President Trump

I cannot believe it.

For years, all the American au-pairs that my brother hosted - so that his kids could speak the Imperial Vernacular almost like a native - have lambasted us with the over-dependence of Italian politics from Silvio Berlusconi.

What can I say... they were, and still are, right.

Now, the same sociological strata of the population that was the base of Berlusconi's triumph, the white plebeian -  in its USA incarnation - has expressed Donald Trump as 45th President of the USA, after its UK incarnation has expressed the infamous Brexit and before the French and Italian  incarnations ( (LePen, Bepper Grillo, La Lega Nord)) will proceed to greet the world with a Frexit and an Itaxit.

Let me get this  out of the way: Trump is a man that makes Silvio Berlusconi - someone that I tend to think to as "The evil dwarf" - look like a giant of a man.

Before going all outraged, consider the biography of the two.

S.B. was the son of the director of a bank filial that managed, through every dirty trick in the economical book and solid working relationships both with Mafia and the so-called Socialist Party of Bettino Craxi, to accumulate some seven billion dollars in his own life, and took a virtually absolute control over the Italian media (apart the - possibly - CIA-tied "La Repubblica").

He has a far more chequered record in fields in which his groups had to face competition without any serious political backing, like malls and insurances, where he didn't really shine but, compared with other Italian politicians of the past he is indeed someone that made something of his life before entering politics (this last career was started precisely to protect his economic interests, when he lose his political patron Bettino Craxi, as well as to save himself from a small host of pending trials, among other things for corrupting a judge).

Donald Trump is the son of a multimillion-dollars real estate entrepreneur that has a made a name for himself as... what, exactly? Ah, He continued with his father enterprise, and amassed... 3,7 billions?

Yes, he states that he is worth some ten billions, but professional accountants have put this in doubt, as his net income is really in the 150 million dollars range, which would mean that he would earn more by selling everything and buy out treasury bonds.  So, either he is a spectacularly poor entrepreneur (in Real Estate in the US... ) or his net worth is a lot less then ten billions, possibly even less than those 3.7 .

So, the "Evil Dwarf" Silvio managed to go from playing a piano on leisure ships to 6.9 billions.

"Larger than life" Donald went from some hundred millions to 3.7 billions.

Trump has become richer, but when he shapes his story as a success, as being a great entrepreneur...  yes, he is better than me, but in this era of rampaging billionaires, he is a very forgettable one.

For all his defects, S.B. is not famous for being overly racist or really any kind of extremist, and even the womanising ways that led to his fall may really be just the product of a soft spot.

For all his wealth and power, S.B. took refuge in re-enacting his younger days, when he was a penny-less pianist that had dalliances with ladies on the cruiser ships - which is pathetic, it opened up his figure to blackmail from virtually everybody and was - thus - incompatible with being the chief of a modern state, but as far as human flaws go, it is not the worst I know of.

But he never grabbed a woman by her cunt and, as far as we know, he behaved in a relatively sensible way with his "bunga-bunga" guests.

To be honest, if confronted with some of his predecessors as chief of the Italian government, S.B. looks like a decent human being.

Had anybody been in the position to damage his power the way the "Rubacuori" affair damaged Berlusconi, good old Giulio Andreotti would have had half of the involved disappear, one way or the other.


When I read a cracked.com article about the similitude between Trump's first days as President Elect and Adolf Hitler, I find it a bit preposterous.

Trump is likely even less of a capable figure than Sivio Berlusconi was (a man whose main claim to comedy was ruling a country that is existentially resisting to any attempt at actual governance).

Then, I remember... in 1933, Adolf Hitler looked every bit like a pathetic Austrian wannabe-painter aping the older, much more capable Benito Mussolini, an ex-journalist that was also the founder of a famous newspaper and had been a public figure from well before WWI...

Not so preposterous, maybe - damn.