The most beautiful fantasy of summer 2026

There comes a moment in the lives of every bullied people when fantasizing about revenge becomes more invigorating than a double espresso at seven in the morning: for Italy, that moment is called "Meloni takes aim and kicks Trump in the ass in front of the cameras of a NATO summit.".

This isn't pure science fiction, let's be clear. The American president actually posted a photo of our prime minister accompanied by the phrase: “we need a restraining order”, just in time to ruin the eve of the Ankara summit.

Palazzo Chigi responded with the most eloquent silence in recent history, that of someone who has decided to ignore the bully, hoping he'll get fed up on his own. Too bad bullies, real ones, never get fed up: they only get bored when the victim stops fighting back, and then they find another.

He first called her “not the same person anymore” in an interview with Courier, then he brought it back into the picture after the G7 with a photo commented on social media as if it were a bar meme, and finally yet another crackdown on military spending, just to keep tensions high in view of Ankara.

Renzi spoke of "infamous phrases," Schlein of "unacceptable" statements: the Italian political class, united for once, remembered that being indignant costs nothing and produces excellent propaganda clips.

And so, yes, football would be glorious. It would also, very likely, be the last free act of our daily lives for the next twenty years.

Day one: planetary heroin, then comes the bill

The video would go around the world in less time than it takes to say "diplomatic escalation." For twelve hours, the Meloni would enjoy cross-party consensus which not even a total building amnesty can guarantee in Italy.

Then, as in any good Greek tragedy disguised as a sitcom, the phone call comes from the White House. The party dies down as quickly as enthusiasm wanes when faced with an unexpected gas bill.

The reason is purely energy-related: the European Union covers 41% of its gas imports with LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas), and the United States alone supplies 58% of that flow. A real disruption, even on a diplomatic level, would push Italian regasification plants—Piombino and Adriatic LNG, already exceeding 80%—toward permanent technical saturation.

In short? The home thermostat will become the new family battleground, much less Trump vs. Meloni.

The cloud is unforgiving: when Windows becomes an archaeological relic

Here the cynical joke almost writes itself: beyond 70%, European data, both personal and corporate, lives comfortably on American servers. We think we're as safe as a bank, when in reality we're simply renting a condo to which we don't have the keys.

A sudden shutdown would shut down the digital lights of more than 741 TP3T of European listed companies in just 24 hours. The most iconic football match in diplomatic history would translate, for the average citizen, into a series of small domestic apocalypses:

• Frozen operating systems: Windows and Office stop updating, turning the office PC into a relic from a twentieth-century ethnographic museum.
• Home automation in crisis: Smart TVs and voice assistants that even forget how to turn on the lights, giving us the digital version of senile dementia.
• Panic IT: A forced migration to Linux and open source software, with lines at the local computer help desk longer than those on Black Friday.

All this while some people on social media continue to share the football video as if it were a World Cup victory, ignoring the fact that we are losing the real World Cup in the silence of overseas servers.

Made in Italy discovers that one-way love also exists in economics

The United States remains the largest non-EU market for Italian exports, with a trade surplus that reached €34.2 billion in 2025. A figure that sounds like a successful marriage of convenience, one in which neither admits to loving the other but everyone willingly signs the prenuptial agreement.

A real escalation would immediately jeopardize key sectors: pharmaceuticals, machinery, and automotive. The word "layoffs" would once again be featured on the news with the same insistence that record-breaking heatwaves are every summer.

Football would be epic on TikTok, sure, but for the automotive components factory worker in the Northeast, it would be yet another demonstration that when history is written with Italy, someone else always pays for it with their salary.

Goodbye McDonald's: The Mediterranean Diet's Unintentional Revenge

Here's the only paragraph where cynicism allows itself an almost romantic respite. The iconic brands of American pop culture, from McDonald's to Coca-Cola, which together invest over €350 million a year in advertising in Italy, could disappear from city centers like extras whose contracts have expired.

Panic among teenagers with Saturday nights already planned, sure, but also an unexpected resurgence of neighborhood sandwich shops. We'd go back to those bottles of wine opened three times a week instead of just on special occasions, to a short supply chain that's making a comeback not out of environmental concerns, but because of the lack of alternatives.

The motto of the RickyVerso It also applies here: if beauty isn't there, it's created. Even with porchetta.

New York, we loved you (with the credit card)

In the first nine months of 2025, nearly 900,000 Italians flew to the United States, completely bucking the trend in the rest of Europe, as if we were the only ones left believing in a cinematic love that was now over.

A geopolitical escalation would suddenly eliminate that tourist corridor, diverting flights from Fiumicino and Malpensa to more conservative routes. The consequence? A surplus of European flights and plummeting prices.

Those dreaming of shopping on Fifth Avenue should opt for Lisbon or Seville, consoling themselves with a euro-dollar exchange rate that is finally in our favor: the only real, small economic victory in this entire apocalyptic scenario.

Laugh at the bully without giving him the gun

The strategy of ignoring, the one already applied by Palazzo Chigi to the post about the "restraining order," remains the most rational choice from a geopolitical perspective. Although, we must admit, on an emotional level it has the same appeal as a lukewarm decaf cup drunk for good measure.

The profound paradox is that Trump can afford gratuitous provocations Precisely because the asymmetry of power is real, structural, and documented. Italy—and with it, the whole of Europe—remains anchored to US energy, technology, and trade far more than it is comfortable admitting out loud on talk shows.

The kick in the ass would forever remain the greatest social victory and the quietest economic defeat of our era. Clear proof that, at times, impulsive dignity and strategic survival travel on opposite tracks.

The only true weapon of those who are temporarily weaker is not the boot, but the patience of those who know that bullies, in the long run, always tire before their victims.