The poltergeist in the Temple

by David Benjamin

“There is a poor, blind Samson in this land
“Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
“Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
“And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
“Till the vast Temple of our liberties
“A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Warning (1842)

MADISON, Wis. — I came across Longfellow’s prophetic lines in Bernard DeVoto’s quirky history of the American frontier, The Year of Decision: 1846, and found them eerily apropos to our current year of decision. Coincidentally, I’m busy now editing my manuscript of a forthcoming novel, which is a ghost story. In the novel, a town is haunted by the seeming presence of a local hero torn suddenly, unexpectedly — unwillingly — from life, leaving in his wake a cloud of gloom that no one can dispel and from which the ghost himself cannot seem to escape.

Again, it’s apropos that we seem to be living nowadays a real-life haunting in which the stubborn shadow of a shorn Samson refuses to fade into his appointed oblivion. Our restless spook imagines his improbable reanimation into full manly bloom. As he lingers spectrally, he insinuates himself into public affairs and private fantasies, enters the bodies and consumes the brains — like Jack Finney’s pod people — of Congressfolk and governors.

The question implicit in every media speculation is whether this spirit of nightmare past is one of those wispy mirages captured with time-lapse cameras in deserted mansions by paranormal researchers. Or is it some awful movie poltergeist who can use cathode tubes to inhale little girls, employ dead trees to devour little boys, and revive colonies of the vengeful dead to suck houses and whole subdivisions into into a mud-soupy grave the size of Lake Huron?

The media prefer the poltergeist theory. At this early stage in our unwonted haunting, I’m noncommittal. But I lean toward the more benign paranormalist option. I’m dubious that ex-prez Donald Trump regenerate his flaccid flesh and bring down the Temple all over again.

My doubts don’t derive from a belief that his rabid cult of personality will disband and disperse. He exerts a barnacle grip on the grievances of the militantly pissed-off and fiercely paranoid element in American politics. He is their ray of light in the black hole of encroaching Apocalypse and they will not — they dare not lest they be cast out from their number — kneel before a strange god. Trump will always enthrall his fanatic fifth of the electorate.

I assume, moreover, that he will lose few, if any, of the loyal Republicans who’ve been conditioned to regard Democrats as Satanist pedophiles who sauté toddlers in olive oil after impaling them on kebab spears and roasting them over a spit. Republicans have become more yellow-dog than Huey Long voters, and Donald Trump is the yellowest dog in the history of the GOP.

But here’s the rub. Trump’s ambitions to once more shake the pillars of our Commonweal seem mortally at odds with his feet-on-the-desk, shuffle-the-buck, let-Jared-do-it work ethic. He wants to cement and expand his hostile takeover of the GOP, but he will not roll up his sleeves and buckle down to the nitty-gritty details of doing the scutwork himself.

Of course, he’ll always have hungry pups tagging at his heels, eager for his fickle affections and sniffing his every dungheap, hopeful for a Milkbone. But who are these guys? “His White House was without doubt the most incompetent in modern times,” wrote Paul Waldman in the Washington Post. “It leaked like a sieve, it could barely issue a news release that wasn’t full of typos, and he went through four chiefs of staff and seven communications directors.”

Expecting this bunkhouse of waterboys, grifters and below-average offspring to rope and tame the Republican Party, an outfit more fragmented and fratricidal than it ever was under Tricky Dick, is a roundup without a corral. We’re not talking about merely herding cats. The GOP has become a milling remuda of snakes, weasels, scorpions, tick-tocking crocodiles and Betsy DeVos.

Remember that the commander-in-exile of this unruly crew has, in his career, mothballed a dozen casinos, alienated every bank in America, torched enterprises that range from Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka and the Tour de Trump to Trump University, Trump Wine and the New Jersey Generals. He has queered two marriages (and counting), defaulted on a hundred loans, stiffed a thousand contractors and become the first ex-president — within two months of leaving office — to face criminal indictments in at least four state and federal jurisdictions.

So, can we really trust that this smirkingly selfish, impulse-driven, easily distracted, small-minded, Big Mac-addicted, 280-character septuagenarian couch booger has the focus and fortitude to brush aside Mitch McConnell, yank Rand Paul through the TV screen and suck down the GOP like a poltergeist swallowing a swimming pool?

And if this is the Plan, here’s the Republican quiz question: How’s he gonna pay for it?

Yeah, I know. He keeps saying he’s richer than God. If so, why, every time he issues a “statement,” does he wedge in a grabber that asks people — regular paycheck-to-paycheck slobs with mortgages, truck payments, child support and tithes pledged to the Tabernacle of White Jesus — for five bucks?
Really? When has Warren Buffett ever touched his barber for a loan? When have you ever heard of Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Scrooge McDuck or Mark Zuckerberg hitting up the hoi polloi for a handout?

Real-life rich guys do not beg.

This is why I’m not holding my breath. I suppose the wispy mirage of Trump might suddenly rise up Samsonlike and roar out orangely onto the campaign trail — Melania in tow — to fight (and spend?) for the election of brother Republicans Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, Loyal Lindsay, Castratin’ Joanie and Mann-Act Matt.

Maybe? Yeah, but I think we’re safe.

He’s better off, and less annoying to all of us, doing what he’s doing — holing up at Mar-a-Lago, waddling and cheating his way from fairway to green, suffering the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that a little too much flesh is heir to, feeling sorry for himself, plotting revenge against a sea of troublemakers, shredding evidence, signing counterfeit promissory notes to gullible lawyers, and waging battle against his extradition to the Southern District of New York.

He’s not going away, but he’s not coming back.

However, just in case, turn off the TV before it goes all fuzzy and starts whispering to your daughter.