Back in March of 2003, in Salon magazine, co-founder Gary Kamiya wrote a brilliant piece called Sleepwalking Toward Baghdad, about America’s hysterical dash into war with Iraq. His words ring true again today:

…we have gone from being in a political moment to a historical one.
I use the words somewhat eccentrically, to distinguish between events that are simple enough to be fully explicable (“political”) and those that are too complex to be defined (“historical”). The war against Afghanistan took place in what I am calling the political realm: It had a clear, limited and achievable goal, one understood by all — and widely supported around the world. The impending war against Iraq, on the other hand, is a historical event. It cannot be explained or defined. When it comes, it will simply exist, with the opacity of history. Its outcome is not foreseeable.
The distinction also has a moral dimension. To exist in history is to have passed beyond the pieties and slogans of the political. History is tragic: politics is not. History is glorious. It is also fatal.
….The lesson every government should have learned from the bloody 20th century, one written in blood across the tortured soil of old, very old Europe, is very simple: Avoid history at all costs. History is too big, too abstract, too dangerous. Avoid men with Big Ideas — especially stupid men with Big Ideas. Take care of politics: let history take care of itself. In a word, don’t play God.

But, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Trump actually wants to go down in history.