Italy Feels Our Pain.

[elleng]

Rome — DURING the circuslike years of Silvio Berlusconi, Italians grew flinchingly accustomed to being the butts of the world’s jokes.

Will they have the last laugh?

They look toward America and wonder. Me, too. In Donald Trump, we have a version of their buffoonish former prime minister — a clown all our own. He baffles and appalls much of Europe.

Here in Italy he prompts an additional reaction: relief, even satisfaction, that another country is proving vulnerable to an emphatically tanned, flamboyantly randy and frequently ridiculous billionaire who makes promises that he can’t possibly keep.

The Ferragamo is on the other foot.

“We do feel, partly, ha-ha-ha,” said Maria Valentini, a professor at a university just outside Rome. “It’s your turn.”

After I ended a telephone chat with an Italian architect I know well, he texted me an assessment from his assistant, who explained that under Berlusconi, “We felt like idiots. Now we feel better, thinking that in the U.S., they are being idiots squared.”'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/italy-feels-our-pain.html?

[safeinOhio]

1. While in Europe I always

Say I'm from Canada.

[Warpy]

2. I know it's our turn, embarrassing as hell, but we already had our turn too many times before

with Nixon, Reagan, Stupid, and now Trump. I just hope we can manage to keep the last one away from sharp objects and other hurtful things like high office.

[felix_numinous]

3. K&R

[fasttense]

4. But we had our turn with W

And Raygun was pretty awful too. It should read it's out turn Again.

[marble falls]

5. At least we won't be feeling the pain of a Trump administration - Hillary, Bernie - its all good.