The light from the tomb in the Temple of Doom

by David Benjamin

“What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who … rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France … A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about … A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law … God help us.”
—Gen. John F. Kelly, White House Chief of Staff, 2017-2019

MADISON, Wis.—You’re being chased. You can’t see your pursuers, but you know they are behind you, relentless, catching up and determined to turn you into roadkill. Throughout the chase, which by now seems endless, you’ve been haunted by a nameless fear that clouds your mind and gnaws at your guts. Since the beginning, you have felt a nagging terror that if you are caught, even if you survive, your future will be an ordeal of subjugation to gloating sadists draped with defaced flags, wearing baseball caps and jungle camouflage.
Your boots are laced to the knees. One of your ankles is cracked, possibly broken. It grows worse with every agonizing step, forcing you to limp violently and fall frequently. Your other foot is no help. In your boot, a sharp stone digs into your flesh, drawing blood and inflicting pain that threatens to immobilize you, to leave you helpless in the path of the encroaching barbarians.

Limping, bleeding, wracked with pain, delirious with fear, you do not dare stop, lest you are caught and overwhelmed.

You are an American voter in 2024. Your boots are your choices. The broken ankle that has rendered you a virtual cripple is the glowering orange specter of Donald Trump. The stone in your other boot is Joe Biden, who trips over sandbags and forgets the names of Cabinet members.

The barbarians on your tail are a hodgepodge of Kool-Aid-swilling MAGA cultists, Trumpist lickspittles, antiliberal think-tank bishops, neo-fascist judges and Justices, racists, misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, sexual predators, conspiracists and Armies of God bound gloriously—and eager to take the rest of us—toward fire, ice and the End of Days.

I have another metaphor.

Indiana Jones and Short Round have infiltrated the bowels of Pankot Palace and bumbled into a skull-littered tomb where the walls, floor and ceiling begin to close in on them. Their only hope is Willie—a song-and-dance girl—who must reach through cobwebs and swarms of giant snaggle-toothed bugs to throw the switch that rescues hero and sidekick from being squished into, well, roadkill.

If she succeeds—that is, if Joe Biden perceives the national upswelling of anxiety over his age and stamina and decides to vacate his limping campaign—an opening will appear in the wouldbe tomb of the Thuggee stronghold. Light will appear. Indie and Shorty will have an escape hatch. The blonde bimbo will become Kamala Harris.

Finally, once through the fast-closing gap, we can all stop, sit down and take off the boots that have been killing us since January 6th, 2021.

I do not limn these metaphors lightly or gladly. Since the 2024 presidential campaign began in the latter stages of the Cenozoic Era, I’ve been fiercely loyal to Joe Biden, based on his decency, compassion and a remarkable talent for accomplishment. I’ve suppressed my concerns about the ravages that Time has wrought in his strength, mobility, acuity and speech. After he collapsed ignominiously into a tangled heap of bones, white hair, chalkdust, polyester and scuffed leather during the debate last week, I joined the chorus of supporters who deemed the debacle just “one bad night.”

But now I’m listening closely to the hum of connotation as Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn and Gov. Pritzker elicit undying fealty to Joe from one side of their mouths and equivocate through clenched lips on the other side.

For months, these Democratic leaders, like the rest of us, have stood by in mute and maddening witness to a weird, avuncular duel for the soul of America, between our lovable but faltering Uncle Joe and the Crazy Uncle Beside Whom Nobody Wants to Sit at Thanksgiving. The feeling for which Uncle Joe’s national family has long been yearning is relief, from an unease we can’t shake, from a creeping infirmity that Joe, hard as he pedals, cannot outrace. I doubt that I’m alone in picturing a supremely statesmanlike moment when President Biden, smiling that familiar, fatherly half-smile, passes the baton to a colleague younger, quicker witted and better equipped to dispatch, back to his Thuggee stronghold, the mendacious, vindictive and incoherent Man Who Would Be King.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has compared such a gesture to George Washington’s decision in 1795 to decline an American throne and surrender the presidency to the winner of the next election. If Biden were to step aside—and I doubt that he will—the wave of relief in all corners of the electorate would trigger a political and emotional catharsis that’s hard to predict but easier to imagine.

I picture the attention of the media and the public suddenly focused on the Democratic Party as its leaders begin the task of choosing their fresh, savvy, eloquent candidate from a deep and diverse talent pool. The spotlight would swing away from Trump. All his strutting and bellowing would not restore its glow, at least until the Democrats had named their ticket. Millions of voters, chronically disengaged and disillusioned, disgusted with Trump and piteous of Uncle Joe, would awaken to the possibility of a future in which both of the old farts had been purged. The nation would turn its lonely eyes to politics more eagerly and curiously than we have been since Barack Obama pumped us full of adrenalin and gave us hope.

Even as the walls close around us in darkness, we would see a sliver of sunlight and we would clamber excitedly toward that glow, not sure what might await on the other side of the opening, but confident that it must be better than the short-fingered octogenarian fate that claws at our heels.

Predictably, in Biden’s absence, the Times, the Post, the networks and the media’s echo chamber would trot out—in 72-point type, at 90 decibels, in Living Color—their most shopworn meme: “Democrats In Disarray.”

But I don’t think most of us would agree, or care, because there would be something new under the sun, and the election season—spiced with new blood and fighting spirit—would regain a whiff of fun.