Stephen King Was Hypnotized

How else do you think he went from America’s most dynamic storyteller to tiresome liberal cat lady?

Who can deny that Stephen King is a preternaturally talented author? He’s written a remarkable number of books that are both masterpieces of gripping fiction and gems of Americana—especially in the first half of his career. Whether it’s Christine, The Stand, The Shawshank Redemption, or some other weirdly engrossing tale, if you haven’t read, and loved, at least one or two Stephen King books, you’re the exception among literate adults in the English-speaking world.

The question is: How do we reconcile the man’s unqualified brilliance in the realm of storytelling with his unqualified buffoonery as a political opinionater—particularly as we see his opinions expressed on Twitter? How can a man capable of probing the depths of our psyches and leading us down any path he chooses also be a clownish fanboy for the likes of Rachel Maddow and Joe Biden?

The answer is that Stephen King was hypnotized.

No, really.

And, at the risk of offending some who might read this, the more specific answer is that Stephen King was hypnotized in a manner peculiar to the baby boomer generation.

The training received by people born between ’46 and ’64

I saw it happen to a number of otherwise pragmatic and impressive boomers in the Obama era, and I saw those same boomers go “death con 3” in the Trump era. What we are discussing, it should be made clear, is not King and his boomer cohorts actively being in trance states, but rather, these people acting out post-hypnotic suggestions—which are, as the name indicates, suggestions made while subjects are hypnotized, which are intended to have effects once the subjects come out of their trances.

It works like this: A controlled and unified mass media, since at least the 1960s, has been relentlessly imposing certain narratives and images on the public consciousness. The narratives and images are not logical propositions, they are stories, with heroes and villains, in which a particular model of morality is presumed. Certain attitudes and types of characters are depicted as being “on the wrong side of history,” while opposite attitudes and types of characters are depicted as being the essence of “progress.”

Then, when events take place that resemble the narratives and imagery the boomers have internalized—such as the rise of “civil rights hero” Obama, or the rise of “fascist” Trump—it triggers preprogrammed responses. The hypnotic subjects don’t know precisely why certain people and political developments stir such powerful emotions in them, they only know that they are suddenly taken by a compulsion to either loudly announce their approval or leap to their feet and perform a two minutes hate.

But are they really hypnotized?

Whether people such as King have literally been hypnotized cannot really be questioned. It’s well known that we are in some form of trance-state while captivated by television programs, and other media can obviously have a similar effect. The media we are discussing gets past our logic filters because, once again, the arguments made are not really arguments. They are tightly focused human-interest stories. As Stalin famously said, one death is a tragedy, but one million deaths is a statistic. We humans want answers, not raw data. We seek ready-made summaries to inform snap decisions, not masses of information that often lead only to more questions.

Harrowing fictional tales, carefully selected news reports, etc., which feature evil white males and all the gentle and long-suffering victims of evil white males, are all the “data” people like King have ever absorbed, and all people like King need to know—or are even capable of knowing.

So … Is the man Insane?

The compulsion to virtue signal, with almost complete disregard for context or appropriateness, is understandable in millennials, who never knew a world that was not thoroughly liberalized, and who have usually not been subjected to the struggles and tensions that define other generations.

But in people like King, who grew up in a world of traditional values, traditional sex roles, etc.—and who once took those things for granted (as we can see in King’s early work)—the total collapse into wokeness is a strange thing to witness. It’s almost inexplicable, in fact, except as a literal form of insanity.

But then, that’s what we’re getting at, isn’t it? King’s rabid, far-left partisanism is a literal form of insanity. A case of post-hypnotic suggestion causing an ongoing break with reality. Like one of his own literary creations, the author is a sort of zombie, acting out urges he is incapable of looking at directly, let alone questioning, let alone subduing. He has simply internalized too much media that carries the same message—that straight white men are evil and everyone else is a victim of straight white men. To even consider that this isn’t true is to become the subject of the message. To be an apologist for evil, and an oppressor of women, minorities, gays, etc.

Rather than suffer this fate, and become one of them, King will double, triple, and quadruple down on any and all woke positions.

He has no choice in the matter.