In a time of great change; upheaval of norms and establishment status quo dissolution, there is one steadfast member of the elite that the world can rely on to never change - no matter how the facts around him do. Nobel-prize-winner Paul Krugman has begun the year as he ended the last, with a New York Times' op-ed exclaiming that "America has become a 'Stan'."
In 2015 the city of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, was graced with a new public monument: a giant gold-plated sculpture portraying the country’s president on horseback. This may strike you as a bit excessive. But cults of personality are actually the norm in the “stans,” the Central Asian countries that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, all of which are ruled by strongmen who surround themselves with tiny cliques of wealthy crony capitalists.
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