During the last four days of February this year the Conservative Political Action Congress (CPAC) gathered in Florida. CPAC is a shadow of its former self. It was once a reasonably cogent gathering of conservative thinkers and activists that provided focused, national support for Ronald Reagan. CPAC at its last incarnation was a Trump Cult gathering anxious to cheer for their hero described by many as “insurrectionist-in-chief” and determine who might best imitate him in 2024.
One of the prominent lobby displays of this year’s CPAC gathering was a gold plated statue of Donald Trump. While many in our country were quick to laughingly liken the statue to the graven image of the Golden Calf in the ancient Exodus story, I have not seen any serious discussion of why a Golden Trump image illustrates the national danger continuing to face our always-fragile Republic. What follows is an effort to do so.
The Biblical Book of Exodus in its chapters 20 – 31 offers the story of Moses sequestered on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments and a series of footnotes. The entire sequence is a revelatory moment for Moses in his effort to present a new government and social model for a powerless, newly-liberated-from-slavery people.
In the context of its time, these proscriptions served as a sort of ‘articles of confederation’ for the disparate tribes. They were a beginning effort at a form of unified government in a tribal culture. In that sense they serve as a remarkable effort in social progress.
The Exodus chapters set forth boundaries on religious practice. They establish foundations for a legal system requiring objective, provable truth-telling. In those chapters, now encased in language and practice lost to us because of being over 4,000 years distant, is a new understanding of property rights, social welfare, and principles underlying both civil and criminal law. There are also rudimentary sentencing guidelines and restrictions curtailing excessive punishments.
But then comes Chapter 32 and the Golden Calf. It is an ancient example of push back against such reforms. It is another example that the old ways do not change without strong resistance.
The Golden Calf was a symbol of resistance to and contrast against all the revelations on a productive way forward that Moses had received, worked out and was presenting for life in a new world.
The Calf was a symbol of those who wanted continued pagan worship practice such as human sacrifice and adherence to tribal terrorism behaviors to keep other smaller tribes in line. The Calf was a symbol of maintaining superstitions, false narratives, and all manner of racial – as well as gender understandings and practices – to be the “truth” against which all decisions and actions were judged. In addition, and finally, the Calf represented unrestrained limits on sanctioned punishments.
The ancient story of Moses and the encounter with the Golden Calf is today layered with fairy book understandings in our Hollywood special effects culture or too often superficial Sunday School lessons of these ancient texts. That is why most often we miss the point of it all.
It would be far better to realize that The Golden Calf in the likeness of Trump at CPAC is a historical truth repeating itself once again. Namely, as Lincoln described such truth, “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.” Indeed, new occasions require all manner of informed effort to address them. Golden Calf superstitions, dogmas, regurgitated prejudices, and behaviors cannot coexist with such efforts.
The Golden Calf reconfigured in the guise of a caricature of Donald Trump at a CPAC meeting is not a laughing matter. What the calf has always revealed and continues to show no matter how it is made to appear, is that if accepted, promoted, and followed it leads to and perpetuates the same old destructive, divisive bull.