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I’ve been batting around the idea of writing a diary like this for several books now. You see, I’ve been working my way through an extended reading list for The Dark Tower that includes over 40 books. While the series itself falls firmly in the sci-fi/fantasy category, the list includes a huge amount of King’s other work and most of that work so far has been modern fiction set between about 1950 and 1985. I’m an older millennial myself so it’s been interesting to look back into a world I literally just missed. King tends to write about fictional people, not current (past) events, so I generally only get glimpses and I was a solid few books in before I started to extract the leanings of a diary.
I think it was while reading The Talisman (1984) when that first happened. The main character encountered a person who’s...
...parents, born-again Christians who fell down on their knees in the living room whenever anyone on The 700 Club began to say a prayer.
I thought to myself, “My God, that crazy goat Robertson has been at this longer than I’ve been alive and I’m pushing 40.” I was alive in 1984 but I looked it up and that rickety shit show has been rolling along since 1966. Fifty one fucking years…
What strikes me about this and other things as I take these trips across America and back through time are the things that have changed that shouldn’t have, the things that haven’t changed that probably should have, and the things everyone knew then and they still know now but often pretend not to. This brings me to the title of my diary. It’s from a book that has, so far, been King’s most politically involved book in my journey: The Dead Zone (1979). In this passage the characters Johnny Smith and Roger Chatsworth are discussing candidates for an election. There is a sitting candidate (Fisher) and a third major character from the book who is running for office as an independent, Stillson. We the reader happen to already know that Stillson is a dangerous psychopath. Johnny and Roger don’t.
“You saw him,“ Roger said, gesturing at the TV set. “The man is a clown. He goes charging around the speaking platform like that at every rally. Throws his helmet into the crowd — I’d guess he’s gone through a hundred of them by now — and gives out hot dogs. He’s a clown, so what? Maybe people need a little comic relief from time to time. We’re running our of oil, the inflation is slowly but surely getting out of control, the average guy’s tax load has never been heavier, and we’re apparently getting ready to elect a fuzzy-minded Georgia cracker president of the United States.” [Roger is a Republican]
[...]
“[Harrison] never went against the party line in his life
[...]
His speeches have all the excitement of the copy in the National Plumbers Wholesale Catalogue. People don’t know all those things, but they can sense them sometimes. The idea that Harrison Fisher is doing anything for his constituency is just plain ridiculous.”
“So the answer is to elect a loony?”
Chatsworth smiled indulgently. “Sometimes these loonies turn out doing a pretty good job. Look at Bella Abzug. There’s a damn fine set of brains under those crazy hats. But even if Stillson turns out to be as crazy in Washington as he is down in Ridgeway, he’s only renting the seat for two years. They’ll turn him out in ‘78 and put in someone who understands the lesson.”
“The lesson?”
Rodger stood up. “Don’t fuck the people over for too long,” he said, “That’s the lesson. Adam Clayton Powell found out. Agnew and Nixon did, too. Just… don’t fuck the people for too long.”
Other than Nixon I didn’t know any of those names. I looked them up, learned some things, but that’s not what the diary is about. The diary is about the lesson and about Stillson. He’s not a harmless clown. I’m not far enough into the book to know how it’s all going to turn out but a little later Johnny has found out just how incredibly dangerous of a person Stillson really is. He’s talking to another person Ngo, an immigrant (to explain his speaking style), who also seems to understand:
“I am thinking that this Stillson is like a bad tiger with its taste for human meat. I think a trap should be made for him, and I think he should be falling into it. And if he still lives, I think he should be beaten to death.”
[…]
“No,” Johnny said. “But to suggest he should be killed...”
“Politically killed,” Ngo said smiling. “I am only suggesting he should be politically killed.”
“And if he can’t be politically killed?”
Ngo smiled at Johnny. He unfolded his index finger, cocked his thumb, and then snapped it down. “Bam,” he said softly. “Bam, bam, bam.”
“No,” Johnny said, surprised at the hoarseness in his own voice “That’s never an answer. Never.”
“No? I thought it was an answer you Americans used quite often.”
[...]
No. Killing only sows more dragon’s teeth. I believe that. I believe it with all my heart.
So why am I writing this and where is it going? Well, I’m really interested to see where the story goes. Johnny seems to be a fundamentally good person and he knows, for reasons I won’t spoil, that Stillson is a monster. But he’s a monster that no one really takes seriously even as he stands to win a seat in the House of Representatives. There’s a bit of foreshadowing that Stillson probably isn’t going to stop at a 2 year house seat. Bringing things back to reality, let’s see if anything from this book published in 1979 sounds like what we are facing today.
There’s a madman that nobody took seriously but he’s getting elected because he knows how to work a crowd. He had an opponent but they were blindsided by his rise. At this point, I have good reason to believe that no trap that is set will end him. He may dodge it, he may walk right into it, but either way he will not be politically killed by it or any other trap I can think of.
King talks about learning the lesson to not fuck the people over for too long. To me it seems he’s saying that, when the incumbent party doesn’t help the people for long enough they will be thrown out to teach them a lesson. Unfortunately for the people, they didn’t just throw out the incumbent for a clown. They threw him out for a psychopath and they won’t know that until it’s too late. To me, King seems to be highlighting the danger of a broken system where the only option that voters have to force their politicians to actively work on the people’s behalf is to occasionally toss them out for a crazy person. What happens if that crazy person is actually dangerous? God I hope 1979 Stephen King has an answer for that in the next couple hundred pages…
One final note. Johnny at one point in the book has an extended hospital stay with brain scans, physical therapy, etc… This basically bankrupts him and his parents, indebting them for life to medical bills because it costs, brace for it now... about $200 a day. I adjusted for inflation and that comes out to about $661.00/day in 2016 dollars. Actual average cost of a night in the hospital today: $4,293 Like I said earlier, it’s interesting to see what’s changed for the worse and what hasn’t changed for the better.
