As somebody who was in middle school when 9/11 happened and was terrified then, and is terrified now, let me tell you why it's different this time.

W was a warmonger and a figurehead for Cheney from a family of career politicians, but he was a politician and was limited in what he could do by things like the Supreme Court. Trump is none of those and has no checks or balances. He's a failed businessman who has bankrupted every company he's ever owned (except for the real estate empire he inherited from his father) who has no idea what the laws are, nor does he care. He doesn't know what it takes to run a country, and he sure as hell won't put anybody who does into a position of power. Those are reserved for his sycophants.

He's a self-styled Mussolini who "wants generals like Hitler had," keeps Hitler's speeches next to his bed to read before falling asleep (according to one of his ex wives in the book she wrote in the 90s), and has both made loyalty to him the number one priority for the people in his party as well as said party having stacked all positions of power with his supporters. The Supreme Court has said that he cannot be held accountable for any crimes committed as President, and he has talked about imprisoning his political opponents.

W was a continuation of Reagan politicians. Trump is a fascist who talks the same way that Jim Jones did while praising people like Putin and Kim Jong Un and has already attempted a violent coup without any real repercussions. The Republicans of Bush's era have been labeled as cowards, traitors, and communists by Trump's party.

The only things today's Republican care about are gaining and keeping power and hurting anybody their bigoted egos demand.

Ok.....but the problem with this is that yes, they take five steps their direction, and ghen we take steps back our direction....only issue, is they take 5 steps, we take 2 steps. The pendulium may swing back the other way, but not as hard. Overtime, the things that 40 years ago would have been seen as a slightly right wing policy is now a left wing policy. Simply by moving the goal posts.

I remember bush being what I assumed at the time would be the worst president we'd have in my lifetime........and now, trump makes bush look like a light hearted rump through the open grass fields, rather than the war monger we know he was.

And thats the problem. Obama wasn't some corse setting correction for this country. He was a mostly nothing president. Take away his health care, and I can't name a single long lasting policy he set that is in effect today.

But I can go on and on all day about reagans policies. I can talk about how george W bush was just continueing what his father started.

I can talk more about Clintons sex life than his policies.

Biden will be forgotten to history. Biden himself may not even know who's president right now.

So it's not an even back and forth. It's continuously pushing more and more to the right.

My fear is in another 20 years we may get someone else who makes trump look like a cakewalk. It doesn't seem possible right now, but it also didn't seem possible 20 years ago.

And that's my point.