Here’s U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Munich, scolding German leaders who say they won’t work with Alternative for Germany (AfD), a neo-Nazi party that has gained a lot of followers because of immigration and a downturn in the German economy:

To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.

“Yes, God forbid,” I said. “How dare those stuffy old German moderates! Why will they not open the door to a party that emulates Hitler’s Nazi Party, which used the democratic system in the 1930s to seize power and start a war that resulted in more than 50 million deaths? It’s an outrage. What they need is an alternative viewpoint.”

Swamp Rabbit was drinking Old Grand-Dad and feeling feisty. “This ain’t no time for irony, Odd Man. That backstabbing swine Vance wants to make history with Donald Trump and President Musk. The speech he made was his way of waving bye-bye to the NATO gang that kept Soviet Russia from gobbling up the rest of Europe after World War II.”

Bye-bye indeed. The new U.S. strategy accommodates Russia’s desire to take back its old empire and Trump’s eagerness to appease his soulmate Vladimir Putin. It looks like his first act of appeasement will be the sellout of U.S-allied Ukraine, which would be eerily reminiscent of the Anglo-French sellout of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938.

Swamp Rabbit said, “Okay, this is where you get to use that famous Mark Twain quote that Twain probably never said — ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.'”

“That’s a good one,” I agreed. “You can’t hear it at first, but Ukraine definitely rhymes with Czechoslovakia.”

Footnote: Vance’s own words, in 2016: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”