Several writers better known for their literary contributions have ventured into the political arena recently to denounce presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. With their words, they've issued evocative warnings.
J.K. Rowling declared Trump "fascist in all but name" in an essay titled "On Monsters, Villains and the EU Referendum," which was posted on her website this week.
"Look towards the Republican Party in America and shudder. 'Make America Great Again!' cries a man who is fascist in all but name," she wrote. "His stubby fingers are currently within horrifyingly close reach of America's nuclear codes. He achieved this pre-eminence by proposing crude, unworkable solutions to complex threats. Terrorism? 'Ban all Muslims!' Immigration? 'Build a wall!' He has the temperament of an unstable nightclub bouncer, jeers at violence when it breaks out at his rallies and wears his disdain for women and minorities with pride. God help America. God help us all."
Rowling had already made her opinion of Trump clear back in December with a devastating comparison to Harry Potter's great foe. "Voldemort was nowhere near as bad" as Trump, she tweeted.
Last month, hundreds of other writers -- including Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, Rita Dove, Jennifer Egan, Stephen King and Maxine Hong Kingston -- signed an "An Open Letter to the American People" opposing Trump.
As writers, they said, "we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can be abused in the name of power."
Dave Eggers, who also signed that letter, attended one of Trump's rallies earlier this month, seeking to better understand the people who support him.
"Believing that Trump’s supporters are all fascists or racists is a grave mistake," Eggers wrote in The Guardian last week. "This day in Sacramento presented a different picture, of a thousand or so regular people who thought it was pretty cool how Trump showed up in a plane with his name on it. How naughty it was when he called the president 'stupid.'"
"Americans who have voted for Trump in the primaries have done so not because they agree with all, or any, of his statements or promises, but because he is an entertainment," Eggers continued. "He is a loud, captivating distraction and a very good comedian ... The moment he ceases to entertain – to say crazy shit – he will evaporate."
Garrison Keillor described Trump in a widely syndicated essay last week as "the C-minus guy who sat behind you in history and poked you with his pencil and smirked when you asked him to stop." The "Prairie Home Companion" creator said Trump doesn't have any kind of philosophy, "just an attitude."
Pointing to Trump's self-congratulatory tweets after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub, Keillor doubted that Republicans could teach Trump any humility.
"The dreamers in the Republican Party imagine that success will steady him and he will come into the gravitational field of reality but it isn't happening. The Orlando tweets show it: the man does not have a heart," Keillor wrote.
And if Trump wins the presidential election?
"If the man is not defeated, then we are not the country we imagine we are. All of the trillions spent on education was a waste. The churches should close up shop. The nation that elects this man president is not a civilized society," wrote Keillor.
"The gentleman is not airing out his fingernail polish, he is not showing off his wedding ring; he is making an obscene gesture. Ignore it at your peril."
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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