Paul Virilio throws up the reminder of the "buffoon Berlusconi," a particular Italian joke for chuckling at a dozen years ago when City of Panic was published. These few years later the note rings rather differently after the imminent nomination of Trump, the South African Zuma (husband of four wives concurrently: polygamy was written into the South African constitution) and beneficiary of a $20m government funded renovation of his private residence; then add Najib's alleged involvement in thievery and murder, Sisi in Egypt, the Sauds forever in Arabia, Putin's PR machine manufacturing the Strongman cartoony. New boys on the block Duterte in Manila (boxer Pacquiao in the wings together with the young Marcos) and the pistol-totting candidate for the Austrian presidency losing by a whisker last week. Placing Kim Jong-un in the midst of that crowd, the youngster might be perceived in an altogether different light. (On our local little red dot the son of the revered founding father in the jockey seat a decade—the party a half-century—after a short round as a Brigadier General in a famed corruption-free meritocracy, with free elections and single state media throughout.)
The sting in the tail comes in the suggestion it was in fact ever thus, only much better managed and presented usually.
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