Bunga Bunga from Hell

Silvio Berlusconi was on my obituary list, but I didn’t get a chance to write it before he died. Well, that’s fine. I figure this site should have some post discussing his legacy. I have nothing positive at all to say about one of the worst Italians in its very questionable political history. But while I, like everyone else, saw him as more than a bit of a precursor to Trump, I did enjoy this tidbit from his Times obit that even Berlusconi was embarrassed by Trump.

Mr. Berlusconi’s cult-of-personality politics, his freewheeling governance style and even his focus on hair care prompted comparisons to Mr. Trump. Both men played up their personal wealth as a qualification for government, and both relished dominating news cycles with often outlandish behavior.

But in contrast to Mr. Trump, Mr. Berlusconi came from modest means, and the size of his fortune, in the billions, was never questioned.

His politics generally fit into a traditional center-right paradigm, and his advisers said privately that he detested the comparison to Mr. Trump. After the U.S. Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters in January 2021, Mr. Berlusconi wrote that the attack would “darken the historical memory of this presidency.”

Of course, this doesn’t particularly speak well of Berlusconi, who more didn’t want to see the truth of what his politics meant in a slightly different context than any actual values he held. Because he held no values except for stealing money and having sex with women half his age.