Wow. Stephen King is so Trump Deranged and politically obtuse that he’s really publicly defending a Nazi-loving, lying, unqualified, serial sexually-abusing accused rapist communist as the Democratic candidate to be a U.S. Senator of his home state, Maine.
And they say President Trump is losing it.
I admire and enjoy Stephen King as a writer. Few writers’ books and stories have spawned as many excellent movies as King. He manages to keep politics out of his horror tales, for the most part. His political opinions are routinely infantile, but let’s face it, artists are usually like that. Stevey doesn’t style himself as an intellectual: G.K. Chesterton he’s not. I would be surprised if anyone is influenced by King’s political outbursts, to which the only response should be “Shut up and scare us.”
However, those tweets cross an ethics line, embracing multiple rationalizations while indicating the ethics standards of a mollusk.
Observations:
1. Why in the world would King, or anybody, hope that Platner doesn’t drop out? At this point Platner can’t win. His party has announced that it will not support him. At best he was a long-shot to defeat Susan Collins even before the latest rape allegation. Does King like Nazis? Tattoos? Communism? He can’t like Communism, can he? King is worth an estimated $500 million. If he’s into income redistribution, why hasn’t he redistributed his?
2. Whatever Donald Trump has or hasn’t done, his conduct is irrelevant to Platner’s qualifications to be a Senator. This is whataboutism at its dumbest. The corresponding rationalizations on the list are #2, Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad,” #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse: “There are worse things,” and #31, The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”
3. The term “Abuser in Chief” is a trope of the Epstein conspiracy theorists, and they are the dumbest, most vicious and most immune to justice, fairness and logic of the Trump Deranged.
4. King’s second tweet is even worse, which is remarkable. He libels every member of Congress with no facts whatsoever. “If we knew what we don’t know, I know that every member of Congress has done horrible things.” What an astoundingly irresponsible statement, as well as pompous, arrogant and mean! King also tops his previous rationalizations with the biggest rationalization of them all, and the most childish: #1 on the list, “Everybody does it.” But everybody doesn’t rape women. Or get a giant Nazi tattoo on his chest. Or post vile things on social media.
5. Finally, King defaults to the hoary “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8: 7,10,11), #5 on the Rationalizations list. It doesn’t mean what King and other lazy wielders of the line cite it to mean. Jesus said that to a group of men preparing to stone a prostitute that all of them had slept with. He was condemning hypocrisy of a very extreme sort, not saying that only the perfect and blameless could make moral judgments. In the context of Platner’s conduct, the quote means, “Let him who isn’t a serial sexual abuser, rapist and substance abuser who has no experience in governing whatsoever and who presumes to run for U.S. Senate cast the first stone.
Ethics Alarms 
Another point about #5 and the tweets together, King just finished throwing a TDS stone at Trump, two minutes before.
Both tweets this close together is conative dissonance whiplash.
I think “Shawshank Redemption” stands as #2 on my favorite movie list. (Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” is #1, which probably puts me at risk of being ejected from EA for sheer effrontery…) I greatly enjoyed the “The Stand.” I unfortunately have missed “IT”, “Pet Cemetery”, “Carrie”, “The Shining”, and a host of others of his works, which are on my eventually to-read list. I liked the adaptation of “Needful Things.” “The Langoliers” was…interesting. I feel in love with the “Dark Tower” series through “Wizard and Glass,” and then felt the story fell off the wagon when King injected himself as a character in his story. And maybe there’s an ethical discussion of just how King finished the series…
On point 1, I think King’s tweets encapsulate what I’ve been thinking for a while. The actual bodies that are elected are becoming irrelevant anymore. All that matter is whether there is a “D” or an “R” next to the name. Qualifications and baggage mean almost nothing when control of the House and/or the Senate is at stake. And the candidates don’t really need to think for themselves. They just need to vote as the Party dictates, or they’ll be out.
On point 4, I think people in general have an honest worry that so many politicians in Washington are corrupt, are grifters, etc. Certainly we have glaring examples that nevertheless keep their seats and keep on grifting. But how jaded must we be that instead of keeping up the mantra of “Throw the bums out!” we’re now at “What’s one more scumbag?”
On point 5: Bingo!
I feel this is projection on King’s part.
We know that many Democrats have no problem with actual Nazis. Antifa and many other leftist groups are outwardly fascist. The Democratic Party’s censorship machine is blatantly fascist in its basis.
We know that many powerful Democrats have no problem with sexual harassment or coerced sex. How many have publicly dissociates themselves from Bill Clinton? How many had no problem with Harvey Weinstein’s activities until they became public?
Steven King may have any friends who aren’t fascist sympathizers, Communists, and/or sexual abusers. His ‘cast the first stone’ comment may just be a reflection of his social circle. A circle of totalitarian sexual abusers that he views as paragons of virtue seems to be the Democratic elite in a nutshell.
Ouch! I feel the heat of that burn from here. What’s scary is the accuracy.
The accusations against Bill Clinton, when vetted, strongly point to Bill Clinton as a serial sexual abuser and a rapist. A fantastic article went point-by-point through the sexual abuse allegations made by Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser vs. Joe Biden’s accuser. It is quite obvious that Biden is likely guilty of extreme sexual assault and that Kavanaugh is likely not. The Democratic Party also seems to have no problem cozying up to racist figures like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan when it serves their political interests, while Democrats generally maintain that they’re merely engaging with influential community leaders. In many other examples, Democrats demonstrate a selective tolerance for racially charged rhetoric when it aligns with political expediency. Platner is a political expediency, one of countless others than render the left-wing moralizing “unserious.”