That they did. “Freedom fries,” “support our troops,” “you’re either with us or against us,” “Axis of Evil.” Iraq War cheerleaders used a lot of the same us-or-them, xenophobic, apocalyptic rhetoric that you’d hear from Tea Partiers in 2010, or from Trumpers nowadays. https://twitter.com/KikkiPlanet/status/1324581895590440960

I came of age during the Iraq War. My first election was the 2004 one: Bush versus Kerry. I voted for Kerry, of course.

Bush supporters were insufferable after he was reelected. Does anybody remember the shit Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and Bill O’Reilly were saying back then?

I was steeped in pro-war talk, but then again, I was living in an overseas military community back then. (My dad was in the Air Force for about 24 years.)

Incidentally, the build-up to the Iraq War happened at the same time I was losing my evangelical faith.

And as I lost my faith, I lost my Republicanism. Fortunately, I stopped supporting the Republicans about a year before I was eligible to vote.

So I remember the Bush years clearly, especially since the politics of the day were so bound up with my own internal conflicts.

There are adults now, people in their late teens and early twenties, who can’t remember the Bush administration. The youngest would have been born after 9/11.

Trump may be especially belligerent and authoritarian, but he is not sui generis. He is part of a pattern.