Days of Past Future

Today's news about Donald Trump is that he invited the Russians to hack Hillary's emails, which is arguably treasonous. Oh, and he said he'd think about letting them keep the Crimea.

The news about Trump is stupefying nearly every day. The New York Times's Anand Giridharadas has been going on Twitter storms repeatedly pointing out how this is not within the extreme range of normal, and that media people need to realize that and change how they are treating Trump: that by the time they get the idea, it will be too late.

On that note, I saw these two tweets juxtaposed today:


The second one is about President Erdogan of Turkey, obviously, but for a moment I had a flash forward that it was about President Trump in, say, 2017. Since martial law is the only way he could make even partially good on his campaign promises, this would make sense, right?

A few days earlier, I was caught off guard by that day's Doonesbury strip, which was from some time in 1986 or ’87:


Iran-Contra, as the strip points out, was preposterous, yet it happened. Though few remember it now and somehow it didn't tarnish Ronald Reagan's legacy with conservatives in the least.

Donald Trump makes Iran-Contra seem like good foreign policy in contrast.