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“The Boys,” however, is an outsized apologue of the worst-case ending that is the product of outsized political rhetoric, years and years of it, that demonizes anyone that doesn’t agree with you.

Still, there's a reason this epic was often invoked as a political apologue, especially in breakdowns of Beltway machinations.

In hindsight, the trajectory is pretty direct from Deep Imagism to political poetry to “Iron John” — with its attacks against corporate visions of masculinity — to his recent apologues of the unconscious.

As often as this apologue is repeated, I still catch myself questioning its accuracy: Does the culture not prefer to hold people endlessly responsible for past indiscretions?

Strenuous devotion to the deliverance of mankind from dangers and pests is the “virtue” which, in Prodicus’ famous apologue on the Choice of Hercules, the hero preferred to an easy and happy life.