Can Trump Control the Golems?

As a New York investor, Trump is probably familiar with the concept of a golem. A golem is a little model made of clay or wood, that somehow godlike, you breathe life into. Your golem is to be your obedient and profitable little servant, and yet it often becomes an uncontrollable nightmare, for you and everyone else.

Golem fables remind us that when imperfect humans play God, things happen. Sometimes these things are hilarious, as in the tale of The Gingerbread Man, or horrifying and deadly as in the more dark Russian version, The Clay Boy.

If you clicked to watch Paul Gobey’s rendition of the The Clay Boy, your first thought might be, “Why, this is a story about Volodymyr Zelensky!” Note to Trump: The little goat who freed the people of this scourge was honored by having his horns painted a lovely golden color.

The current US president is not a wise goat who saves the village – even if that was his campaign promise in a nutshell. The golems that plague us today grew from not-yet-post-colonial Europe, from a yearning for yesteryear by a monstrosity of bureaucratic parasites, by pride and greed. They are also American-made clay boys, made to serve Washington, to enrich Washington by extending US military power, and more specifically to subsidize the growing US military sector, which today is responsible for 43% of the global weapons market. How else can NATO circa 2025 be explained?

How else can the European Union’s depressing productivity since its formation in 1993 be understood? The chart at this link is shown in current US dollars, which has lost 55% of its value since 1993. It appears as if our golems have eaten everything they can, and are still hungry.

The Ukraine problem and Zelensky et al are symptoms of European golems created by men decades ago. NATO was always a servant to war, not peace. War and the threat of war energizes and feeds the state, against the wishes and interests of those designated to be sacrificed to it.

Once life was breathed into these man-made models, they grew powerful, insatiable, while retaining all of their original stupidity, animality and immorality. Their robotic, anti-human nature is persistent and predictable.

Golems, especially the monstrous ones, are featured in much of our modern entertainment – what scares, and entertains, us is often the robotic, the amoral, animalistic, and supernatural enemy. Horror novels, TV and movies may all contain a hero, and people may get rescued, and the golem may be conquered, broken into a thousand pieces, freeing the innocent. The darker theme – but more likely in real life – is when our golems dominate, act without restraint, and destroy the Earth.

From my protected rural perch, far from the costs of war and the threats of evil men holding the reins of power, I can speak freely about the dangers of our existing government golems, of greed, of armies filled not with natural patriotism but of hatred and contempt. I can speak freely of the Zelenskys, the Netanyahus and Smotrichs, the warmongering beneficiaries of political power in Washington, DC. I can criticize their actions as immoral, mechanistic, animalistic creations of men, not of God.

We can have no doubt that the history of the Ukraine conflict, even starting at 2014, is man-made, or woman-made, if we consider the irrelevant gender of Victoria Nuland. Over the decade, we see the appetite for war expand from civil to international, much like the Clay Boy, devouring flesh and emptying pantries across the land. Unstoppable, without a brain, driven by base desires and beyond human logic, the golem was stopped by a single barnyard animal – in a single well-orchestrated blow. I suspect this is exactly what Trump hoped to achieve two months ago. Yet, instead of following up on his good initiative, to stop arming and fueling and sharing intelligence with Zelensky as he works directly with Russia to end the war, Trump reverses course.

Does Trump misunderstand the nature of the golem the US and NATO created in Ukraine? We know many in the Congress, and the European bureaucrats, still cheer for war, claiming that the end of it is just too difficult, let us fight on and wait for more destruction and more death, to feed the beast. John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in June of 1963, is instructive for the Trump presidency, as Mr. Trump was clearly elected to end war and promote peace. Kennedy reminds us that “Our problems are manmade. Therefore, they can be solved by man.”

What a simple and profound reality this is. How dare we blame God for the evil that men have done, both consciously and though neglect? We indeed are empowered to fix what we – and our governments – have done, and what they have created.

Americans have many national examples of evil being prosecuted by some golem the US government created, promoted as good and useful, and then was unable to control. To recall a related fairy tale, Washington enjoys conjuring the genie, and is later unwilling and unable to put the genie back in the bottle. Vietnam, Central America, Yugoslavia, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and Ukraine – in every case Americans woke up to the fact their government lied, created the problem, never had a plan to resolve the problem, and continued to feed the golem our blood and treasure, waiting apparently for some independent entity to act. Eventually, these clay boys all ran into the horned goat of popular opinion, civil disobedience, economic and demographic reality, and abandonment of popular faith in the state. It’s happening again, with or without Trump’s help.

It’s happening now for Israel. Since its modern political creation, the Israeli state found itself hungry for living space, driven to destruction of everything that surrounds it. Israel’s inhumanity and narcissism is nurtured within its borders, and lied about and hidden from its primary source of sustenance, the United States. We are told God created it, and nothing trumps the command of God; but in fact, Zionism was created by very human, mostly secular, wholly immoral, and politically- not spiritually-driven people. It dumbly follows the 19^th century colonial project, of divide (its creation of the PA, and later Hamas) and conquer (Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria for years). For Zionists, the enemy is everywhere; they struggle daily for life amidst mindless, animalistic, subhuman goyim.

More accurately, the West, for political convenience then and now, subsidizes, arms, funds and covers for Israel, a dangerous golem of their own creation. Despite the origin story of brave Zionists who took their “rightful land” in 1948, in fact it was created to serve the West, in several ways, and has been fed and fueled consistently by its creators ever since. We own the golem, and we are culpable for its grievous and murderous acts.

Perhaps Trump will “win” in Ukraine by ending military support, leaving NATO, and restoring trade relations with Russia in the dawn of great power pragmatism. God willing, he can then use that experience to end the uncontrolled, inhumane and lawless rampage of the Israeli state, a golem that has run its course and is long overdue for a meetup with a goat with golden horns.