Trump has sent B-2 stealth bombers to runways in Guam – just in case – and you can practically hear the rumble of Greg Stilson’s campaign bus pulling back onto the road, American flags flapping like teeth in a grin that doesn’t blink.
This isn’t just saber-rattling. It’s a hymn to ambiguity.
A “decision is being made,” he says, as if indecision now comes with stealth wings and nuclear payloads. The thing about B-2 Stealths – they doesn’t ask permission.
It arrives unseen, unheard, a holy ghost with a warhead.
Greg Stilson, for those who remember Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, was a bible-thumping, Armageddon-itching populist who climbed into power on fear and bluster. He dreamed of pushing the button not out of necessity, but because he believed he was chosen.
What saved the world in that fiction was one man seeing the end and choosing to act.
But this is real life, and there’s no Johnny Smith with a migraine and a conscience. There is only a president drawing lines in the sand to see who he can intimidate and the bombers sitting pretty.
Jimmy Breslin would’ve walked into a Queens bar and asked the guy pulling pints what he thought. “You mean they flew ‘em all the way there and didn’t bomb anyone?” he’d say, wiping a glass. “You ever see a guy draw a gun just to check the weight?”
We’ve lived through enough of these moments to know when power gets twitchy. What we’re watching is not restraint. It’s the theater of menace. And somewhere, in some briefing room, a man with too much power and not enough imagination is looking at the playbill and thinking: Hell of a finale.