This week in the saga

Tuesday morning he counts another city's weekend dead — fifty-four shot, eight killed — and says he could fix it in a month if they asked. Tuesday evening he reports something the country has never read in that register before: on his orders, a strike at sea, eleven men killed aboard a boat, announced by post with a video attached and the Pentagon confirming afterwards. There is no trial in it and no court, and the paragraph ends by asking that it serve as notice. The rest of the week runs on either side of that sentence. Wednesday he tells the other side to give back all twenty hostages and things will change rapidly. Friday he loses India and Russia to deepest, darkest China and wishes them a long and prosperous future together. Sunday afternoon the last warning goes out, and he says there will not be another one. And Monday evening a young refugee is killed on a train in North Carolina and he has watched the video: the blood on the knife, the fourteen previous arrests, and the argument that follows her all the way into the next week.