General George S. Patton, the great potty-mouthed, braggadocious World War II general, once had a week from hell in 1943 to which Donald Trump can well relate.

The equally politically incorrect Patton, as you know, famously slapped a shell-shocked soldier as a malingerer during the General’s visit to a field hospital. It was an unpleasant matter, perhaps even bordering on cruel, but it was a moment of absolutely no significance compared to the infinitely more important war effort.

The slapping would not have even been a historical footnote had a military nurse not told her boyfriend (an Army public affairs officer) who in turn leaked it to reporters.

It wasn’t until, you guessed it, the press and politicians got involved that the slapping took on undeserving importance. Congressmen and newspapers expressed the same faux outrage then as their counterparts do today. At that point Eisenhower had to bow to the pressure and made Patton apologize to every one of his divisions publicly and temporarily relieved him of command.

There is a scene in the great, eponymously-titled 1970 film biography of Patton where the general prays in a church and recites Psalm 63 to steel his resolve before his mandatory self-flagellation. You can tell from the words of the psalm that he considers the apology over such a trifle a direct affront, but he proceeds so that he can continue to lead his men in important matters.

It is the ultimate non-apology apology.

Deed done, he regained his command (though much later) and became the greatest U.S. general in history. His stock-in-trade was all offense, all the time. By sheer force of will, he drove his brigades to do what was thought impossible, freeing another battalion that was surrounded in Bastogne on almost no notice, no rest and with limited supplies. It was an amazing comeback.

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Now, let’s jump forward 70+ years to another larger-than-life figure in the throes of his own media-concocted agony looking for a grand comeback.

You could almost picture the moment when Donald Trump had to swallow hard and pump out an apology of his own. He also had brigades of a sort for whom he needed to sacrifice a bit – but only a bit – of pride. Like Patton, the media and the politicians wanted him brought to heel.

It was a weekend of crisis. The corrupt bureaucrats of the GOP had jumped ship. The Inside Baseball-types whispered in his ear to fall in line and play nice. Trump was, save for his family and his loyal voters, utterly alone.

But as always when a man is desperate, he will rely on his (old blood and) guts.

When the debate started, the two propagandist moderators, Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, acted as scolds and joined with Hillary Clinton into attempting to goad a proud man into making himself prostrate before the nation. He would not do it. And the Silent Majority of Americans sick to death of liberal hypocrisy cheered. The Alpha man inside Trump reemerged. He ignored all the defeatist flaks who begged him to turn Beta to court women voters.

He proffered an apology, but it was every bit as tepid as Patton’s. Once freed from his shackles, Trump went on an offensive in the debate that would have made his psychological doppelganger proud. It was pure shock and awe.

An establishment so used to cowing the politically incorrect into submission had just been confronted with purpose and virility and it was they who were cowed. Hillary Clinton never knew what hit her.

Patton, er I mean Trump, blitzed her on all her scandals and laid bare the corruption intrinsic in our modern political system. The nagging paid shills passed off as unbiased moderators continually interrupted him and tried to talk over him. Trump bullied back, harder, more righteously and louder. He would prove unlike the GOP weaklings of the past two cycles who genuflected before Obama and Candy Crowley.

Please understand the gravity of this sequence:

It was an underdog’s gamble worthy of Quixote; he essentially warned the most vengeful and dangerous politician of our lifetimes that it’s win the election or go to jail. If Trump loses, his empire will surely be lost to a combination of a financial anal probe and a corporate freeze-out by the social justice thugs. All the chips were piled into the center of the table for one winner-take-all hand in the ultimate game of no-limit hold’em. The next four weeks will be as close to literal warfare as any U.S. election in history. This in a country where one candidate’s partisans essentially called an opponent a hermaphrodite.

The entire 90 minutes was a riveting drama of one man standing alone. Trump was unbowed, fighting like a cornered wombat, red of tooth and claw on behalf of the marginalized working class, single-handedly attempting to destroy the vicious Clinton machine.

He fought the Borg and for one night at least he was victorious. The haughty establishment never saw it coming; not the dirty-tricksters of the Left; nor the Republican Quislings who were ACHING to see Trump fail; and least of all, the overconfident, frothing media who were queued up to see who could deliver the death kick to the uppity populist movement.

What they still don’t realize is that any one man can be easily stopped, but a man backed by a revolution is a far tougher go. The whole leftist, globalist, political/corporate/media cabal underestimated him (and thus you, you unwashed deplorables) the whole way. It is so tantalizingly close to achieving its Utopian dream of your subjugation, its monstrous tongue is dripping saliva and can almost taste your savory freedom.

But the cohort never reckoned that a fellow member of the ultra-rich would work in the interests of the proles instead of his own. It never thought anyone would or could challenge its supremacy and withstand its witheringly passive-aggressive assault. Trump is the ultimate black swan scenario for which it as yet has no answers. And so the desperation grows daily. Expect anything (and I mean ANYTHING) from here to election day.

It was an epochal night because – through the brazen fuck-em-all attitude he displayed – he brought back thumos and courage as chief political virtues. As is the case in all of history, people are drawn to and emboldened by strength. The instant Donald Trump said “Nuts!” to being a pathetic groveler to the groupthinkers of the ruling class, he ensured a movement of men and women with the courage of their convictions will move forward into the breach even if he falls this November. It was a bravura act that history will not forget: the day Donald Trump, for all his blustery narcissism, gave back to America the testicles that the Left have been wearing for costume jewelry for decades.