It Happened Here
One of my favorite expressions when I want to describe a situation that is really creepy or haunting in a very real sense is to say that the moment feels like the beginning of a Stephen King movie. (And I generally don't like or even watch his movies or read his books.) You know what I'm saying though. The scene might seem somewhat normal to some but to the trained eye, it's the beginning of something really horrible.
Well, in fact we in the US and in the World are living such a movie.
It's the Dead Zone.
The theory that Stephen King's 1979 novel
The Dead Zone
predicted the rise of Donald Trump centers on the book's populist
politician character, Greg Stillson. The comparison is based on
Stillson's manipulative personality, his "outsider" appeal, and the way
he uses public perception to gain power. Who is Greg Stillson?
In The Dead Zone,
Stillson is a political candidate who presents himself as a man of the
people, wearing a hard hat to appeal to blue-collar workers. Behind the
scenes, he is a ruthless, corrupt, and murderous psychopath.
Those who see similarities between the fictional Stillson and Drumph point to the following characteristics:
- The outsider persona: Stillson, like Drumph, positions himself as an unconventional politician who is "outside the mainstream" and willing to say anything to captivate voters.
- Populist appeal: Both characters tap into public frustration by pandering to the "everyman" with promises to fix a corrupt system.
- Manipulation of the media: The novel questions the power of journalism to hold such figures accountable, a theme that has been heavily discussed in the context of Drumph's rise.
- The infamous photo: In the book, a photographer captures a damning image of Stillson using a baby as a human shield, which destroys his political career. However, some observers note that a similar photograph of a real-life public figure might not have the same effect in the current, highly polarized media landscape.
Novelists have long imagined, and warned of, the threat to
liberal places from totalitarian rule. British writers of the 20th
century, including George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Robert Harris, won
mass audiences for their depictions of anti-democratic dystopias.
All
owed a debt, in turn, to a disillusioned Russian revolutionary, Yevgeny Zamyatin,
whose novel “We” described a dictatorial “OneState” of the 26th
century, in which humans become mere “Numbers”—automatons who
prioritise efficiency over freedom.
His book, published in the early
1920s, provided an inspiration for Orwell’s “1984”. Authors across the
Atlantic have fretted no less than Europeans about threats to democracy.
Margaret Atwood, a Canadian, imagined America becoming a repressive
religious republic, Gilead.
Sinclair Lewis, who wrote soon after the
Nazis were elected to power in Germany, told a story of the rise of
populist, fascist government and the failures of ordinary American
citizens to resist it. His book "It can't happen here" could now be renamed it happened here.
Now, except for the those house media sources that are part of the ruling junta, the administration is now called a regime.
The question is moving quickly from one of condition to one of what can be done.
This from the Globe and Mail:
To call what is happening a “slide” into authoritarianism, as if it were
something anarchic and uncontrolled, would not be apt. It is more like a
cementing. Having slipped back into power by the narrowest of margins,
Mr. Trump and his acolytes have been steadily expanding from that
beachhead, each new power serving as the means to acquire still more.
Often these powers have been
acquired illegally, in brazen defiance of the Constitution. But so long
as no one holds them to account for it, and so long as the
administration refuses to be held to account, they become ratified by
convention, or practice, or sheer nerve, the de facto rapidly congealing
into the de jure.
At some point, American democracy will find it is caught, immovably, a colossus in quicksand.
The examples pile up by the day. In recent days, weeks and months, Mr. Trump and his officials have:
- Installed National Guard troops and other military forces in the centre of major American cities, first Los Angeles, then Washington, and soon (if Mr. Trump’s threats are to be believed) Chicago, Baltimore and New York.
- Seized thousands of suspected illegal immigrants off the streets, the snatchings carried out by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents without badges, their victims bundled into cars without markings, to be sent in some cases to barbaric foreign prison camps, in some cases to their domestic counterparts, without trial, without even charges. ICE is increasingly seen as Mr. Trump’s personal police force.
- Initiated criminal investigations into various of Mr. Trump’s antagonists, from Letitia James, the Attorney-General of New York who prosecuted him for fraud, to Jack Smith, the special counsel who prosecuted him for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and for his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, to John Bolton, his own former national security adviser who has since become one of his severest critics, to Adam Schiff, the Democratic Senator and lead manager on his first impeachment. more
It has happened here.
Chicago is responding,
California and New York are crafting their own executive orders,
the Appeals Court finds his tariffs illegal,
And it's time for Americans to begin talking about a Soft Secession.
And it's time for the Plutocrats to step off the train.
Earthfamily Principles
Earthfamilyalpha you tube channel
Earthfamilyalpha Content IV
Earthfamilyalpha Content III
Earthfamilyalpha Content II
Earthfamilyalpha Content
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war three.”
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war three.”
tus quo and sick of it. Voters saw a vast and overloaded apple cart lumbering past them. They wanted
tus quo and sick of it. Voters saw a vast and overloaded apple cart lumbering past them. They want
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war three.”
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war thr
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war three.”
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war three.”
King’s most presciently crafted Trump-like character appears in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
“Greg Stillson is a door-to-door Bible salesman with a gift of gab, a
ready wit and the common touch. He is laughed at when he runs for mayor
in his small New England town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that
repeats itself when he runs for the House of Representatives and then
for the presidency — a rise foreseen by the story’s hero Johnny Smith,
granted clairvoyant powers by a car wreck. “He realizes that some day
Stillson is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where
he will start world war th
Labels: american fascism, artificial intelligence, Constitution, earthfamily, existential philosophy, nuclear war, political philosophy, the world
posted by oZ @ 12:00 PM
0 comments
