Frank's Musings

Early blame for  the assassination of Charlie Kirk was placed on  a transgender perpetrator because of Kirk’s mention of that lifestyle during a speech on a college campus.

In fact, it turned out that the suspected killer, Tyler Robinson,  a in a romantic relationship with a transgender man.

Ironically, the victim was a deeply religious conservative who sponsored dialogue instead of violent opposition of views.

The killer seems to have had an unconventional social orientation--one that usually would have reduced his tendency to use violence to resolve disputes.  

The killer also had an extremely conservative upbringing.

Trump’s initial publicized reaction was surprisingly correct; but it had undemocratic undertones.

This assassination may be an additional consequence of Trump’s pugnacious, incendiary rhetoric (cf. Jamelle Bouie in 9/20/2025 NYT)

Kirk ironically advocated acceptance of a few gun deaths as the price of relying on the 2nd Amendment to justify loose regulation of firearms (cf. Stephen Cody controversy in Palmetto, FLA).

Politically disaffected people often search for otherworldly solutions to their problems.  This invites exploitation by quasi-demagogues, especially by appealing to evangelical Christians.  Some of these rabble-rousers  are sincerely responding to sociological discomfort; but others are merely megalomaniacs. 

As a result, the Kirk memorial on 21 September 2025 was ripe for exploitation by speakers like Stephen Miller and Donald Trump as a political rally.  The event was an assembly of listeners who were sympathetic to right-wing propaganda.  It couldn’t have been better organized by a campaign advance man.

FBI Director Kash Patel testified on 16 September 2025  that the agency has made many more apprehensions of alleged criminals since he took over the FBI than were made under the previous federal administration. He implied that this evidenced more effective performance of its mission under his direction.

Bombing Gaza civilians presumes that Hamas’s leadership is rationally concerned for its Palestinian people and will agree to return hostages in order to save lives. But bombing Hamas’s leaders in Qatar shows that Israel disdains their good faith.  Both events are like exterminating kitchen ants with a sledgehammer. Surely, the IDF would do a better job of protecting its own troops and collateral civilians when invading and occupying the entire Gaza Strip than by ordering Palestinians to save themselves.

Yes, the people of Palestine have the right to govern themselves; but they aren’t entitled to install a government of violent thugs--no more than the Taliban could turn Afghanistan into a training ground for Al-Qaeda. Although the existence of the Gaza Strip is only the result of happenstance, it certainly is time for the U.N. to step in and designate a temporary multinational (as well as inter-Arab) police force to remove Hamas and accede to a formal branch of the Palestinian Authority.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was at Dr. Ladapo’s press conference. It was probably at the Governor's direction, and for political reasons, that portions of the state mandate have been removed. By the same token, DeSantis and Ladapo should be sure to recommend conformance with universal school vaccination protocols in the future. That way, they will have a chance to dance the fine line between currying the MAGA Crowd’s favor and protecting their health. 

What if President Donald J. Trump is only the unwitting showmanship tool of a diabolical would-be autocracy?  (See Thomas Edsall’s essay in the 9/2/2025 NYT.)   Edsall names the Svengalis behind Trump’s  would-be throne: Russell Vought and Stephen Miller.   Vought and Miller, according  Edsall, “are coldblooded, ideologically driven strategists who have spent nearly a decade developing the foundations for this MAGA takeover of what was once a familiar American way of life.” 

Throughout his career Trump has been the benighted heir to a giant real estate fortune who has repeatedly fooled bankers, other investors, and electoral majorities into backing his personal ventures in other fields. But his ability repeatedly to garner such  support has been too tempting for right-wing political  schemers to ignore.   Their goal is to distort the Constitutional trappings of America’s liberal democracy into a formula for legitimizing autocratic rule and depriving average citizens of their equitable rights.

This danger has increasingly been recognized by alarmed members of  both Parties.  However, they are all such true believers in the mythological foresight of the creators of the Union that they are easily manipulated by determined masterminds armed with a popular, narcissistic, and pliant demagogue.

Solving this predicament requires youthful leadership, experienced in defining and defending liberal democratic values, as well as appealing to stay-at-home audiences.  A television or radio  personality might fit the bill; after all Ronald Reagan, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and others have succeeded in making that shift in roles.  Of course, that kind of presidential candidate would have to be backed up with a circle of government policy professionals.  Nevertheless, owing to the country’s recent record of incompetent cabinet secretaries, it is not unreasonable to expect that such a presidential ticket would be welcomed by an electoral majority.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

In Trump’s criticism of the “woke”  interpretation of U.S. history at the Smithsonian Institution, he calls for modifying its presentation of some of the shortcomings of our government and cultural practices to “correct” mischaracterizations of our culture.  Reactionary policy is a  form of paternalism and it can lead to tyrannical rule.   But what the MAGA crowd resents, and what Trump has successfully appealed to, is its resentment of being told what to do by the country’s educated elite—by their paternalism.  Thus, paternalism can vitiate democracy from two directions. 

Trump’s  supporters in the 2016, 2020,  and 2024 elections  were convinced that he represented their resentment of the disregard of their immediate interests by the dominant groups in the U.S. government.  The bureaucracy under  previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, consisted of an elite stratus of society who were typically college educated and socially segregated from the backgrounds and immediate concerns of the majority of the public.  Because the U.S. republic is built on the assumption that majority rule guarantees the most equitable outcome of government policy, most of them believed that, somehow, they had been victims of corrupted democratic ideals and voted to restore their idealized concept of self-rule.

However, particularly during Trump’s second administration, they are learning that attempts to restore this simplified version of democratic principles can easily lead to autocracy and the loss of popular control of government policy.  The restored Trump presidency has witnessed even more egregious faults that include the following:

These failures of the restored Trump presidency are largely owing to the weakening of the power of the checks and balances built into the Constitutional structure of the republic created 250 years ago.  It did not anticipate how thoroughly our society would be released from the bounds that the sense of individual responsibility imposes by the substitution of third-party information for personal thought.  Not only has the public been trained to rely on showmanship for the validation of factual truth; the public’s representatives in its democratic government have also subsumed their commitment to principled behavior to personal life goals—their professional  careers. 

A demagogue like Donald Trump can take advantage of how American society has been transformed by its subservience to skilled use of  communications technology.   The legacy structure of the U.S. government does not allow change in its rules of “checks and balances” to occur swiftly.  Therefore, it will take a long time to correct the features of the Constitution that allow it to be used to facilitate authoritarian distortion.  Determination and patience will be necessary to protect the ideals of our Founding Fathers from the paternalistic tyranny of 21st Century autocrats.

The judgment of the majority of people in entertainment-soaked societies has been corrupted by their reliance on the messages that are most effectively communicated. Instead of thinking for themselves and listening to influencers who present their arguments in anticipation of thoughtful audiences, they have been conditioned to accept the messages of those who best use modern communications techniques.