‘Don Colossus’ — a golden warning of America’s fall

Contra Trump

金湯之固，非粟不守

In A National Suicide Pact, an earlier chapter in Contra Trump, I observed that China’s ‘Epstein class’ of interconnected privilege, presumption and prestige is hidden behind a system of secrecy that has been rigorously developed and jealously guarded since the Yan’an days of the 1940s. The raw reality of America is far more confronting, even as its operations are labyrinthine in their workings. In 2026, it is piquant to observe that some who seek to flee the egregious malevolence of Trump’s America believe they can find solace in the fictions of Xi Jinping’s frictionless China and its ersatz values. Neither is a refuge, though there might be a scintilla of mutual recognition.

I also remarked that Xi Jinping’s rule is often seen as being generally successful, even if far from benevolent. Social stability maintained by overwhelming police force and surveillance and economic growth have continued. Both are in stark contrast to the dishevelled state of Donald Trump’s America. Yet, both China and the US face the same systemic dilemmas: that of long-term regime stability and political succession. Who comes after an aging Xi and who will replace the dotard Trump?

This is a vital question for those of us in the Antipodes as both New Zealand and Australia are bound to China by trade while also being willingly subject to the whims of Washington.

Previously, I referred both to historian Timothy Snyder’s comments on ‘superpower suicide’ and to ‘Ozymandias’, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Karen Attiah’s essay on Trump as Nebuchadnezzar, reproduced below, includes similar references. She also sees in the ‘Don Colossus’ statue a golden warning of America’s fall. This is a companion piece to A National Suicide Pact and should also be read in the context of The Great Palace of Ch’in, a poem by the Tang-dynasty writer Du Mu about political arrogance and historical regret that both Xi Jinping and Xu Zhangrun have referred to on a number of occasions. In light of the ‘Don Colossus’ fiasco, Attiah calls for greater Christian cultural literary among American reporters. As she writes that:

… the news media lack basic fluency in religious foundational texts and their symbolism—an illiteracy about religious and mythological archetypes and how they consciously — and subconsciously — shape our understanding of the world.

Similarly, for over two decades we have encouraged students of contemporary China to gain a basic grounding in New Sinology.

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The rubric of this chapter in Contra Trump is  金湯之固，非粟不守, meaning ‘even the most ostentatious  defences will not stand if the troops are not fed’. We could just as well have chosen the expression 金玉其外，敗絮其中, a Ming-dynasty equivalent of ‘all that glitters is not gold’, or a famous line from the Tang-dynasty poet Li Shen 李紳:

假金方用真金镀，若是真金不镀金。

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
17 May 2026

Given what happened to Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible, one would think that Trump’s spiritual advisors would have warned him against building a golden statue. Alas, they don’t make royal spiritual advisors like they used to. Maybe this is what happens when you order spiritual interpreters from Temu.

— Karen Attiah

Trump Is Not the Golden Calf. He’s King Nebuchadnezzar.

Trump’s Golden ‘Don Colossus’ is yet another warning sign of America’s imperial decline.

Karen Attiah 

I have been following the news reports about Trump’s colossal gold statue, aka “Don Colossus,” which was unveiled last week at Trump National Doral Miami resort in Florida. It is 22 feet tall, and reportedly cost about $450,000 to erect. The statue was paid for by the $Patriot memecoin crypto investors.

The statue has drawn immediate backlash, with critics likening it to idol worship. And, plenty in the news media and on social media say that this is like the story of the golden calf in the Bible.

The scrutiny got so bad that they trotted out a Black Republican pastor, Mark Burns, to defend the statue and say it’s not idol worship.

Yes, everyone is making the Golden Calf references. It’s perhaps one of the more recognizable stories and symbols even with non-Christians, so I understand why. For the uninitiated, the “golden calf’ story refers to when Moses took a little too long to return from Mount Sinai while he was receiving the Ten Commandments. In his absence, the Israelites who were waiting for him grew impatient, melted their gold jewelry, and formed a golden calf to worship instead of God. Of course, God — and Moses, got pissed. Moses burned the calf, mixed the gold powder with water, and forced the Israelites to drink it.

God handled the Israelites the Old Testament way — he sent a plague upon them.

Pastor Burns is right, to an extent; my colleagues in the media are getting it wrong.

Trump’s statue is not a ‘golden calf’. The golden calf story is the wrong narrative frame. There’s more in the well of Biblical symbols we can draw from to understand ‘Don Colossus’ — and the trajectory of the American empire.

Trump is more of a King Nebuchadnezzar figure than he is a golden calf. Which means that America is Babylon. And in both Biblical and historical terms, the Babylonian Empire came to a sad end.

So, the ‘Don Colossus’ statue is a golden warning of America’s fall.

Gather around the fire, friends. Let’s talk about King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and what happened when he constructed his ill-fated golden statue of himself.

King Nebuchadnezzar’s Golden Statue

In the Book of Daniel in the Bible’s Old Testament, King Nebuchadnezzar ruled over Babylon from 605 BC to 562 BC. He led the conquest of Egypt and the eventual capture and destruction of Jerusalem.

Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great statue of mixed materials, with a head of gold, a chest of silver, legs of bronze, and feet of clay. In the dream, the statue is destroyed by a meteor. Daniel interprets the dream as signifying that all empires live and die.

King Nebuchadnezzar erected a 90-foot-tall gold statue of himself, going against the prophet Daniel’s warnings. He ordered that all the kingdom’s peoples, officials, and magistrates worship and bow down before the statue, lest they be thrown into a blazing hot furnace.

The King got word that three Jews, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, refused to bow down and worship the statue. They told the king, “If we are thrown into the furnace, the God we serve will deliver us from it. But even if he does not, we will not serve your gods or the image of gold you have set up.” They are thrown into the furnace, but protected from the fire. Nebuchadnezzar is amazed and praises the God of the three men. This is usually how the story stops.

But more is in store for the prideful, but ill-fated Nebuchadnezzar.

A year later, he is walking by his palace, admiring its beauty. Per the Book of Daniel 4:27-33:

“Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”

Even as the words were on his lips, a voice came from heaven, “This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the ox.

Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.”

Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.

Given what happened to Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible, one would think that Trump’s spiritual advisors would have warned him against building a golden statue.

Alas, they don’t make royal spiritual advisors like they used to. Maybe this is what happens when you order spiritual interpreters from Temu.

The Biblical Fall of Babylon

At one time, like America, Babylon was considered one of the most splendid empires on earth.

In Revelation 18:1-14, Babylon falls.

Verses 4 to 20 are the laments of the kings and trading partners of Babylon who weep because a major market for them is gone. There is no one left to buy their gold, silver, jewelry, woods, silks, spices, or human slaves.
Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a huge millstone. He threw it into the ocean and shouted,

Just like this, the great city Babylon
will be thrown down with violence
and will never be found again.

22 The sound of harps, singers, flutes, and trumpets
will never be heard in you again.
No craftsmen and no trades
will ever be found in you again.
The sound of the mill
will never be heard in you again.

23 The light of a lamp
will never shine in you again.
The happy voices of brides and grooms
will never be heard in you again.
For your merchants were the greatest in the world,
and you deceived the nations with your sorceries.

24 In your streets flowed the blood of the prophets and of God’s holy people
and the blood of people slaughtered all over the world.

Historical Babylon fell into a slow decline after the death of Nebuchadnezzar.

So why is the media reaching for the golden calf story when the allegory of Trump as a King Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon is RIGHT THERE?

First of all, most journalists are not historians or religious experts. But we can’t afford to be ignorant of either of these forces any longer.

I have long believed that corporate news media have done a poor job of covering spirituality and politics in America. I saw this during my time as an editor and columnist at the Washington Post. As someone who grew up going to an evangelical church in Texas and to an Episcopal school on weekdays, it would shock me how religion and spirituality were topics that were dismissed, treated with disdain, almost.

What I mean is that the news media lack basic fluency in religious foundational texts and their symbolism—an illiteracy about religious and mythological archetypes and how they consciously — and subconsciously — shape our understanding of the world.

Frankly, the fact that most news media are hanging on to the wrong symbolic image to interpret and discuss Don Colossus makes me even more alarmed about the utter failures of the liberal, secular world to combat the right-wing’s very explicit fusion of empire, technology, Christian dominionism, and White Nationalism.

Okay, back to Trump and gold statues.

Now, Trump is not forcing people by threat of death to bow down to his golden statue in Florida, as Nebuchadnezzar did with his colossus statue.

But Trump is trying to remake American cultural and political institutions in his own image—literally. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is now the Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Trump administration is releasing a commemorative passport featuring his face in honor of America’s birthday, not his. Meanwhile, thanks to Trump ordering the Kennedy Center closed for two years, the sounds of harps, lutes, and trumpets in the performance halls are literally being silenced — like the warning in Revelation.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of a possible economic depression in America, fears of another virus outbreak, and Trump’s foolish war in Iran, which could destabilize the world’s entire energy economy. While America might not be trafficking in spices, silks, and luxury woods, it’s very telling of the technocracy that the gold statue of Trump’s empire has been paid for by cryptocurrency investors and memecoins.

Of course, it is debatable whether cryptocurrency is “fake” money.

But the gold statue is getting attention precisely because it taps a very real, very Biblical, civilizational, almost primitive nerve. Gold and imperial maximalism catch our human attention in ways that other aesthetic displays of power don’t.

Writing for the CBC in 2011, Brent Bambury spoke with Peter York, author of “Dictator Style,” about the maximalist aesthetics of dictatorial leaders and the need to re-express power at home and abroad through excess.

It’s designed to intimidate and impress…

…He’s saying there’s a threat attached to the outrageous esthetic decisions of a Gadhafi. Bad taste is not the exclusive domain of the world’s worst dictators. But when it’s magnified by unlimited funds, bad taste transcends esthetics. It bullies and diminishes the people exposed to it.

In other words, excessive gold, when combined with state power, can be read as a threat.

Is America’s Empire Reaching Sunset?

Photography, light, and beauty are not the only reasons I called this space “The Golden Hour”. In medical terms, the “golden hour” refers to the critical time interval between when someone suffers a traumatic injury and when they receive care. If care is not given within that first hour, the likelihood of severe permanent damage or even death is higher.

And maybe as America heads towards its 250th anniversary in July, it makes sense to think out loud about imperial mortality.

In a New York Times guest essay, “America is Officially an Empire in Decline,” Christopher Caldwell assesses the American-Israeli attack on Iran as a “watershed in the decline of the American empire”. He writes, “Imperial systems, whatever you call them, last only as long as their means are adequate to their ends. And with the Iran war, President Trump has overextended the empire dangerously.”

Is this a ‘superpower suicide’, as Timothy Snyder calls it? “The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies,” he writes. “As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide.”

Certainly, we are in the death throes of… something in America. Whether it is an extinction burst that will lead to corrective behavior, or a true suicide, will remain to be seen.

As more and more Americans struggle to find jobs, as voting rights are rolled back across the country, and as federal forces patrol the streets looking for non-whites to deport, the dominant American myth — that it is a multicultural democracy and a land of opportunity and freedom — is coming apart at the seams. The rushed construction of imperial monuments and gold statues is a sign of an imperial animal that feels wounded and cornered.

Again, Revelation told of Babylon’s destruction in no small part because of the bloodshed it caused in foreign lands.

Perhaps empires that sense their end approaching reach instinctively for new gold statues, gigantic monuments, and new useless wars.

How much time does the American empire really have left?

Of course, no empire disappears in a day. But the moral of the story of the Biblical Babylon — and for America, is that imperial kingdoms that run on gold, greed, and blood do not last forever.

And of course, neither do statues.

The light is quickly fading into darkness, so I must wrap up this golden meditation on “Don Colossus”. I leave you all with the ‘Ozymandias’ by the English Poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, on what happens to the statues of kings from ancient lands.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

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鍍 dù, ‘plating’, as in 鍍金 dù jīn, ‘to gold plate’ or ‘gold plating’