I am told that Americans don’t do irony very well and it is one of the reasons why they don’t always enjoy British humour. So they probably wouldn’t see any irony in my saying Sarah Palin is a female Ronald Reagan but they do get angry at the fact that many ordinary people are suffering from what a few bankers got up to but might not see the irony in the fact that the bankers couldn’t have done it without the ordinary people’s avid economic output.
Nor might people not get how ironic it is that so many Americans are descended from Europeans, where irony is done so well. For here they do see the nature of the present difficulties as deeply ironic; that the UK only being half-hearted in its advances to Europe is not much better off then Ireland which after a hundred years of freedom from the British needs British banks to help bale it out.
The beauty of irony is that it makes us all fools to our assumptions. And every generation makes decisions that would blind their forbears and politicians make declarations that would horrify their grandparents. Yet they do not see the irony of history.
We change, and not just with years, and in the change irony is born with laughter on its lips.