‘Beautiful but fragile’: Stephen King paints a sobering picture of the current state of American democracy

He Trump’s fanboy Elon Musk, reminding us that democracy is fickle. We need to hear too, as half the country recklessly voted into the White House a convicted.

The top responses to the post on Musk’s bot-infested website feature blue checks en masse, AI-manipulated images of Trump, and of course lots of ribbing from those with opposite views to King’s.

His response is more level-headed and analytical than what many of us are feeling right now. The general mood in leftist spaces is dour, as pre-election echo chambers annihilated the ability to predict a Trump win, let alone that he’d secure the popular vote in the process.

Trump crossed the 270 electoral college votes by winning in Wisconsin, with crucial states like Pennsylvania already in his pocket. The popular vote was clinched by 51% to 47.5%, a feat he failed to achieve in the previous two election cycles.

Kamala Harris is yet to comment at the time of writing, while Democrat voters are stuck between awed silence and rapid-fire social media posts trying to make sense of the results. Democracy is still intact in America, but the reality is Trump’s behavior and statements have threatened it in the past. The Jan. 6 Capital riots are evidence enough of that.

Author and producer King has been one of the most consistently vocal anti-Trump voices in popular culture, going all the way back to Trump’s 2016 campaign. On Oct. 23, he wrote, “The choice American voters face in November is a classic: the lady or the felon.” He also reposed a sobering piece of political art by cartoonist Adam Zyous on Nov. 5, the day of the election.

Incensed by Trump’s populism and sway, his opinions on America’s most egregious fake-tanned politician even made it into his work. His crime-thriller book Holly is laden with references to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as general huffiness towards the Republican party.

A age from the novel now reads depressingly real: “’Booster vaccines are coming. First for people with bad immune systems and people over sixty-five, but I’m hearing at school that by fall it’ll be everyone.’ ‘That sounds right,’ Holly says. ‘And bonus! Trump’s gone.’ Leaving behind a country at war with itself, Holly thinks. And who’s to say he won’t reappear in 2024? She thinks of Arnie’s promise from The Terminator: ‘I’ll be back.’”

Other celebrities followed suit in 2024, with some of the biggest names in the world making it very clear they weren’t voting red. All those Harris endorsements from famous faces Trump fans associate with “the establishment” and untrustworthy media didn’t impact the outcome like the horror icon would have hoped.

King has not yet made any other statement, but what is there left to say? When even the best writers among us can’t find the words, all that’s left is sadness and anger. The good news, and people really need some, is that those two emotions are historically precursors to necessary mobilization.