Dear Mario,
I have to disagree on at least one point. I do not believe at all that the inhabitants of the peninsula have only now realized, or after his death, the value of Silvio Berlusconi. In fact, he was more loved than hated, indeed, perhaps he was the Italian who seduced men and women of all ages the most, winning the hearts of millions and millions of people of opposite generations. A distinction must be made: it was not the citizens who rejected him, who fought him, who scolded him, who persecuted him, but rather the antagonistic left who found in Berlusconi the most fearsome of adversaries. But what did she actually fear about Silvio? The fundamental and characterizing trait of him: the charisma, the enthralling enthusiasm, that positivity with which the Knight infected everything and everyone. It was enough to listen to him or stay next to him for a few minutes to transform into winners, that is, into subjects who believe and who roll up their sleeves for what they believe in, as he has always done. I have never heard Silvio say a phrase that conveyed negativity, pessimism, lack of confidence in life, in himself, in others. Even when we saw him fragile, almost consumed by the hatred of which he was made the target, he continued to emanate a special magnetism, an energy that I have never found in anyone else. And I think it was this that aroused anger in those who could not bear to watch someone fly high, above the stones being thrown at them. This man, who always retained the simplicity of his soul, was capable of achieving wonders and miracles, but he never had a chest swollen with arrogance like many people who gravitate towards politics and entrepreneurship at the highest levels. Maybe this was his secret? In this we were very similar. You could see his simplicity in his eyes, in his smile, in his always ready joke, in his ability to communicate with anyone, to be a worker with workers, a housewife with housewives, a head of government with heads of government.
I confess that he sometimes got on my nerves due to his propensity to always bring up the joke, even at the most inopportune moments. But today I look at this thing with amusement and – if I may – even with a deep and cutting tenderness. I remember a mid-August lunch at his house, in Arcore, him and me alone. He had just greeted Gianni Agnelli, accompanying him to the lawyer's personal helicopter, ready to take off again from the president's garden. No one like Silvio was capable of making you feel completely at ease with him, he treated you like a guest of honor, he gave you care and attention. And he did this with everyone, even the least of his many employees, whose personal life he knew in a way that still remains a mystery to me. In fact, how does a human being, equipped with a human memory, store so much information in his brain? He knew my children's names, their ages, the schools they attended. On the phone he always started by asking about the family. But be careful: these precautions were seriously intended for anyone.
Silvio Berlusconi has sown love and this is the reason why he continues to be more successful on social networks than a global influencer. It turns out that the interactions involving him this year amounted to several tens of millions. Silvio likes it. He was liked before and he still is liked and will always be liked like all the extraordinary human beings who pass on this planet.
Yet you're not entirely wrong, Mario, perhaps it's true, sometimes you are appreciated more by the dead than by the living. And this is a symptom of our stupidity, of our envy, of our inability to accept the success of others without feeling a corrosive feeling of frustration and even hatred towards those who succeed. Fighting the latter then becomes a way to exorcise one's demons. We often hate in others what we have not managed to be in our own existence.
It would be more intelligent and more productive to take example from great men and women rather than trying to boycott them, defame them, put a spoke in their wheels.
Who knows if we will ever learn it…!