Years ago I traveled to Sicily on the overnight train from Rome, and really enjoyed my visit there. As I was leaving to catch a train to my next destination, I passed by a newsstand and saw a current calendar on sale featuring, of all people, Mussolini. I couldn't believe it. I was tempted to buy the calendar, just to show people back home that it actually existed, and that Mussolini was evidently still popular in Italy, but decided against it. When I got back home to Denver, I told people about this, and everyone found it hard to believe that Mussolini - the founder of fascism - was still admired in Italy to the extent that people would buy calendars to remind them of his reign. Recently, just for the fun of it, I looked up the Italian word for calendar and typed that, along with Mussolini, into Google Search to see if there were any web sites that might actually be selling such a thing today. And in fact, an entire page of images appeared showing years worth of these calendars, along with a link to a website selling both the 2022 and 2023 versions. It just boggles my mind. Of course, back when I saw the calendar at that newstand, it was a much saner world, long before Donald Trump and his gang of magaheads rose to power. I was really shocked to see such a thing back then. Of course, these days, Trump's former advisor, Steve Bannon, gushes over Mussolini's record and does not hide his admiration for him. I also read somewhere that one of Donald's Trump's friends gave him a book of Hitler's speeches before the 2016 election to help him learn how to fire up a crowd. And could there possibly be Hitler calendars on the market now, too? I have no intention of finding out - it would be depressing beyond words if there were.
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