Our demi-rulers operate in an insanely expensive, over-designed building.
Though details of the talks remained hazy, and it was not clear whether the opposition or the court would accept his position, Mr. Morsi's gesture was another demonstration that Egyptians would no longer allow their rulers to operate above the law.
The new rulers are having to operate out of the Ramadan and three other hotels, the state's proper buildings being either heaps of rubble or burnt-out ruins with huge shell-holes in the walls; all have been comprehensively looted.
The classic argument has always been that, compared with democracies, totalitarian states have always been less efficient and prone to making much larger mistakes, because in a society where the truth is dangerous, even the rulers find themselves operating in a fog of lies.
The king has deepened ties with the United Arab Emirates, which is a force behind the regional campaign against Islamists of all stripes.Last September King Abdullah publicly joined America's coalition against IS, when a more discreet ruler might have operated behind the scenes.
By then, the empire had a single ruler, but it operated as a theocracy subject to the whims of an array of deities, principally Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Tlaloc, the god of water, whose shrines stood atop the Templo Mayor, or main temple, in the heart of Tenochtitlan.
Turkmenistan's ruler has proposed allowing private media to operate in the one-party state.
He said: "Before you is a former military ruler and a converted democrat who is ready to operate under democratic norms and is subjecting himself to the rigours of democratic elections for the fourth time".
One is grudge-bearing nationalism, allied to a deep conviction that other countries operate in the same way, even if their rulers suborn courts and elections more neatly.
Mr Blair emphasised that companies which operate in poor countries can make a big difference to the honesty of political rulers.
