In 1937, the increasingly paranoid and unhinged absolute ruler of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, had a brilliant young general, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, executed for treason. The general had grown too popular and independent for Stalin. Fortunately for the Soviet Union, the tactics promoted by Tukhachevsky were eventually adopted by the Soviet army and helped win the Second World War.

He was not the only military officer executed by Stalin and his henchmen during the late 1930s. It is believed that the purge of the officer corps during those years made the German invasion of the USSR in 1941 much easier. It would take four years and millions of lives to eventually defeat the Germans. How many lives might have been saved if the country had not been ruled by a mad tyrant?

We have an increasingly paranoid and unhinged ruler in President Trump. He has already presided over a federal government that let thousands of desperately poor Africans die from disease and malnutrition by cancelling U.S. aid that would have saved their lives. He has also ordered the executions of nearly a hundred suspected narcotics traffickers without arrest, trial or a show of proof of their guilt. If he escalates his war on alleged Latin American drug trafficking, it may end in an all out war with countries like Venezuela and Colombia.

At the same time he has ordered a Department of Justice, that no longer deserves that name, to charge people with crimes simply to punish their disloyalty to him. He also sends troops to occupy cities where the majority of the people voted against his rule, again to intimidate those who refuse to bow down before him, sing his praises or deliver gifts to him. Unfortunately, too many foreign heads of state and captains of industry bow before him and deliver all manner of tribute, including valuable gold objects, delivering these bribes to win concessions from him as they also serve to feed his insatiable ego.

Generals have also been removed for lack of loyalty to this would-be king. Others have resigned simply to avoid obeying orders that were likely unconstitutional, orders that could have possibly led to their eventual arrest and trial for war crimes. At the same time Trump’s masked ICE agents have continue to brutally arrest families of mostly peaceful, hard working asylum seekers. They are also now increasingly arresting those who interfere in their “ethnic cleansing” of the vulnerable brown people among us.

Recently the actor and writer, Jermaine Fowler, chose to remind us of an origin myth from ancient Greece that speaks to our situation today. Fowler explained how Cronus, king of the Titans, received a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him. In order to prevent this he decided to swallow all of them whole. Not to kill them, but, to keep them inside of himself, alive but contained and powerless.

Five times he swallowed his children, one after another. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Their mother, Rhea, was forced to hand over each newborn. She watched as each child disappeared into her husband’s mouth. She told herself that this is how kings survive. But she also realized that the threat posed by the king would never pass. The king would always fear that, one day, one of his offspring might stand as his equal.

So, with the sixth child, Zeus, Rhea refused to continue delivering her children to Cronus. She instead wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes, and Cronus swallowed it without looking. And so, Zeus survived. He grew up to eventually challenge the king. He forced Cronus to vomit up all five siblings, and then went on to overthrow his father. Fowler explains the meaning of the king’s actions:

“He didn’t swallow his children because they betrayed him. He swallowed them because they existed. Because their presence meant one day they might stand as equals. Their existence was the threat. Power doesn’t crush everyone, that would be inefficient. Power makes examples. The purges aren’t about the individual. They’re theater for everyone watching. See what happens when you put something, anything, above loyalty. See how fast ‘most loyal soldier’ becomes ‘traitor.’ See the threats multiply. There is no safe distance. No correct level of loyalty. … The lesson is clear: loyalty means being smaller than he is, always. Smaller in presence, in ambition, in the space you take up. The moment you shine too bright, make an independent choice, look like you might stand as an equal, you’re swallowed. Those nearest are most dangerous. … Each purge trains the rest, teaching the same lesson over and over: You don’t just serve, you reshape yourself, make yourself small by choice before you’re made small by force.”

So it was with the Soviet dictator Stalin, and so it is today with the American president Donald Trump. Firing America’s best and brightest military minds can’t possibly end well. We await the entrance of our Zeus, the people rising up united against the would-be king.

Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.