Chris Blattman

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The politics of personal rule (reconceived by Stephen King)

James Parker reviews the latest Stephen King novel in the NY Times:

Why is Obama writing to Chester’s Mill? Because an enormous transparent dome, not breachable by prayer, bullet, laser beam or cruise missile, has suddenly and unaccountably descended over the town. Its provenance is uncertain (aliens? North Korea?), but its effect is incontrovertible: no one gets in, no one gets out…

Bummer, right? Not for the tyrant-in-waiting Big Jim and his pet goon squad. For them this is Christmas Day in the morning. Secession has occurred! The “thug in the White House,” the “Blackguard in Chief,” is on the other side of the dome, and Anytown, U.S.A. — with its meth factory, its profusion of religious denominations and its atavistic police department — is about to, as the phrase has it, “go rogue.”

…The coalition that forms against him includes a journalist, a librarian, an Iraq veteran, some acned skateboarders and an English professor from Massachusetts who (rather wonderfully) has just edited an issue of Ploughshares.

It sounds like the red-blue divide meets Robert Mugabe. A King novel for political scientists to dissect?

One Response

  1. I think I would recommend dissecting Ahmadou Kourouma if you were a political scientist interested in African politics… ;-)

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