Those who do know it are doomed to hope for a plot twist.

History doesn’t entirely repeat the same exact way. There’s always a little variation. Sometimes, the result looks identical, but sometimes something has changed (for better or worse). We can try to talk about it, keep warning people, maybe learn from past attempts at warning to see what we can improve. We can try to find ways to at least shift the cycle, even if we might not be able to break it.

Because one lesson that we can learn from many successes and far more failures is that persistence, the will to keep going despite setbacks, is critical to any effort at change, be it military, civil or even just attempting to eat healthy. It’s not the only important bit, but nothing will change if we don’t try.