King’s fiction now clumsily promotes left-wing morals.

America’s former horror master Stephen King has been striking out a lot lately, and not just on Twitter.

I recently read one of his latest novels, Billy Summers, and was struck by what it revealed: an author trying to replay his greatest hits that never should have been hits in the first place. 

King rocketed to fame off of 1974’s Carrie, about a girl from a devout Christian family who gets bullied until finally snapping. She uses her telekinetic powers to rain progressive, feminist fury down on the ignorant townies and her “oppressive” family. 

King’s various works span genres but tend to explore nostalgia, trauma, internal torment, and supernatural struggle. 

King has (or at least, had) a knack for plotting and drawing the reader into sympathizing and identifying with his protagonists. He’s gone noticeably downhill since being hit by a van in 1999, but the real question is this: How did King and others of his ilk ever get so famous in the first place?

Feel-Good Leftist Pablum

King creates a false moral complexity and conflict in order to almost always have the hero come out against the big bad ignorant adults or mean conservative people who deserve to get what’s coming to them. 

The vast majority of his protagonists are tortured writers or individuals who have to defeat the past ghosts or current demons of injustice and horror in some way. Alternately, they are young people struggling to understand the horrible injustice of the adult world. 

The writing is insufferably self-righteous if you understand what King is actually doing in almost all his books, but that’s exactly his talent and why he became famous. This is voyeuristic pseudo-moralism that reinforces a progressive absolutism. 

• The bully is always the intolerant religious creep, never the alternative hippie kid.
• The bad guy is always a beer-belching macho man or a twisted killer, never a soft-spoken artist.
• The hero is always misunderstood or internally conflicted, never truly irredeemable or disgusting.

By couching childish wish fulfillment and hate in crime, horror, fantasy, and the supernatural, King hit a sweet spot in

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases