Dubba was dumb, but not “rip out USaid” dumb.

No. He just put the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of FEMA right before one of the worst hurricanes in the nation's history. Then he put John Bolton, a man even Donald Trump dunked on as a war-mongering idiot asshole, into the position of UN Ambassador. Oh, and he put Scalia - a man who recited 15th century poetry to defend a moratorium on gay marriage - on the SC. Oh, and don't forget putting Jeff Gannon in the White House press pool.

most presidents (or at least their cabinets) understood that the laws and institutions of the country

You are off your fucking rocker if you think Bush 43 either understood or respected the laws and institutions of the country. We were dealing with a Constitutional Crisis every other week during the last two years of his Presidency.

Go back to Reagan, Nixon, fucking Eisenhower. Nevermind how corrupt and mendacious folks in the LBJ and Carter and Clinton administrations ended up being. It's all the same shit, different days.

Trump feels worse because we're so far removed from the Golden Era of the New Deal that we've forgotten politicians can even be "good" in a proper sense. And when even the gritty Cold War jerk-off of the 1980s are a distant memory, we've forgotten that we're all supposed to be playing on the same team even if we don't like the Head Coach. It's the naked infighting that makes this modern moment suck so much. Sending gestapo in to drag women by their hair and shoot paramedics in the face is shit you do in Vietnam or Iraq, not LA or Minnesota.

Trump is Imperialism coming home to the Core. But the policies are as American as Apple Pie.