Playbook

What would the perfect candidate for the 2020 Election, the perfect foil to our current President, look like? The possibility Sebastian Harper imagines for us in Playbook: A Story for Today's World, though tinged with dark humor and an original willingness to occasionally break the fourth wall, is an eerily realistic and searing one. His name is Gore Nottingham Macaulay, and, as the most competitive third-party candidate since Ross Perot, he is racing to the White House on a platform of demonizing and criminalizing racism. However, he is just as arrogant and tyrannical as our incumbent, unwilling to stop at anything to institute what he believes is right. He is willing to throw the country into violence and instability, and to sacrifice all our lives, with his first act as President (declaring waving a Confederate flag on American soil an act of terror) effectively green-lighting a Second Civil War that will be just as bloody and consequential. Using the ambitious antiheroes of Shakespeare as his guide, Harper has created a Macbeth for the modern age, a character so set on getting what he wants, and so determined to bring glory to his name, that he welcomes the prospect of being assassinated. For in his God-complex of a brain, being killed in office would bring him martyrdom, immortality, and sainthood. Playbook is a sobering look at the ignoble nature of self-made American politicians, the corruption of modern politics, and how won't-take-no-for-an-answer, tyrannical Presidents (either elected or simply contenders for the position) are willing to sacrifice anything, including our lives themselves, before their beliefs.