I am a fan of Stephen King. I remember reading his early work and sometimes being so scared of the characters he created that I would physically take the book out of my bedroom before I fell asleep and place it in drawer in another room, hidden behind lots of other things, so nothing could creep out and find me while I slumbered.
When you are evil in a Stephen King novel you not only do bad things to others but you are sinister enough to encourage others to follow you as if they had no mind or conscience of their own. When you are evil in a Stephen King novel you use the most simple pleasures of life and somehow turn them into weapons of malfeasance and malevolent machinations and twist peoples insight into thinking what had always been good was bad, what had always been useful was now the work of the devil.
When you are the antagonist in a Stephen King novel you prey upon the naiveté of good people to question just how well those around you behave. When you are the antagonist in a Stephen King novel you share lies, innuendo, plenty of fabrications and little penchant for the truth. You help define a line in the sand of us versus you. You cause chaos and doubt by implying theories of dishonor, disbelief, distrust. When you are an antagonist in a Stephen King novel you insist that all of your actions are misrepresented when others find them callous or without cause. You insist that you are the victim standing up for the rights of the downtrodden and that educated, truly religious people, and fair minded populations are really devious deceivers who use their education their relationship with God and their so called welfare as tricks to capture your soul and hand it to the devil.
I was hooked on Stephen King novels and was always relieved, knowing that at the end, no matter how awful the bad guy, the bogey man, the bastard, that good would prevail and the innocent, the character least wanting to be a hero would emerge the victor. He/she would never quite understand the cause for justice, but would pursue persevering until the death and destruction would abide, subside and the first ray of fair and just would dawn with a more wholesome sun rise.
But now it seems I am living in a world of evil doers and antagonists created in the same image of fictional characters written by Stephen King (but who are real) in the form of Tea Bag/Republicans like presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee to current politicians like Governor’s Scott Walker (WI), Dennis Kucinich (OH), Rick Snyder (MI), political entertainers/ messiahs like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter.
They have taken greed and gluttony to greater lengths. They have lined up lemmings. They have decided that deceit and divide are delights in which to treat their followers. They have found more fiction than fact. They have conned their way into the lives of the uneducated, the angry, the racist, the zealot, and the bigots and have blinded all of them from seeing any vision of truth, compassion and understanding. They care less about individual freedoms like health care, women’s reproductive rights, marriage equality, less about workers rights trading them for profits of corporations, (Oil Cartels, Financial Institutions, Health Insurers), and less about freedoms like believing in a God of your choice, or none at all, breathing clean air, and the ability to afford an average income.
Stephen King has written about vampires, creatures clairvoyants, monsters, serial killers and aliens all who try and legitimize their way of existence by denying any other way of living. Stephen King makes the statement that all of his creations are here to challenge what is good from what is bad, what is right from what is wrong, what is the norm from what is abnormal. Gingrich, Palin, Huckabee, Walker, Kucinich, Snyder, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter want to define how we live, who we live with, how we pray, to whom we pray, how wealthy we are allowed to become, how little we should receive, and how American we all are.
And like the villains in Stephen King’s novel they are sly in their sinister ways and means to contain and control divide and conquer. They go for the jugular but slowly so the victim bleeds a long painful death. There is great glee towards the suffering of those they declare he enemy.
I am scared every time I start a Stephen King novel. But I know if I can make it to the 580th page somehow a hero will emerge ridding the world of a mean meanie. In 2010 it seems we started a huge version of a Stephen King Novel filled with Republican/Baggers who have declared the US is theirs and they will take no prisoners in making a nation they define. I can’t hide this novel in any drawer as I sleep and in fact this novel keeps awake on many sleepless nights.
Fiction turned into fact is too scary for me.
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