“HE SEES IT AS VENGEANCE”

“When people tell you who they are, believe them.”

Thank god the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a widely-read “amateur historian” as he describes himself.

When shocking events occur, happen, the intellectually lazy can be heard tossing around adjectives like “unprecedented.” The thing is, there’s really no such animal as an “unprecedented event.” As Mark Twain observed, “history doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes.” Faced by such an event, someone who understands history, will search for illuminating previous events, parallels however imperfect; that can aid in understanding the present.

We are really lucky that General Milley, who attended Princeton and immersed himself in learning history before pinning on his Second Lieutenant bars back in 1980, was where he was, when he was, with that background. The authors of “Peril” go into some depth in relating the chilling “historical rhymes” the General was forced to consider as a result of events he both observed and participated in over the previous 18 months. Drawing on historican analogies, he was able to see the darkness we endured during Trump’s presidency. As more than one observer has pointed out recently, we are still living through that darkness. The most chilling quote in the book can be found on the back cover, from Brad Parscale: “He had an army. An army for Trump. He wants that back. I don’t think he sees it as a comeback, He sees it as vengeance.”

The first of the great events that shook the 20th Century to its foundations was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. Unfortunately, while many know that event, few know - or if they know, realize the significance - of an event that happened 12 years earlier, which Vladimir Lenin - who did understand its significance - called “The Great Dress Rehearsal.” That is the failed 1905 Revolution (go to your Netflix account and put Sergei Eisenstin’s “Potemkin” in your queue for a quick overview). As revealed in “Peril,” 1905 on the Odessa Steps is what came to mind for General Milley when he watched insurrectionists overrun the U.S. Capitol on January 6. As recounted in the book, Milley told aides he was worried that January 6 was “a precursor to something worse down the road.”

Wherever you come down on the issue of civil control of the military in these events surrounding the general’s efforts to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, you should heed that worry. Put the Parscale quote on a sheet of paper and tape it to the wall over your computer. Look at Every. Single. Thing. that happens over this next year in Washington - negotiations over the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill come to mind - through the lens of “what does this do for the elections of 2022?” If the Republicans win next year, take control of the House and perhaps the Senate - neither of which is a difficult task - then January 6, 2021 may well be a foretelling of the events to come on January 6, 2025.

General Milley looked at January 6 and feared Trump was looking for a “Reichstag moment” before the inauguration, an event either manufactured or taken advantage of, that would serve as a pretext to his consolidation and securing of continued control. Milley saw on the TV screen what Republicans have been working assiduously the past six months to deny: that some of the insurrectionists came planning revolution, that they were our contemporary Brownshirts.

Milley first recognized the problem after he was summoned to walk with the president through Lafayette Square following the violent removal of protesters. In his telling, on reflection he saw this as a personal “Road to Damascus” moment. Walking with Trump on a political mission, even for a split second, was “completely wrong.”

When he saw Trump ragingly chew out then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper for publicly opposing a possible invocation of the Insurrection Act as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests, Milley was reminded of the character of the vituperative drill sergeant in“Full Metal Jacket,” and realized the president’s purpose was the same: to dominate and then control Esper and in so doing change him Watching Stephen Miller, who attended meetings about responding to the unrest, he realized the advisor was “the closest thing the United States had to a modern-day Grigori Rasputin.”

When he witnessed Trump’s continuing curiosity about an attack on Iran, Milley said that made him determined to avoid a “Wag the Dog” scenario, a reference to the film in which a president fabricates a war with Albania to distract from a sex scandal. When Trump weighed possible strikes on Iran, Milley was reminded of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, that led to the unintended consequence of World War I. He thought also about the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis and particularly the information that came out years later that one mis-step by the U.S. could have led to the Russian General in Cuba using his authority to release the tactical nuclear weapons under his control, which would then have led to worldwide nuclear war.

The overall problem was that, while Milley used historical analysis to see Trump as the main actor in events that had the potential to create catastrophe, Trump saw things in terms of the movies he had watched. Having dodged the draft through a lie about non-existent bone spurs by a doctor who was in debt to his father, Trump had no experience of either the military, or of war. His ignorance was the creator of the threat.

In light of all this knowledge and awareness of just what kind of threat the country faced, we should be giving General Milley the Medal of Honor for “service above and beyond the call of duty” for what he did to defang Donald Trump.

And very definitely, the threat continues. The people who are saying the threat now is even greater than it was, are right. Trump’s view of the military can be seen in the opening of last month’s Nuremberg Rally down in Alabama, which began with the opening scene of “Patton” being played on the jumbotrons, with George C. Scott as Patton assuring his men that “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.”

Trump’s psychological makeup will not allow him to accept the idea that he came in second in a two-man race. His narcissism is such that he really would be willing to burn the whole world down before he could admit he is not who he thinks he is. That’s why news that Trump is telling associates that he’s seriously considering another run in 2024 has to be seen as the dire threat to the future of this country that it is.

Pretending he didn’t lose doesn’t make him a winner. Pretending he doesn’t exist, that he will not do what he says he will, does not lessen the threat he poses to our constitutional republic.

“I don’t think he sees it as a comeback. He sees it as vengeance.”

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