On Being A Good Man In A World Full Of Bastards

When I was a small boy my father listened incessantly to the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms, and that meant I had to listen to it as well. Brothers in Arms is the one which features Money for Nothing, Walk of Life and a lesser-known song called Man's Too Strong. I was always both allured and confused by Man's Too Strong. My incorrect hot-take on the song was that it was about gunslingers in the old west with one gunman finally meeting his match and being terrified.

In actual fact Man's Too Strong is a story about a 1930s style dictator and his henchman. The henchman, after years of torturing and murdering the opposition, finally has an epiphany and betrays the dictator. The dictator then thwarts his henchman's schemes, imprisons him and sentences him to death. Mark Knopfler, singing from a first-person perspective, tells us of his final days: