility of destruction, there is a natural tendency to feel angry, frustrated, helpless, and/or hurt. The volatile reactions of terror, hatred, resentment, and jealousy are often experienced as emotional manifestations of these feelings".

So perhaps non-unionists should feel sympathy rather than annoyance at the stream of 'anger' and 'fury' stories coming out of unionism. It is, after all, only their way of coping with the inevitable and progressive destruction of their political world.