Quote that stuck from a history class I took years ago:

‘A key difference between fiction and history is that fiction generally has to make sense or it doesn’t circulate and you aren’t exposed to it. With history, whatever happens happens, and whether or not there’s any rhyme or reason to it doesn’t matter: it becomes history.’

Also reminds me of this post, which kinda puts into perspective just how fucking weird a lot of history was as it was unfolding. Studying it after the fact we can get a sense of “oh that must have been shocking” but we don’t really get a sense of the absolute “…what the actual fuck…?!” going through the heads of the people at that time:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d5a5669e-462a-49a8-9911-fd6cf172a39e.png

Makes me wonder if the batshit insanity of the circumstances of Trump’s presidency will actually be captured by history, or if it will just get boiled down to “…the US then elected a talkshow host famous for his orange face. It went poorly; and the next president was…”