From Seven Days in May (1964), one of my very favorite movies: a speech by the President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March), as he is about to speak to Gen. James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster), who planned to stage a coup and take over the government:
He’s not the enemy. Scott, the Joint Chiefs, even the very emotional, very illogical lunatic fringe, they’re not the enemy. The enemy is an age. A nuclear age. It happens to kill man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him. And out of this comes a sickness, a sickness of frustration, a feeling of impotence, helplessness, weakness. And from this, this desperation we look for a champion in red, white and blue. Every now and then a man on a white horse rides by and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration. For some men it was a Senator McCarthy. For others, it was a General Walker. And now it’s a General Scott.
We could rewrite this now, substituting an age of terrorism for a nuclear age, and substituting Donald Trump for General Scott.
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