His marriage (to a Department of Corrections employee played, in too few scenes, by Lolita Davidovich) is falling apart, and his heroic, macho image of himself is crumbling in the face of unpalatable realities.
"The bottom line for me, though, is that it's difficult to see how anyone hoping to understand Britain in 2013 can avoid having to get their head around a whole clutch of unpalatable realities," he said.
These settlements are an unpalatable reality for municipal authorities, and are forever subject to threat of removal.
But decision-makers are now accepting this unpalatable reality and there is a growing impatience for the process to begin in earnest.
In the end, Khomeini decided – in his own words – to "drink from a poisoned chalice" and face up to the unpalatable reality.
It happened, for the victors, with a fanfare of superlatives and, for the defeated, with the first rumbles of rancor as Labourites absorbed the unpalatable reality of rejection by the nation.
"The reality is that non-maternal childcare is a fundamental part of modern societies; until we recognise that, we shall not recognise, let alone address, the unpalatable reality that much childcare, especially for children under three, is currently of dismally low quality".
Yet, were the Tea Party to achieve a real measure of power – which I profoundly hope will not be the case – they would rapidly run up against an unpalatable reality: to retain their high levels of popular support, they would have to deliver economic salvation, and deliver it fast, to America's increasingly precipitously situated working and middle classes.
We should tell Serbia that because of Milosevics Naziesque acts, Belgrade now faces an unpalatable reality regarding Kosovo: formal independence for this once-Serbian province that before the killings was 90% ethnic Albanian.
With one dreadful exception: her phony-radar is switched off when she meets Adrian Dervish, the creator and host of Red Pill, a website devoted to rational thought – the name of which is a reference to the drug in the film The Matrix, which allows those who take it to witness the unpalatable truth about reality.
Don't be alarmed, he says with unambiguous menace, invasion is a last resort.Some in the West will argue that the starting point for policy is to recognise reality, however unpalatable.
