Two years ago, as Serbia’s (increasingly authoritarian) “reformed” ultranationalist president gave warm praise to the war criminal who once led the country to disaster, I warned:

The history of countries like Serbia is actually instructive for countries like the US. They show the danger of rehabilitating extreme and criminal elements of national leadership, of whitewashing their legacies, and of re-elevating them to positions of prominence. Unfortunately, they’re lessons Western media doesn’t seem to believe apply to their own countries.

Two years on, this has only become more true. Because the more the chaos of Trump’s presidency intensifies, the more clear it is that it’s far from the aberration his fiercest critics insist it is. Instead, its pandemonium churns not just in the shadow of war criminal George W. Bush’s eight years in office, but directly because of them.