Daily Dialogue — August 1, 2016
PRESIDENT LYMAN: It covers your plan for the military overthrow of the United States government.
GEN SCOTT: I presume, Mr. President, you’re prepared to back up that charge?
PRESIDENT LYMAN: I am prepared to brand you for what you are, General: a strutting egoist with a Napoleonic power complex, and an out-and-out traitor. I know you think I’m a weak sister, General, but when it comes to my oath of office and defending the Constitution of the United States —
GEN SCOTT: Nobody has to teach me how to salute a flag.
PRESIDENT LYMAN: Somebody has to about the democratic processes that that flag represents.
GEN SCOTT: Don’t you presume to take on that job, Mr. President, because, frankly, you’re not qualified. Your course of action in the past year has bordered on criminal negligence. This treaty with the Russians is a violation of any concept of security. You’re not a weak sister, Mr. President, you’re a criminally weak sister. And if you want to talk about your oath of office, I’m here to tell you face-to-face President Lyman that you violated that oath when you stripped this country of its muscles, when you deliberately played upon the fear and fatigue of the people and told them they could remove that fear by the stroke of a pen. And then when this nation rejected you, lost its faith in you, and began militantly to oppose you, you violated that oath by simply not resigning from office and turning this country over to someone who could represent the people of the United States.
PRESIDENT LYMAN: And that would be General James Mattoon Scott, wouldn’t it? I don’t know whether to laugh at that kind of megalomania or simply cry.
GEN SCOTT: James Mattoon Scott, as you put it, hasn’t the slightest interest in his own glorification, but he does have an abiding concern about the survival of this country.
PRESIDENT LYMAN: Then, by God, run for office! You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical affection for your country. Why, in the name of God, don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hellbent to protect? You say I’ve duped the people, General, I’ve bilked them, I’ve misled them, I’ve stripped them naked and made them defenseless. You accuse me of having lost their faith, deliberately and criminally shut my ears to the national voice.
GEN SCOTT: I do.
PRESIDENT LYMAN: Well, where they hell have you heard that voice, General? In freight elevators? In dark alleys? In secret places in the dead of night? How did that voice seep into a locked room full of conspirators? That’s not where you hear the voice of the people, General, not in this republic. You want to defend the United States of America? Then defend it with the tools it supplies you with: its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight when the country has its back turned.
— Seven Days in May (1964), screenplay by Rod Serling, based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Activism. Today’s suggestion by Will King.
Trivia: An important plot point in the film involves the attempted coup taking place on the same day as the Preakness Stakes horse race. However, the seven-day timeline for the film would have had the coup taking place on Sunday while the Preakness is always run on a Saturday. John Frankenheimer said that the problem was solved by a scriptwriting acquaintance of his. This man worked as a script doctor and liked to gamble but wagered his professional services instead of money. Frankenheimer had won some work from the man and gave him the problem. The solution? In one scene a character walks by a poster which says “First Ever Sunday Running of the Preakness”.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Political fiction is often the realm of activism where differing viewpoints square off and get the chance to be fully expressed in a debate, such as when General Scott finally comes clean about his attempted military coup against President Lyman. Here, the battle of strength and security is pitted against the argument for citizen participation free from the coersion of a military-run government. Is it better to be safe or free?”
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