2017 is the year of outrage at anything and everything

ADDICTION is the story of 2017. Not addiction to opioids, though of course tens of thousands of families are mourning this season the death of a loved one to fentanyl or heroin or some other variant of the scourge coursing through the United States.

Not addiction to the toxic combination of power and lust that has metastasised for so many decades and burst onto the public stage in so many places, with the name Harvey Weinstein now synonymous with a sociopathic need to dominate, humiliate and exploit for a twisted set of pseudo pleasures.

And no, not an addiction to President Donald Trump, either on the part of his adoring legions or his self-anointed "worst enemies", whose ritual condemnations of Mr Trump seem just as calculated to oblige notice of the virtue of the condemners themselves as the president's tweets are to bring the collective gaze back to him and his agendas, both personal and political.