It ends with this:
It’s as if Italy’s elite felt unable to cope with the challenging realities of its role and were striving to compensate in the easiest way available – by flashing the cash. But the upshot is that expensive creature comforts no long confirm superiority. Instead, they flag up inadequacy, showing how far the elite is from Italian reality. They are signaling an inability to comprehend the country’s need today for restraint and a focus on essentials.
But if you want to get an idea of what Italy has become, surely what Ernesto Galli Della Loggia wrote on Corriere della Sera is woth reading.
