Global newsmakers of the year: Trump, May and Musk
The common thread uniting the three global newsmakers — Donald Trump, Theresa May and Elon Musk — is that the trio of formerly mighty personalities were all felled by their own unjustified hubris
We have the Darwin Awards for people who top themselves in such an idiotic way that they are effectively improving the global gene pool. But what about the Ozymandias Awards? Ozymandias was the subject of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley in which a traveller encounters the broken statue of a legendary king of ancient times, lying forgotten in the desert, with these words carved on its base: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" The poem wonderfully illustrates hubris, human frailty and fleeting prowess. If there were such an award the global winners of the Oz Awards this year would have to be US President Donald Trump, Tesla boss Elon Musk and UK Prime Minister Theresa May. Once they were mighty; now they are sniping and growling at everyone and everything. Yet some of their prowess surprisingly remains, like the mighty trunk of Ozymandias’s statue, a reminder of better times. Trump suffered two major setbacks in 2018: the loss of the House ...
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