Don’t hold your breath waiting for a mea culpa from the 43rd president. Instead, it’s left to Barack Obama to come to terms with the Bush legacy.

The former vice president is Leatherface, Jason, and Freddie Krueger all rolled into one: lawless, methodical, and unpredictable with firearms. He’s had more sequels than Chucky: White House chief of staff, House minority whip, secretary of Defense, CEO of Halliburton, vice president, and now rogue pundit.

What would it look like if Quakers ruled the world? The World Bank would be renamed the International Frugality Fund. All political institutions would run on the principle of consensus. And there would be meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. It would be like living in a huge group house.

St. Augustine fooled around a lot as a young man. At one point during his philandering, according to his Confessions, the future Church Father uttered the immortal lines: “Give me chastity. But not yet.”

Think about the term “money laundering” for a moment. It suggests that the more often dirty money changes hands, the cleaner it gets. In fact, globalization just moves the dirt around.

One hundred days isn’t enough to judge a presidency, the cautious pundits say. “It takes time for a president to put his team in place, formulate policy, steer legislation through Congress, and conduct foreign negotiations,” history professor Allan J. Lichtman writes in The Washington Post. Look instead, he says, to the next 100 days.

It’s a time of war and depression, and populist leaders have emerged in Latin America. The U.S. president declares a new era of friendship and equality. The Monroe Doctrine appears to be on its last legs. Take your pick: the 1930s or today?

The interviews with Ranko, Violeta, and Attila are part of a new project coordinated by Foreign Policy In Focus, Provisions Library, and independent curator Olivia Georgia that brings together artists, activists, and academics to explore questions of identity in the United States and the Balkans.

Institutions almost never vote themselves out of existence. They just plug along, inventing new missions if the old ones disappear.