Literary Corner: Sir Thing

Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings (2017), via.

I liked this, from the Tucker Carlson interview, not just for its sonnet shapeliness but still more for the way it elevates the sir story into the hypothetical mood. When Trump imagines what it's like to be president, it's exactly the way he expects his TV and rally audiences to imagine it, like the court in a sword-and-sandals movie, where the sovereign stands, or sits enthroned, in the midst of a crowd of heroic-looking guys who "walk up to" him to announce their concerns.

Corollary to that is the insight that he must be aware he isn't, in fact, effectively president, to the extent that these scenes aren't really taking place, much as he clearly wishes they would. That's why . they figure so strongly in the stories he makes up.

Sonnet on the Poet's Theoretical Plan to Remove All the Troops From Afghanistan

by Donald J. Trump

But I would leave very strong intelligence
there. You have to watch because they do --
you know, okay, I'll give you a tough one.
If you were in my position and a great looking
central casting and we have great generals,
a great central casting general walks up
to your office, I say, "We're getting out."
"Yes, sir. We'll get out. Yes, sir." 

I'll say, "What do you think of that?"
"Sir, I'd rather attack them over there, than
attack them in our land." In other words, them
coming here. That's always a very tough
decision, you know, with what happened
with the World Trade Center, et cetera et cetera.

If the general's good-looking enough, George C. Scott type, it's war. There's a chance we haven't gone to war yet in Iran because it's John Bolton pushing the case ("If we don't fight them there..."), with his stupid facial hair.