Ireland was once a country where Catholic religion was intimately entwined in it's constitution & where the Catholic religious community controlled schools, hospitals (part of the plan to control the people from cradle to grave) & had an undue influence in government policy. Apart from miracle cures in Knock, moving statues & the usual collection of idiots & idiocy the country still had a majority of sensible people. We all experienced the physical & mental abuse meted out by some members of that Catholic religious community in schools & elsewhere & understood the corporate thinking that allowed such abuse to occur. So it didn't come as any surprise when the widespread revelations of child sexual abuse by some priests & the churches cover-up of this, the various Magdalen laundries style institutes where unmarried mothers were imprisoned as slaves & they & their babies, mistreated.
The depth of hypocrisy demonstrated by so called Christian religions is always gobsmacking. The US Senate & House are the epitome of just such Hypocrisy but it's the hypocrisy of the number of US citizens who vote for & support these politicians that is the real gobsmacking fact.
Ireland is no longer under the yoke of the catholic control, etc. which may have something to do with our pagan history?
The foundation of the US is based on religious fundamentalism which is still seen in it's very fabric to this day.
This, to my mind, means the 'US experiment' was flawed from the beginning & is doomed.
BTW, that phrase 'US experiment' is just a disingenuous way of saying "conquest & genocide" The US are adept at coming up with phrases which skirt reality, just like "truthful hyperbole", "collateral damage" or the latest one I hear for near starvation "food insecurity"