18 December 2025

This is the week where the EU must show its mettle and proceed with its plan to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.Any delay or compromise will confirm Trump and Putin’s belief in its weakness.

Picture of the Week

Forms of Waterford (2025) by Manar Mervat Al Shouha is part of the Solomon Gallery’s Winter Group show - ending on the 23rd December. Al Shouha had to flee Syria during the revolution and spent her first two years in Dublin living in a hotel room provided for refugees. Her very evident talent saved her. She was taken up by admirers in the RHA and promoted by the auctioneer John De Vere. She is now well established and is currently artist-in-residence in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. Her early exemplars were Schiele and Picasso but there’s a strong connection in this work to the cubist landscapes of Mary Swanzy. An Irish artist she knows and admires.

The Moronic Inferno

An extract from Canadian commentator Andrew Coyne’s pithy piece from The Globe and Mail on 5 December. The compete piece is available via Robert Reich’s December 16 Substack.

Donald Trump — and American democracy — is getting exponentially worse

Andrew Coyne

“I wish I could say I told you so. A point I have tried to make over the last year or so is that Donald Trump can only get worse: that however corrupt or incompetent or dictatorial or treasonous or insane he may appear at any given moment, it will inevitably come to be seen as a relative golden age beside what is to come.

There is a reason for this. It is that he can only stir the media and establishment outrage on which both he and his supporters thrive if he behaves even worse than we are accustomed to him behaving. It is not enough to say or do some appalling thing, even if it would have ended the career of any previous politician. He does that, quite literally, several times a day. Rather, he must exceed expectations of his grotesquerie. His critics’ dilemma — how to sustain outrage in the face of the constant, numbing, normalizing stream of objectively outrageous conduct — is also, in a way, his.

I was right about this, up to a point. Certainly his behaviour has grown worse over time. It is far worse now than it was at the start of his term, which was worse than during the unspeakable campaign that preceded it, which was worse than anything we had seen from him before that, even his terrifying first presidency — which was itself worse than even his worst critics had anticipated.

What I had not anticipated was the second derivative. After a time, that is, people come to expect, not just bad behaviour, but steadily worsening behaviour. So to keep feeding his outrage addiction, Mr. Trump’s behaviour not only has to keep getting worse, but to do so at an ever accelerating rate. And, I suppose, the rate of acceleration must also increase, and the rate of acceleration of the rate of acceleration, and so on. We are in a kind of hyperinflation of presidential derangement, an exponential curve asymptotically approaching Nero.

Do you doubt it? Consider the evidence. On a most basic level, Mr. Trump’s mental and physical state has noticeably deteriorated. He now openly sleeps through cabinet meetings and public gatherings. He posts on social media at a hysterical pace, in increasingly agitated tones, on ever more lunatic themes. He boasts of having “aced” a cognitive testthat is only administered when there are real doubts about a patient’s acuity, and cannot explain why he was given an MRI — or even what body part was screened.

All of which might be cause for sympathy, even pity — as, in a way, does his vast insecurity, his desperate need for praise and affirmation, symptoms of a childhood deprived, it seems, of everything but money — were it not for the consequences. His multiple emotional and psychological issues — the malignant narcissism, the pathological lying, the utter, sociopathic absence of empathy, and yet also an almost childlike manipulability — would be disturbing enough in an unemployed drifter. Manifested by the most powerful man on Earth, they amount to a global emergency.”

A Musical Interlude

A Fool no More by Peter Green

I saw Peter Green in the Olympia Theatre in 2010 - he was portly and dishevelled and looked his age. However he put on one of the best pure blues gigs I’ve ever attended. Far from the current poppy incarnation of his erstwhile band. Here’s a short piece I wrote in my Ardmayle blog at the time:

“Rumours of Peter Green’s terminal decline are greatly exaggerated. Backed by a solid chugging band (including standup bass) he put on a fine performance in the Olympia last Sunday. Sporting a bandana and bearded like Captain Birdseye he beamed out on the audience as if he was really enjoying himself. The show took a little time to get going, but after a couple of perfunctory workouts we were treated to that sharp soaring sound that make him a legend amongst blues guitarists. And the amiable growl of a voice worked well. He ran through some of his popular stuff like Black Magic Woman, and Albatross but a large proportion of the show harked back to his John Mayall days and obscure songs by Bobby Parker and Willie Dixon. The highlights for me were a virtuoso version of Parker’s Steal Your Heart Away and a lengthy exploration of Rainy Night in Georgia.”

A Morsel of Memoir

Mac

My father was a senior officer in the Irish Army and so was entitled to an orderly (or batman as the Brits called the role). He was called Mac – short I believe for McCarthy. Although he was with us for a 15 years or so,, I never got to know his first name. He arrived in the house every morning at 9:30 and he stayed until around 4:30. He was I suppose in his late thirties when he started with us. He was a medium-built man with a fine head of dark hair. He was a gentle and easy-going type and I don’t think I ever saw him excited or upset about anything. A true stoic I believe. He was an area of calm in a volatile household where high drama was the norm. He usually had a pipe clamped between his teeth – especially when he was in the garden. What on earth did he do all day? Ostensibly he was there to shine my old man’s buttons and polish his shoes and Sam Browne belt – but that took 30 minutes at most. Then there was the daily vat of potatoes to peel, another half an hour I suppose. Our floors got waxed a lot and the fire in the living room got cleaned out and reset but after that there was little to do but potter about in the garden – and Mac was an expert at that. He was a quiet reflective man so this suited him. There were some disturbances in his life. His wife had a Benilyn habit. This was an over-the-counter cough mixture that contained codeine and she reached three bottles a day before she had to be taken into hospital to effect a detox. He would tell us about this in a rueful but generally unconcerned way. Also, one of his sons committed suicide, although again that seemed to raise barely a ripple.

The only thing to get Mac upset was the regular requirement for him to destroy kittens - extruded with monotonous inevitability by our sexually incontinent cats. We had two female cats that seemed to have kittens every 3 months or so. Both my parents were feckless beyond what was reasonable about animals and the notion of neutering them would never have entered their heads. So these regular crops of kittens had to be destroyed and it fell to poor old Mac to do it. These days this would be considered major abuse but back then you just did what you were told. I could never bring myself to watch but I gather he usually drowned them and buried the poor blind blighters in the back garden. No wonder our rhubarb flourished.

My parents rarely went out. Well my father went out every night at 9:30 to the officer’s mess, but my mother and him rarely went out together. When they did, the bould Mac was enlisted as baby-sitter – notwithstanding the four post-pubescent girls in the family. Innocent days eh.

Poetry Corner

Emily Dickinson’s poetry can be thorny and tangled, obtuse even. Here’s a more direct message. How Frugal is the Chariot:

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry -

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll - How frugal is the Chariot

That bears the Human Soul -