Frank's Musings

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency under the direction of Mr.Tom Homan has been operating in violation of the international refugee agreements which the U.S. has signed and ratified, namely the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.  These UNHCR documents require  applications by international refugees to a signatory country’s  courts for asylum to be considered with due process of law, including the appeal of any rejection by those courts.  It has been reported that ICE agents have abducted and deported immigrants from certain foreign countries of origin virtually at the moment of rejection by immigration judges of their initial applications for asylum without even allowing their representation and counsel by qualified attorneys.

David Brooks’ essay in the 7/17/2025 NYT wrongly advocated the approaches of FDR and Reagan for  reviving the U.S. economy.  The comparative  advantage of the US economy is withering away despite the multitude and expansion of government institutions (credit  DOGE at least for targeting the right problem). The private sector is America’s strength; and the government can best stimulate its growth by providing speculative finance to encourage innovation.

Filtering tax revenue to  startup ventures will sometimes fail; but ultimately it will result in world-leading economic and technological development. The government’s primary function is to ensure that the resulting wealth is shared equitably among all taxpayers.  Washington should act merely as their agent and subsequently guarantee their fair reward.

Sincerely,

Frank A. Ocwieja

Culminating in the denial of the Epstein blacklist, the invention of “Reasonable Suspicion” as the equivalent of due process, and the labeling of pro-Palestinian sentiments as antisemitism, President Trump has carried his disdain for the intelligence of the MAGA Crowd to an extreme extent.  Trump is foolish to believe that his supporters' disaffection with the equity of American government will always and ultimately smother their impatience with his presumptuous disregard of their good sense.

It is time for credible potential successors to this unconscionably self-interested leader of the American republic to ignore objections from instinctively defensive Trump supporters and directly call him and his lieutenants out for their distortion of American democracy.  Members of the Trump administration have taken the Constitution that was created almost 250 years ago to make government serve the general welfare and seditiously tried to make it serve their personal exploitation of the combined economic and redoubtable power of a self-confident nation.  The current subduction of the Founders' goal to the ambitions of Trump and his sycophants only prevents its accomplishment.

Vladimir Putin has put himself on a one-way route to nihilism. In his mind, his place in history will be as the relentless restorer of Russia’s greatness (including all the Baltic and trans Caucasian lands), or as the contemptible and violent pursuant of an outdated standard of imperial glory.  

Donald Trump empathetically recognized a kindred spirit in Putin. Neither of them can truly achieve a greater historic pinnacle without fulfilling their dreams of unique significance. Trump’s goal is to demonstrate that a world that conforms to the vagaries of his unsteady singular vision is better than a world subject to the perpetually conflicting desires of a democracy.

Inevitably, the two megalomaniacs will clash. Until then, they can postpone a final reckoning by expressing temporary mutual disappointment.

A man like Donald J. Trump  is a player in an exclusively personal game of life. Such a man exists for the sole purpose of achieving whatever personal goals he has concluded constitute the rules of that game.  He didn’t choose to be in that game and has no control over its terms or conditions. Changing anything about the game is not only impossible;  it would be an admission of complicity that diminished his claim of victimhood that excuses whatever sociopathic actions he commits.

One of the measures of success in the game that he plays is the extent to which he escapes being held accountable for his actions.  Moreover, he is even admired for his ability to ignore the rules that he blames others for imposing on the game.  But those admirers, who  have also  repeatedly failed to comply with the imposed rules of the game, constitute a majority of the voting public.  This is what Trump realized  when he became fed up with derision from the “elites” who were commonly considered to control the game of life (cf. Barack Obama’s put-down of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner).

Violation of not every game rule can be meaningfully sanctioned; and Trump’s selection of which rules to ignore is part of his manipulative  skill.   It is curious, nevertheless, that Trump has been able to gain the summit of American politics while continually circumventing its written Constitutional rules.  As in his relations with bankers, educators, numismatists, and others, Donald Trump exists primarily as an emblem of entropy—offering us the result of living together without establishing behavioral norms. 

I spent a long time reading Ross  Douthat’s podcast with Matthew  Continetti, a conservative journalist.  It confounded me that two critical thinkers believe that Trump has intentionally transformed the Republican party.  Trump has only been along for the ride as the frontman for an undeclared coalition of conservative thinkers, including Stephen Miller, who are impatient with what they view as rule under an elitist political system.  Trump has done this for his entire career.  What a lucky man to have lived as the heir of a real estate magnate with the  wealth and childish  presumption  to have gained the indulgence of hungry financiers, anxious wives, copycat children, regretful entrepreneurs, opinion writers, and media-led voters to realize his fantasies of building projects, consumer scams, and political prominence!  His raison d’etre is self-aggrandizement  with no regard for what those personal luxuries may cost others.  Moreover, he has no regard for critical thinking.

My fear is that there is an informal group  of Svengalis behind Trump’s throne who have been taking advantage of his audience  appeal to subvert the protections of our Constitutional democracy that have outgrown their eighteenth-century effectiveness.  Its   objective is to leave America’s trappings of liberal democracy in place, and  to free  the economy from the fetters that prevent even more concentration of capital in the hands of the select few endowed with the wit and luck safely to ignore the common interest and achieve their personal ambitions. 

The most prominent  of these influencers behind Trump include Stephen Miller and Curtis Yarvin.  But other successful investors and entrepreneurs in this group include internet investors Peter Theil, Marc Andreesen, and even VP JD Vance.   It is they that the MAGA Crowd has unwittingly empowered to rake advantage of their influene on Trump’s insecure personality  to remove liberal impulses from American democracy.  Those of us who wish our government  to realize its intended purpose of the promoting the common welfare must express  that goal into a language that addresses the daily concerns of the majority of Americans.