The Golden Calf of Trumpism
What is idolatry and how does it threaten our politics?
This may seem like a bizarre question. Who among us is tempted by the desire to worship statues or celestial bodies?
But consider Southern Baptist leader and author Beth Moore’s description of Trumpism at the opening of a viral twitter thread that was written in apparent response to Eric Metaxas’s pro-Trump December 12 “Jericho March” (so named because participants blew ram’s horns to call on God to overturn Donald Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden just as horn-blowing heralded the miraculous destruction of Jericho in Joshua 6):
Moore elaborated later in the thread: “We do not worship flesh and blood. We do not place our faith in mortals. We are the church of the living God. We can’t sanctify idolatry by labeling a leader our Cyrus.”
Moore is hardly alone in equating Trumpism with idolatry. Prominent Christian authors, from the writers David French and Rod Dreher to the theologians Michael Horton (United Reformed) and John Jalsevac (Catholic) have all condemned Christian Trump supporters for succumbing to idolatry. Similarly, if less prominently, some rabbis and observers were moved to allege idolatry upon witnessing scenes of Orthodox Jews praising and praying for Donald Trump.
But is Trumpism indeed a case of idolatry? And if so, how is this possible given that so many of his supporters are committed monotheists? And what about their leaders? You would think that if religious leaders were to see their flock succumbing to idolatry, they would stop them before they (in Horton’s words) “cross into rank spiritual adultery”? You might even argue that it is impossible for a community of committed monotheists to become idolatrous. It seems like a contradiction in terms!
In fact, the opposite is more nearly the case. Idolatry is a risk for everyone, and perhaps especially for monotheists. Consider: Who in history is most famous for condemning idolatry? The Hebrew prophets of course. And their messages were aimed at people who ostensibly believed they had a covenant with God!
Let us be more specific. Much of the recent Trumpism=idolatry talk has referred to one biblical incident of idolatry in particular: the Sin of the Golden Calf.
This makes sense because this episode (in Exodus 32 with the aftermath in succeeding chapters) represents the biblical paradigm for how a people can succumb to idolatry. Not only does the Bible describe this descent into idolatry as happening to a community of committed monotheists, it describes it as occurring to a community that had just experienced mass revelation at Sinai. The Bible is suggesting that it is precisely people who believe they have experienced the divine in their lives who may be prone to idolatry. But this still begs the question of how and why. How do the people fall? And what about their leaders?
To address these questions, I offer here a novel interpretation of the Golden Calf episode, one based on a close reading of the Hebrew text aided both by some rabbinic sources and on modern social science (including research by my coauthors and me). Science and Bible may seem like strange bedfellows, but they are not, especially when it is social science (e.g., see here).
The upshot of this interpretation?
At the heart of both the Golden Calf episode and of Trumpism is an aggrieved populist movement abetted by a religious-cum-political leadership that accommodates the mob when it should oppose it.
More specifically, the Golden Calf episode teaches us that descent into a highly self-destructive form of populism occurs in three steps:
(1) The spread of popular grievances at a seemingly corrupt elite that dominates it and imposes alien norms upon it;
(2) The proclamation of obvious lies both to provoke the establishment and to serve as a loyalty test for the aggrieved;
(3) An accommodating response from the leadership.
This accommodating response derives from one or more of four motivations:
(a) Fear of the mob’s response if it does not accommodate;
(b) The perceived opportunity for glory;
(c) The bet that it can channel populist grievances towards long-standing objectives;
(d) Awe at the social movement’s authentic religious energy.
We will find ready analogies to Trumpism for each of these elements in the story, with the last perhaps providing the most novel and important angle on our current situation. More generally, we will come away with greater insight into— if not with ready solutions for — our current political predicament.
Step 1: The People are Aggrieved
Insinuations of Corrupt Rule. The Hebrew Bible is famously stingy in providing narrative detail and almost completely silent in describing its characters’ motives. As such, we must pay close attention to characters’ words when they do speak. In the case of the Sin of the Golden Calf, a problem is that the first words spoken in the episode are routinely mistranslated. The JPS (1985) translation of Exodus 32:1 is as good example as any:
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him.”The mistranslation comes after “we do not know” (which can also be translated “as we didn’t know”) The next words are “what has happened to him” (which some translators render as “what has become of him”). The implication is that the people’s rationale for their initial appeal to Aaron was that they felt leaderless with Moses gone. After all, he had disappeared into a mist at the top of Mt. Sinai almost six weeks earlier and had given no explanation for why he was leaving nor any indication when and even if we would return (see Exodus 24:12–18).
But their actual words here are not “what has become of him” but “meh haya lo.” And this expression actually means “what he had” or “what he possessed.” One can verify this by checking the first five times versions of haya lo appear in the Bible: a) to describe all the property Abraham had acquired due to his entanglements in Egypt; b) to describe Isaac’s taking of Rebecca as his wife after she was brought back from her family in Haran by Abraham’s servant; c) to describe the property Isaac had accumulated due to his entanglements in Philistia; d) to describe the property that Jacob had accumulated due to his clever management of his relations with Laban; and e) to describe Onan’s motive for spilling his seed rather than consummating levirate marriage with Tamar: “the offspring would not be his.”
With this background in mind, the people’s plea to Aaron should properly be translated as something like “we didn’t know what he possessed/acquired/owned.” In addition, given how there is an underlying theme in the five examples of suspicion (perhaps just that, nothing more) of ill-gotten gains, one might translate it as “we wonder what he has gotten.”
They are not simply feeling leaderless then. Rather, they are expressing grievance about what they perceive as poor leadership and they are specifically insinuating that Moses is corrupt.
One possible reason translators may have assumed meh haya lo must mean “what happened to him” is because the accusation of corruption is so subtle. They don’t accuse him of anything specific. But recent research on political conspiracies by political theorists Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead indicates that vague insinuations can be quite effective as expressions of political grievance because they are impossible to counter with facts. They label this “conspiracy without the theory and cite such examples as Trump crying “Obamagate!” while refusing to specify what this means.
Like Trump then, the Israelites seem to be saying that they don’t know what precisely he got out of leading them into the desert to abandon them, but that it must have been something.
Additional clues in the text back up this interpretation. Consider first another tricky translation challenge. The people don’t say “because we don’t know what Moses, the man who raised us out of Egypt, gained” but rather something closer to “because that one, the man Moses (ki ze Moshe ha’ish), who raised us out of Egypt…” But why are they emphasizing that Moses was a man — that’s obvious! And what is “that one” all about? “That one” sounds rude, doesn’t it?
A clue to addressing these question is that “ish” here probably does not mean “man.” Ish word can mean “man” in biblical Hebrew (as it does in modern Hebrew) but it often means something more like “distinguished personage.” More to the point, the words “ish” and “Moshe” are juxtaposed only one prior time in the Bible, shortly before the tenth plague, when Moses is at the height of his Egyptian celebrity: “The ish Moses was esteemed in the land of Egypt, among Pharaoh’s courtiers and among the people.”
It would seem then that the people’s reference to the ish Moshe is a bit of artful trolling. The people seem to be calling out his celebrity, his status as an Egyptian “establishment” figure (he was the Prince of Egypt after all; and not only did he grow up in the palace, he had escaped the slavery that was their lot by hiding in exile for decades until recently), perhaps to signal how distant he is from the people and to hint that he is fundamentally unconcerned about regular people’s welfare.
An additional reason to think the Israelites are making dark insinuations against Moses is that this would be in keeping with their past behavior. Just prior to their arrival at Sinai, the people had voiced a series of serious complaints about conditions in the wilderness, culminating in Moses’s crying out to God to save him because “a moment more and they will stone me” in response to the people’s allegation that he had “raised us out of Egypt to kill me and my children and my livestock from thirst.” And while they do not make allegations of corruption prior to Sinai, Moses does sense insinuations of corruption sometime later, in an episode that has many intertextual linkages with the Golden Calf episode. In particular, when Korah alleges that Moses has taken too much power, Moses’s response to God is, “I have not taken one donkey from them, nor have I wronged any of them.”
Sources of Grievance. But why should the people feel aggrieved to the point they are come to allege that Moses is corrupt? After all, conditions in the wilderness were no longer so difficult by the time they were at Sinai. They once had reasonable worries about how they would eat and drink in the wilderness. But God and Moses had demonstrated that they would take care of all the people’s needs.
One possibility is that in fact, such stark dependence on more powerful agents can breed resentment. In the case of contemporary America, it is frequently noted that Trump voters are disproportionately drawn from states and counties that benefit disproportionately from Federal funds, which effectively means that the coastal/urban elites (who are wealthier and thus pay more in taxes) are subsidizing “flyover country.” This may or may not be the primary reason for the “politics of resentment” practiced by rural Americans but it certainly does not seem to help.
Two additional considerations, each of which resonates with Trumpism, also seem key for explaining Israelite feelings of grievance.
First, very high and exacting normative standards had recently been imposed upon the Israelites. Consider two ancient rabbinic commentaries — one that describes the covenant at Sinai as having been forced on Israel, with God threatening to drop Mt. Sinai on their heads if they did not agree to enter into the covenant, and another that describes Israel’s sins upon their departure from Sinai as stemming from the fact that they left Sinai “like schoolchildren running to escape from school when it lets out.” There is a deep theological point behind these metaphors. To wit: Can we really call it a two-sided covenant when one party is the God who terrorized Egypt and rightly asserts that He could “destroy them in an instant?” Aren’t we instead talking about the imposition of norms on a party that cannot say no?
If the people are feeling put upon, this would not be the first time. After God delivers them from the Egyptian cavalry at the Sea of Reeds, the Israelites panic when they learn they will be punished by the great “man of war” if they fail to meet his exacting and inscrutable standards. They seem to calm down when they learn that God is not just a vengeful destroyer but a caring parent who feeds and instructs them; and then the new legal code is laid out. By the time of the climax of revelation, they were even were moved to utter a remarkable statement of willing consent: “we will do and we will listen” to “everything God has said.”
But after the moment had passed, this new divine system of law and order must have seemed daunting to say the least. Much modern social science (captured well by self-determination theory, and Marx’s notion of “alienated labor”) teaches us that people will be demotivated and even resentful when they must work to standards that are imposed on them rather than those that are chosen by them. This is liberation from slavery?
Before linking this with the roots of Trumpism, let us consider a third factor that would have exacerbated Israelite feelings of grievance: While the Israelites had been promised a radically nonhierarchical, democratic mode of governance and covenantal relationship, and they had even had a taste of this, they were now feeling like peons in a towering hierarchy.
Revelation at Sinai opens with God’s pledge that the people will henceforth be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This is an inspiring anti-hierarchical message. As such, it is perhaps no surprise that the people respond enthusiastically: “everything that Lord has spoken we will do.” What is more, this radical populist vision seems fulfilled in the lead-up to Moses’s ascent to Sinai, where there was universal participation in the religious ceremonies. This included the erection of pillars representing each of the twelve tribes; the appointment of “lads” rather than (old) priests to administer the sacrificial cult; a reading of the book of the law with the aforementioned enthusiastic mass response; and the anointing of the entire people in “covenantal blood” with Moses declaring that God had made a covenant with “you (collective).” One can only imagine what this must have felt like for these former slaves: As long as I am part of the people Israel, I am a king and demigod like Pharaoh. I will have an unmediated relationship with God!
But consider what happens next: Moses, Aaron and his sons, and the seventy elders ascend to a higher point on the mountain and are treated to a vision of God on His throne, which they celebrate with an exclusive feast. Next, Moses is summoned to ascend to the top Sinai to commune with God by himself. And what about the regular people? They are seemingly left hanging, with little guidance as to why Moses is leaving or how long he will be gone. Consider the stark hierarchical symbolism: Moses disappears into a cloud at the summit of the mountain; Joshua is stationed somewhere below him; and the elders — seemingly still stationed above the people — are told to keep things under control and refer matters to Aaron and Hur if anyone should have complaints. Perhaps it’s not surprising complaints are expected: Not only do the people now have to live by a new legal code but it seems the populist promise has been betrayed. What kind of “kingdom of priests” has to endure an interminable wait for a divinely chosen hegemon to return?
In sum, the social ingredients for the Sin of the Golden Calf consist of a people who are aggrieved not only because of the stark dependence they are feeling but because a new normative code has been thrust upon them and because the tantalizing promise of democracy seems betrayed by an overwhelming hierarchy. These grievances in turn seem to fuel suspicion that the elite’s claims to lead them selflessly are a lie.
The parallels with modern populist rebellions and Trumpism in particular should be clear. As do all populist leaders, Trump claims to be the authentic champion of “the people” against an elite that has betrayed it. He too calls for a return to a moment when the people achieved greatness and a reversal of changes imposed by an unaccountable elite. The charge of corruption is at the heart of the allegation, represented by the Trumpian call to “drain the swamp!” And the specter of an arbitrary alien code is present in Trumpian politics too: who are they to tell us what is “politically correct”?!
Step 2: The Common Knowledge Lie
OK so the people are aggrieved. But how does this make them reject the values they hold so dear? How does this turn them into idol worshippers?
Let us turn back to the biblical text, and specifically the next words the people say to Aaron. This occurs after Aaron has responded to the people by asking them to “break off the golden rings from the ears of your wives, sons, and daughters and bring to me.” The “entire people” do as he requests, whereupon Aaron “casts a mold, and he makes it into a molten calf.” “They” then proclaim:
“These are your powers/gods O Israel, who have raised you up out of Egypt.”
Nahmanides famously and convincingly argued that the calf was meant as a substitute for Moses rather than God; the best evidence for this is that they use the word Elohim (“your powers/gods”) rather than YHWH and they associate it with a plural verb (he’eluha), which is never done by the Hebrew Bible when it means God (e.g., The word for “created,” bara, in “In the beginning, Elohim created” is singular). This hardly eliminates their betrayal of the covenant however. Even if they haven’t replaced God, they are still in violation the commandment not to make graven images (Exodus 20:4).
Yet a focus on the question of apostasy diverts our attention from a subtler puzzle: How could they contradict themselves so blatantly?
After all, their first words to Aaron in this episode referred to Moses as the agent that had “raised them out of Egypt.” And they had also used this phrase before Sinai when they had complained of thirst and threatened to stone Moses to death. (See above for both) Every person among the assembled knew that it was Moses, not the calf, that had “raised them” out of Egypt! And after all, they all knew golden calves cannot do any such thing!
This statement then was thus a lie, and a lie of a particular sort. In my research with my coauthors Oliver Hahl and Minjae Kim, we distinguish between two kinds of lies that politicians — or anyone — may tell. The more familiar type of lie is a “special access” lie. This is when someone makes a statement he knows is false but his listeners do not know to be false: the liar has special access to the information that would expose the statement as a lie, but listeners do not have such access.
There is also a second kind of lie that some politicians (and any of us) may tell, and Donald Trump is most notorious for them: a “common knowledge” lie. These obvious lines are statements that both the speaker and his audience know (and so on: they both know that they both know) are false. Consider some of Trump’s most notorious lies: his lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration; his statement that the Chinese invented climate change to hurt the American economy; his claim that Arabs in New Jersey celebrated when the Twin Towers were felled; his promotion of the “birther” myth that Obama was not born in the United States; or his many lies about the 2020 election being stolen. Some of Trump’s supporters have surely believed these lies to be true. But our research shows that Trump supporters tend to appreciate such statements even when they know they are not true and/or do not follow norms of truth-telling (and social unity).
What is the logic? Why make declarations everyone knows is false?
The social science literature points to two complementary reasons.
The first is that highlighted in our research: The advantage of an obvious lie, especially in the context of further norm-breaking, is that is an especially effective way to signal the “deeper truth” that is being unfairly suppressed by those appear most wounded by the lie. You might assume that everyone is hurt when norms of truth-telling and social unity are violated and so no one should support such violations. But if you consider Trump’s common-knowledge lies listed above, it is clear that they are designed to poke a stick at the “liberal” “coastal” “cultural” elite in particular. The norms being violated may be everyone’s norms, but they are especially prized and defended by the establishment. Every American by now understands that this is the secret of such norm-flouting to Trump’s base: they are a tool for “owning the libs.”
There is also a second powerful rationale for declaring common-knowledge lies that complements the rationale of poking the establishment: to test and reinforce loyalty. As is well-known from research on gangs, communes, and anti-democratic political movements, nothing binds people together more tightly than contradictions of one’s interests (e.g., by hurting oneself), values (e.g., by hurting someone else, preferably someone close to you), or beliefs (an obvious lie). To take a mundane example, after-hours drinking in Korea is widespread despite the fact that it is common knowledge that most people would rather go home after work. Why? As Minjae Kim shows, the very fact that people are hurting themselves makes it a stronger signal of loyalty to coworkers and business partners.
Consider also how this sense of commitment deepens over time. The first time you endorse a belief that contradicts your deeply held values (e.g., supporting Trump when he denigrates the war heroism of John McCain, or when he is revealed to have bragged about precisely the type of sexual assault of which he has been accused by numerous women), it must be very difficult, though it becomes easier if you are surrounded by others who provide “social proof” that your decision was the right one.
And then, having made that fateful choice to publicly betray your own values, it becomes very difficult to reverse. You have to admit that you had experienced a failure of either mental acuity or moral judgment: What does that say about you? And if it may be possible to rationalize a single failure as a momentary lapse, how do you rationalize it after dozens of such episodes? This process is known as “escalation of commitment” in social psychology: you are now “up a tree without a ladder.”
How then were the Israelites able to utter their sacrilegious declaration? In short, since their declaration was obviously false, they could not have meant it literally and did not expect anyone to think they meant it literally. To the contrary, it would have served their purposes better if it was an obviously false declaration that no one could reasonably believe. That would have made the declaration a more effective tool for expressing deep grievance. And it would have had the effect of bounding the participants more tightly to the movement. Having made publicly participated in such an outrage, how could they go back?
Step 3: Political Accommodation
Even if a populist movement goes so far as to embrace obvious falsehood in a bid to provoke the establishment and bid the movement together, it is unlikely to be successful unless it finds sufficient support among elites. This leads us to one of the most difficult questions of Trumpism, the one that is perhaps most pressing in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the Capitol building in response to Trump’s call to “stop the steal.” It is obvious that this would never had happened had prominent Republicans not spent the prior months tolerating and often promoting the false canard that the election had been stolen. And of course religious leaders were key as well, including the organizers of the “Jericho March.”
The questions before us are obvious and crucial:
How do political and religious leaders become supporters of a dangerous demagogic liar who is known for brazen violation of the values they promote? Why don’t they stand up to the people and tell them that their grievances are overdone and that this is no way to solve them?
Unsurprisingly, The Golden Calf episode foregrounds these questions. Notably, Aaron is front and center in the story in part because the biblical text is remarkably silent on a different question: How were the people mobilized? Surely there must have been some sort of process by which resentment bubbled up, demagogic leaders emerged to harness and shape it, and some of those leaders approached Aaron. But the story includes none of this: There is no Trump!
Perhaps the missing mobilization process hints at something important: Demagogues are a dime a dozen. There will always be charismatic people who are willing and able to feed and channel the people’s grievances. The key question is why they get traction with the people and why established leaders accommodate and thereby fuel the populist fervor even when they should know better and often do.
The Golden Calf episode points us to four distinct motives that facilitate such accommodation: a) Yielding to fear; b) Opportunistic gain; c) Cooptation; and d) Yielding to awe.
The first motive is evident when Moses first turns to Aaron for an explanation for how he had become an accomplice to great sin. Aaron responds by begging Moses not to be angry for “you know/knew this people, how they are in an bad way.” This rationale is the most straightforward and it seems to be the one with which Moses is most sympathetic: Aaron was scared of what the people would do, perhaps to him or to each other. Perhaps they would have committed even worse sins! And perhaps they already have. The Talmud notices that whereas Hur and Aaron were jointly appointed to field the people’s complaints, Hur is never again mentioned; the implication is that the people have killed him, perhaps because he opposed the plan to make the calf. In modern political parlance, Hur has been “primaried” and Aaron is reasonably afraid he will be next. Who can blame him for giving into fear?
The second reason for accommodation can be inferred from what he should have been said but did not. In particular, we should be astounded that when the people first complain to him about Moses, Aaron does not defend his younger brother. His silence here is very loud. How could Aaron not have expressed outrage that they would insinuate that Moses was corrupt?! How could he not respond that it was wrong for them to peddle in misinformation about Moses?
It is possible that Aaron’s silence is a symptom of his fear of the people. But it is also possible he sensed an opportunity to finally come out of his little brother’s shadow. After all, hadn’t it been Aaron whom Moses had leaned on to be spokesman to Pharaoh? Aaron’s Jealousy of Moses’s status is evident later (Numbers 12:2) when Aaron joins their sister Miriam in wondering, “Has God spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?”
A purely fear-based explanation also cannot explain the initiative that Aaron took, and the associated risks, in suggesting the idea of having them collect the golden earrings and melt them down. The great Medieval rabbinic commentator Rashi offered that Aaron was buying time here; he thought the people would never agree to give up their gold, and he thought they would back down for awhile. But he was wrong and then he had to keep on improvising — casting a mold; making the calf; and building an altar and declaring a festival to God. Regardless of his specific reasoning for each step, the overall imagery is of Aaron acting as Moses often seemed to act, in trying to anticipate what God would have wanted and expecting divine ratification later. Aaron surely must have been hoping he would be successful and rewarded for his clever responses to the difficult leadership challenges before him. Of course, he might not have had such great challenges had he stood up to the people in the first place.
In the end of course, Aaron is humiliated just as Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice is. It turns out that he has inappropriately tried to step into the magician’s shoes while the magician was away but ends up needing the magician to return and save the apprentice from his hubris. Likewise, the vast majority of Americans are now counting the hours till noon on January 20th when responsible government will hopefully return.
The third reason for accommodation is related to the second but it ascribes a purer motive to Aaron. This logic is rooted in Aaron’s declaration of “a festival to the Lord (YHWH) tomorrow.” This statement reinforces Nahmanides’s argument that they were not aiming to replace God. Or at least Aaron wasn’t. Aaron is essentially arguing that the people’s grievances can be productively channeled into a legitimate, longstanding goal: worship of God. Indeed, the people’s silent acquiescence when he proposes this seems to suggest that they endorsee this plan.
A similar logic is obviously behind political and religious accommodation for Trumpism. It is the “prudential” tradeoff of policy wins against appearing to endorse defects of character and values. In the case of Orthodox Jews, this tradeoff is often been expressed in terms of support for Israel’s right-wing government. Here is how the Christian Post’s Richard Land put expressed the tradeoff evangelical Christians were making in supporting Trump:
I think most evangelicals feel that the president, despite misgivings they have about his language or some of his behavior, believe that he’s the most pro-life president in the modern era, that he’s done more for religious liberty through the appointment of conservative judges and through speaking out for religious liberty around the world, for Muslims, for Christians, for Jews, his statements against anti-Semitism and his actions against anti-Semitism, that he is, at the very least, at the very least, the lesser of two evils against Mrs. Clinton and also against the current crop of Democratic candidates.
And so I find that most evangelicals still support him. They don’t condone everything he does. He was my last choice in the primaries. I know a lot of evangelicals that he was either their second, third, fourth, fifth or last choice in the primaries, but once it became a binary choice between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, we decided that Mr. Trump was the better choice.
And most of us have been pleasantly surprised that he’s done better than we thought he would.
Is this tradeoff morally defensible? Some Trump supporters continue to think so even after the storming of the Capitol. Others are more circumspect. In the case of the Golden Calf, Aaron’s tradeoff obviously was in error. Aaron clearly failed in his attempt to channel the people’s problematic behavior towards proper ends. In the festival that occurred the next day, no one makes any mention of God, and a general atmosphere of carousing licentiousness breaks out. When leaders convince themselves that the people’s problematic energy can be channeled to productive ends, they may be misleading themselves.
Let us now turn to the final reason for accommodation. This one is perhaps the least familiar and therefore perhaps the most important for us to consider if we are to grapple with how committed monotheists may succumb to idolatry.
This final rationale may be inferred from a false and seemingly sacrilegious statement Aaron makes in his otherwise faithful account of what had happened. In particular, Aaron tells Moses that after the people gave him their gold, he “cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”
Not only is this statement directly contradicted by the biblical narrator’s own account of what happened (where Aaron is described as responsible for casting the mold), but Aaron seems to be pointing an accusing finger at God. After all, a golden calf cannot “come out” of anything on its own. If the calf emerged from the flames, it could only be because God had wanted it to happen.
What is going on? Aaron seems to be expressing awe at the seemingly divine power unleashed by the populist movement: How could something that feels so powerful and authentic not be divinely inspired?
Here we have what is perhaps the most difficult challenge — one that is at once theological and political — represented by contemporary populist movements and by Trumpism in particular.
The first three rationales for accommodating the populist politics of resentment are not hard to understand nor are they hard to see. Politicians who are so afraid of their constituents they do the opposite of what they know is right? Check. Politicians who see opportunity for glory if they portray themselves as champions of a populist movement not of their own creation? Check. Politicians who see in such movements a vehicle for realizing long-sought goals? Check. But consider also the awe that such politicians — or any of us — feel at the power of such movements.
The alternative reality that human collectivities create can indeed be so awe-inspiring it seems to be touched by the divine. Think of a large Trump rally and the “collective effervescence” it creates. Think of the amount of human excitement and communal creativity reflected in the QAnon “research movement,” one that Caroline Mimbs Nyce likens to a new religion. There is something incredibly impressive about this kind of collective myth construction, for indeed the greatest of human achievements rest on precisely such processes, the very ones that capture our wonder and inspire religious metaphors. The social truths these movements convey are powerful and undeniable even when they are based on nothing but lies. And if and when these bubbles burst, who does not feel at least a little sad?
Looked at from this perspective, it is certainly not hard to understand why a leader — especially a religious one in the presence of his enthusiastic flock — might get swept up in this process and yield to it willingly. He may have never felt something so powerful in his life? Have you?
Conclusion: Destroying the Golden Calf
The biblical account of the Sin of the Golden Calf provides a paradigm for how committed monotheists may succumb to idolatry, a model that resonates eerily with our present moment and challenges. That this model can be found in the Bible should not be surprising. If the specter of committed monotheists succumbing to idolatry was the great challenge of biblical times, it stands to reason that the Bible would offer insight into how this can occur. And it should not be surprising that the biblical insights dovetail with that of modern social science about contemporary politics: “There is nothing new under the sun.”
It is unfortunately less clear how we can heed the Bible’s guidance to address our current challenges. Whereas Moses forces the people to ingest (and thus to excrete) the calf’s gold dust mixed with water, there seems no analogous process by which Trump supporters might repudiate the lies they have endorsed. But if there is no such repudiation, we may be fighting the golden calf for a long time to come.
Perhaps such forceful rejection becomes more possible if we approach the task with a degree of empathy and compassion. After all, if we can empathize with the people of Israel when they bristled under an alien code and with the contrast between the promises of democracy and the necessities of hierarchy, we can certainly empathize with some of Trump supporters’ grievances. Over recent generations, social mobility for non-immigrant Americans has stagnated and income inequality has grown dramatically. Meanwhile, various identity-based movements in rapid succession have promoted a sometimes bewildering array of new norms that have made many Americans feel like “strangers in their own land.” It is critical we appreciate that one does not have to be immoral or stupid to be caught up in a populist movement like Trumpism even while we repudiate the movement itself and especially its idolatrous trampling on fundamental norms of truth, democracy, and social unity.
Similarly, while the logics of fear, opportunism, and co-optation perhaps do not merit our empathy as explanations for why leaders accommodated Trump, the awe logic should command our attention if not our empathy. The key point is that for those who become immersed in it, Trumpism feels like an authentic religious movement. The religious festival prior to Moses’s ascent would have felt very similar to the one that Aaron convened with the Golden Calf: at each episode, there was general merriment and worship amid bulls, burnt offerings and peace offerings. The social validation provided by each event would have felt very similar. The difference of course was that one was rooted in truth and one was not. But who among us has a clear glimpse at truth, especially when it is obscured by those who surround us?
We must somehow appreciate how people — especially religious people who yearn to see the hand of God in their lives — can collectively convince themselves that something false is true, even while guiding them to recognize the difference. It may help to realize that if those who communed at Sinai fell prey to such idolatry, we all can.
