Bowing Before the Idol
CPAC's (Conservative Political Action Conference) idol has arrived! No joking, photoshopping, or facetiousness here. This is actually a golden idol of Mr. Trump that will be worshipped by his cultish followers during this weekend's gathering of GOP luminaries and their lackies in Orlando, FL. This photo is a sad commentary on just how morally hollow the GOP has become. One claiming to be a conservative now must figuratively (and who knows, perhaps literally as well?) bow before the idol to receive the Trump blessing to continue to belong. Those who don't--Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and others--are cast out of the ruling coterie and labeled as not sufficiently loyal to the former president and his brand.
Ironically, the theme of this year's CPAC bacchanalia is "America Uncanceled" where the notion of how Un-American it is to 'cancel' someone for their beliefs and opinions will be espoused while at the same time purging from the GOP those who, out of an obligation to personal conscience and philosophy, refuse to pay homage to Mr. Trump and his insistence on unwaveringly accepting the cartful of lies, both big and small, that have kept his adoring masses as buzzed and oblivious as a Red Bull-fueled Fortnite fanatic on a three-day, sleepless jag.
The GOP made a Faustian bargain back in 2016 and now it is time to pay up. Many elected GOP officials are now faced with an existential political crisis. Should they continue to kowtow to Mr. Trump, the newly-anointed Republican kingmaker, in order to curry favor with a minority of their vociferous constituents still held in thrall by the Newsmax narrative and QAnon conspiracy, or make a break with Trump’s brand of American Fascism, hedging their bets on the demise of Mr. Trump’s continued political prevalence and relevance and actually working to make the lives of all of their constituents better? They have earned each and every sleepless moment in the dead of the night where they are tossing and turning and sweating, trying to determine where they could have steered a different course. Truly these are profiles in cowardice.
The Golden Trump idol is part and parcel to the grotesquerie that has become the GOP. It is a gilded, hollow, self-serving symbol of an empty nationalism. It is a buffoonish cartoon, a caricature depicting so much that is wrong with our country and the political party that claims Mr. Trump as its leader. The Great Gilded Trump is an ugly abomination that typifies the gaudy and gauche, the trademarks of a man devoid of any true substance and obsessed by image and numbers and ratings and self-aggrandizement. Mr. Trump stands for nothing else. If the GOP continues to bow to this graven image, then they as a collective body don’t either.
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