Point Quote Comment

Words by J. Patrick Armstrong

This week sees the inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term. A whole host of former presidents, stars and tech billionaires descend upon Washington to take part in what many around the world will more likely view as the repulsive return of a convicted felon who incited an ugly riot that killed five people, injured many more, and turned one of the former bastions of democracy into a crawling symbol of brazen stupidity and hatred. Beneath the ongoing head-shaking dumbfoundedness with which many view Trump’s return to power, there are also nameless, nagging fears that squirm and writhe like eels stranded in a dried-up waterhole. What’s he going to do? How bad can it get? Will he steer the world faster toward climate disaster? Will he hand Ukraine on a plate to Putin? Will he abandon Taiwan, start a war with China, steal Greenland? With any other president these questions would be ludicrous, but Trump, just last week, appointed an ex-Fox News host accused of sexual assault as secretary of defence, a man who wants to bring the “warrior culture” (whatever that is) back to the pentagon. With Trump, anything is possible, but rarely in a good way.

“But the people didn’t elect buffoons to Washington”, thinks Johnny Smith, the psychic protagonist of The Dead Zone (1979), before he shakes the hand of Greg Stillson, and sees the destruction this “buffoon” will bring to the world. Rereading The Dead Zone this past December, while the world anticipated Trump 2.0, and listening to stories on the radio of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos making pilgrimages to Mar a Lago (Musk has a cottage there apparently), I marvelled at King’s prescience, at how, more than forty five years ago, well before the advents of the internet and social media, he managed to foresee (much like his protagonist) the dire lunacy of the direction in which American politics was heading.

While there are big differences between Stillson and Trump, the buffoonery at the rallies and the furores around the men themselves are, at times quite startling. King’s pre-Trumpian candidate wears a hardhat and charges about on stage. In his first campaign, Trump wore a hardhat and pretended to dig coal (he also sat in a truck like a kid who’s been allowed upfront in a fire engine). Stillson tells his adoring supporters he’s “gonna send [the pollution] to Mars and the rings of Saturn”; Trump wondered if COVID could be cured by ingesting bleach. King’s protagonist is beaten by Stillson’s thuggish bodyguards; Trump has stood and mocked while protesters are violently removed from his rallies. At the climax of The Dead Zone, Johnny Smith attempts to assassinate Stillson, a scene King describes as

Stillson survives but is derailed by his own cowardice when he picks up a child to protect himself from the bullets, the photo of which hits the newspapers and destroys him as a bullet never could have. Trump, as we know, was grazed by a bullet and led away bloody, fist in the air, with the American flag fluttering in the background, the picture strangely similar to the famously staged Iwo Jima flag-raising, which became a statue and symbol of American victory and power. Where Stillson dodges a bullet but falls foul of bad press, Trump seems immune to all potential causes of political collapse. He can boast of groping, pay off porn stars, employ alleged alcoholic sex offenders, start riots, threaten to steal large landmasses, act a total buffoon (or Bozo as Robert De Niro once called him) and survive assassination attempts. Finally, then, even King’s imagination – the same imagination that brought us a telekinetic schoolgirl, a vengeful car, a haunted hotel and a psychotic clown – could not dream up the downright madness of the Trump show, back by popular American demand for its second season.