Gnomic Utterances

It is an intimidating task to write about my illustrious relative, the Gnome. As others have pointed out before, it is this man who played the globalisation game so well that his island nation moved up the leader board from third world to first in record time.

Of course, the true story, as you trawl through the oceans of his speeches and works, is that this country was a first-world oasis (although somewhat decrepit and imperilled) in a third-world setting. All he did was to burnish and cement its reputation in ways that would look good on the global stage. The systems engineering he carried out worked well too.

We can't say that what he did was all to the good. But there isn't enough evidence for the reverse. History will probably judge him as the real brain of the outfit, the one who cut to the chase and did the planning. His boss was the enforcer, who handled the politics, and that was all.

Nothing new here. Except that I am beginning to wonder, oddly enough, whether he ever really existed the way we thought he did.