The Iowa GOP and Stephen King

I opened up Facebook a few days ago to see the Iowa GOP absolutely dragging me…

Rural Iowans aren’t buying what Jess Piper, a failed far-left Democrat candidate from Missouri, and the Iowa Democrat Party are selling. They will continue to reject their extreme liberal agenda time and time again.

To the Iowa GOP: Check your grammar, and by all means, keep saying my name.

Rural Republicans are scared of rural Democrats, and they don’t like folks like me poking my head into rural places to talk politics. They don’t want cheerleaders in red, rural towns and counties. They want rural progressives to feel alienated and disengaged. They want them to feel hopeless. Bleak.

I am chasing away the boogeyman at each stop.

Reviving Rural Iowa event by Colton Pestel

I spoke at Milk and Honey in Harlan, Iowa last weekend. It’s a farm to table restaurant with homemade everything and the best dirty chai in town.

The event was called “Reviving Rural Iowa” and I had been emailing the organizer since January. He wanted me to come to speak to a group of rural people from at least six counties — to get them excited to do the work that is bearing down on them with the midterms only about a year away. To motivate people who feel left behind by their party.

I spoke on my “extreme liberal agenda.” Paving roads and funding schools and saving Medicaid and keeping hospitals open and making sure kids are fed. As extreme as those positions are, I went even further and talked about not having Democratic nominees to vote for and how we ought to contest every race.

A real communist in their midst. What’s next? Libraries and parks?

I had been in Rolla, Missouri the day before.

There were over 100 people at a Democratic picnic in Rolla — home to Missouri S&T. I was in town a day before the event and found a used bookstore. You can imagine how few and far between bookstores are in the parts of the country I travel between. Book deserts exist like food deserts and childcare deserts.

I listen to audiobooks while I drive across the heartland from small town to small town and I haven’t had much time to sit down with a novel lately. I listen to books on politics in general, and history in particular, but I have been feeling an itch to get back to my roots — fiction.

I saw “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King on the shelf in the small bookstore in Rolla, and I bought it.

I went back to my hotel, showered, and jumped into the clean bed with my new book. I had a big glass of water on the nightstand and I turned the air down to 68 degrees. I can’t tell you how happy this entire scenario made me.

I am still giddy about that well-spent evening as I write this. I dove headfirst into the novel.

The gunslinger — Roland — was chasing the man in black across the desert and had done a lot of murder before meeting a little boy who seemed to live alone with demons deep in the desert. They banded together to start a quest.

A theme of obsession started to become clear to me. Another theme is survival in a decaying world. A bleak world.

I haven’t finished the novel yet because I have spoken at two other events since last weekend, but I have a feeling I know where the story is going. I am a Stephen King fan from way back. I read The Stand at 12 years old, and several other King novels I had no business reading at such a young age, but that’s the Gen X experience.

I have purposely not read The Gunslinger because I don’t love the western genre — except for Lonesome Dove, but that is another essay. My dad had The Gunslinger in his library, and I probably picked it up a dozen times, read the back of the book, and put it back down.

That was decades ago.

As I read about Roland and the desert he is crossing, I started to feel a certain way. It’s bothering me. I am not sure if he is in Hell or if Hell has become Earth. I don’t know if he’s actually chasing a man in black or if he’s dreaming. Is he chasing the devil? A boogeyman?

I think the boy, Jake, may be dead.

I am confused, and I can’t say that I love that feeling because I feel it when I am not reading. I feel it when I read the news or turn on the TV. I feel it when I am in Iowa and Nebraska and Missouri and Arkansas and Kansas.

Milk and Honey reminds me of Manna from Heaven. A long journey.

Reader, I am sorry to take you from Iowa to Hell and back, but I can’t help reading themes into my everyday experiences. That’s the trouble with an English major — I am always looking for connections and reading too much into situations.

But, sometimes I am right. Sometimes I can see something that might be missed by others.

We are on a journey to reclaim our country and our very existence. Our country and our morality are decaying before our eyes. We have a rapist and cruel fascist in control of our country — he has employed other rapists and fascists.

We are on a quest to not only survive this current regime, but to come out better on the other side. We can do just that. We do that by going back to our roots in the heartland. By remembering who we are and what we believe in. By shaking our neighbors awake…by showing them the decay creeping in and how we root it out.

"Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa" ~Field of Dreams

The space we currently inhabit is strange and dark, but I can see the light. It’s in the cornfields and the beanfields and the rural spaces I travel into. It’s the people standing for their neighbors and shielding them from the worst. It’s a failed ICE raid and women in their golden years standing with signs on old highways.

I may be a failed Missouri Democratic candidate, but I speak the truth and I am not scared of the fascist party trying to upend our country.

I don’t think they will win.

I see the truth in the heartland. I see the power in the people and the resolve to be better.

Let’s chase away the boogeyman together. We can do this.

~Jess

P.S. I went round and round with the word “boogeyman.” I read British Lit throughout my life and the word was always spelled with only one O — bogeyman. But, it seems Americans prefer the two Os, so I obliged. And, it’s so much better than “boogerman.”