Listen for a moment and you may detect an odd undercurrent in the domestic conversation about Donald Trump’s America or Ukraine or Gaza or Venezuela or the rest of the benighted world. The message is that such matters are of little import to us. Well, what with them being so far away and barely identifiable on a map, surely only people with notions about themselves care to comment about such lofty matters. Only people with an elevated sense of their own place in the world imagine that anyone relevant is listening. And haven’t we enough to be worrying about at home?

It’s partly true. No one of sound mind believes that Trump is studying their appeals to reason, however well-crafted. (Their best bet is to cadge a slot on Fox News but since that may require the Maga imprimatur, it rules out the saner 90 per cent of the population.)

No commentator believes that Vladimir Putin is listening to them either. The only thing he fears is news of ample sophisticated weapons deals for Ukraine. Anything that might help it defend itself against being bombed to destruction or having its people frozen to death in minus 20 conditions, or watching Russian drones and missiles strike its maternity hospitals, apartment blocks or its exhausted miners travelling home from work. Or the agony of having tens of thousands of its children abducted and acculturated to the Putin ideal.

No commentator on earth will persuade Putin to stop. But what they can do is keep the conversation........

© The Irish Times