confronting the Golem – Michael Liss
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In 16th century Prague, so the legend goes, the sage Rabbi Judah Loew, Talmudist, philosopher, mystic, mathematician, and astronomer, searching desperately for a way to protect his community from violence, took a figure made of soil or clay, and, through sacred words, animated him. The product of his efforts, a Golem, served as an unflagging, inexhaustible bodyguard until, soulless and untethered as he was, he grew so powerful that he menaced the people he was charged to protect, and the Rabbi was forced to deanimate him.
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That “war” has many fronts and many tools, but, for this essay, we are going to have to talk about money. Money is not merely the lifeblood of politics; for those entities and organizations that rely on the government to provide support, it is essential to their existence. Trump’s withholding of cash from disfavored entities and organizations is one of the most effective weapons conservatives have ever had—with just the flash of a conscienceless pen, swift, brutal, and lethal.
The result? Mass firings at critical agencies, the termination of long-time programs that even Republicans used to praise as serving the country’s interests, and the zeroing out of agencies upon which the public relies. For those programs too big to kill in one shot, skeleton crews man centers with immensely long wait times designed to get people to hang up. With three-plus years left in his term to starve and pummel the rest, few if any will ever be resuscitated. Many Trump supporters are counting on this—I recall one office-mate who was convinced that DOGE had found so much “waste, fraud and abuse” that checks for $5,000.00 were about to arrive in every good Trump supporter’s mailbox. Have faith, and faith shall be given to you.
On Trump, I don’t and I can’t, but, if you do, you align with a great many Americans. We can argue about who the majority would choose, but the majority did choose in 2024, and what we have is a Republican President, a Republican Senate, and a Republican House. In a government where Congress eschews its traditional role in favor of deference, and SCOTUS supports a Unitary Executive, we may rage against the machine, but we have no way of turning it off. The Golem is out.
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