Greenfield just mailed Trump his Moscow and his Stalingrad — and the MOAM's reading it cold. A retired professor writing for the Greenfield Recorder — western Mass, our backyard — just cast the midterms as Napoleon's retreat and Hitler's last stand, then casually prescribed martial law as the “best solution.” Easy, quick, and foolproof, he says. Down here in Marblehead we know a fever dream when we smell one.
What was said
On Friday, October 2, 2026, Jon Huer — retired professor and regular “As I See It” columnist for the Greenfield Recorder — published “As I See It: Napoleon's Moscow, Hitler's Stalingrad and Trump's America.”
He opens with powers that would make a history department blush:
“Donald Trump, our sitting president and the leader of the free world, who holds the fate of his nation and the world in his hands with powers greater than Napoleon's and Hitler's combined, is facing his own political end…”
Then the midterms become Moscow and Stalingrad:
“On Nov. 3, he will either meet his Moscow and Stalingrad and lose everything he cherishes or will cement his name in history as the greatest conqueror of the world.”
Lose the House and Senate, and the ledger is sealed:
“If he loses his majority in the House and the Senate, his whole political fate — just like Napoleon's and Hitler's before him — will be sealed.”
And here comes the cure — not a poll, not a platform, martial law:
“The best solution for him, as it's so plain to see, is to prevent Nov. 3 from ever coming to America: Declaring martial law and letting the army take over America, in the name of its commander in chief, seems high on his strategic plan — just for the simplicity of its execution: Easy, quick, and foolproof.”
Aftermath? America's Armageddon:
“everything we've known as ‘liberal America,’ ‘citadel of democracy,’ ‘shining city on a hill,’ etc., etc., will never come back, amid unimaginable civil war and chaos that will be America's Armageddon.”
Source: Jon Huer, Greenfield Recorder, Oct 2, 2026
Context (not spin)
You can handicap the midterms. You can argue that a president who loses both chambers of Congress is politically boxed in — that's Civics 101, and fair game for any columnist from Greenfield to Georgetown. Serious people write serious takes about November.
What Huer did is not a midterm preview. He stacked Napoleon and Hitler in the same sentence, gave Trump “powers greater than… combined,” cast Nov. 3 as Moscow and Stalingrad, then announced that martial law / army takeover is the “best solution” and “high on his strategic plan” because it's “Easy, quick, and foolproof” — before closing on “America's Armageddon.” That is not strategy analysis. That is apocalypse fan fiction with a local byline.
If the argument is “Trump faces a tough midterm map,” say that. Cite the districts, the polls, the generic ballot. What you don't get — not if you want anybody west of Franklin County to take the “democracy in peril” lecture seriously — is a column that scripts martial law as the sitting president's preferred Plan A and calls the aftermath America's Armageddon. That's not analysis. That's the end-times channel with a Recorder masthead.
MOAM's diagnosis
Severity: TERMINAL.
When “powers greater than Napoleon's and Hitler's combined,” midterms-as-Moscow-and-Stalingrad, martial law as the “best solution,” “Easy, quick, and foolproof,” and “America's Armageddon” all land in one western Mass column, we are past spicy local opinion and into clinical territory. Presidents can lose elections. Columnists can be dramatic. Neither requires a Greenfield byline to hand the commander in chief a martial-law cheat code and call the result Armageddon. Down here in Marblehead we still know the difference between a hard midterm take and a Napoleon–Hitler–Armageddon sandwich with coffee. Save the democracy lecture for the evidence. Save the martial-law bedtime story for the fiction shelf.
MOAM Out.
