Yes. The illustration may have been intended humorously. But it strikes close to home for me.

There were never any "Good Old Days" in the U.S. U.S. history is full to the rim with grim. However, there was a moment in the past century when we stood on the brink of change. There was a chance for a future.

The moment was 1979. The Vietnam War was over. Nixon was gone. The idea that people had rights was no longer treated as a fantasy. There were still problems, such as the 2nd Energy Crisis. But, just for a moment, we were at a turning point.

Then came Reagan.

Donald Trump is nothing. The destruction that he's wrought has been as avatar of the ugly side of the ape that is the species. We refer to it as the modern term #MAGA but it's always been there.

The ape has picked up an orange hammer and has smashed things to pieces; chee-cheeing with glee as innocents are crushed in the rubble.

Ronald Reagan was different. He was no more intelligent than Donald Trump. In his final term, he was, in fact, gone. He believed, literally and this is no parody, that he was physically on a movie set playing a role.

But where Donald Trump is a brutal ape, Ronald Reagan is a more refined and chilling portrait of evil. He was the end of the America that could have been. Trump is simply the simian rampaging among the ruins. Utinam ne hoc accidisset.

At this time when Donald #Trump is raging ineffectively at Iran to distract attention from his sexual activities with children, it's worth a moment to recall that #Reagan supplied the #Iran revolutionaries with weapons in exchange for U.S. hostages and thereby helped them to consolidate their power.

Illustration: Cover of issue #2 of "Reagan's Raiders", a 1980s comic book series. Note: This isn't GenAI. IIRC I owned a copy of this issue decades ago.