The "Anti-Weaponization Fund," a Grafter Government Unhinged, and the Final Arrival of ‘1984’

 

 

It’s been reported on, but from my perspective without the glacial shock wave it deserves: the so-called “slush fund” ostensibly targeted toward January 6 perpetrators. The act itself feels almost like trolling by this “president,” but more than that, a smokescreen while potentially making him and his family millions of dollars richer by granting immunity from past and present IRS scrutiny.

 

I begin with my favorite political cartoonist’s take on the subject. Mike Luckovich not only points out the hypocrisy of it all, but, more subtly, the press’s lack of focus on the real issue. It is not merely the contrast with the relatively minor transgressions of prior administrations, but the failure of the Fourth Estate to shake its own foundations loudly enough to affect change. At least we still have independent journalists metaphorically riding as Paul Revere, such as Paul Krugman.  In “The Looting of America; MAGA corruption reaches the point of no return,” he writes that “few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to ‘settle’ a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.”

 

His is only one of many similar voices one can now find on Substack, independent historians, political scientists, ex-government officials, and even perceptive humorists. While the traditional news media may report the same facts, few institutional voices seem willing to say so directly. Heaven forbid Dear Leader be offended or, especially, be laughed at.

 

The broader normalization of conflicts of interest surfaced again when Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times, on a related issue, wrote in his newsletter: “…thanks for all of your notes regarding President Trump’s 3,700 trades. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what trading policy for federal officials should look like. For example, should trading be banned entirely? Restricted to specific windows? Managed through blind trusts? Furthermore, should public disclosures be immediate or delayed, and how should the policy address family members?”

 

I dashed off my response, recognizing that he is perhaps walking on institutionally mandated eggshells: “Andrew, the fact that you can even ask whether there should be a trading policy for federal officials shows the erosion of the core principles on which this country was founded. Of course they should be banned from trading individually, or at the very least required to place investments in blind trusts, as other officials have done in the past. It goes without saying, or once would have. The potential conflicts of interest are simply too numerous, and the temptation too great, as we have witnessed time and again with the current administration.

 

“And what has happened to the rule of law, with the arbitrary establishment of a $1.776 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ to ‘compensate’ individuals involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack? This is American justice at work?

 

“It is bad enough that an entire political culture seems increasingly comfortable with graft. The mere fact that we are now publicly debating whether elected officials should trade stocks while possessing inside knowledge and the ability to influence day-to-day market movements, not to mention accepting lobby money to favor industries or causes, makes me lose hope.”

 

In spite of being one of Trump’s most obsequious supporters, perhaps this “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was a bridge too far even for Pam Bondi who resigned as AG. How convenient, then, to have Todd Blanche step in, without Congress now having a further say to block his becoming Acting AG (not that they would if they could). As Trump’s personal lawyer, Blanche represented him in criminal cases including the New York hush money case, which ended with convictions on 34 felony counts, as well as the federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith, now abandoned. Apparently Blanche works tirelessly to satisfy his direct report, the President of the United States and not the Constitution.

 

On to other dystopian developments, arriving with such rapidity one can hardly hold them in one’s head long enough to think about them. Among the latest architectural impositions proposed for the White House and Washington, D.C. is the “United States Triumphal Arch,” supposedly commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence, though in reality seeming more like a monument to Trump himself.

 

It immediately recalls George Orwell’s 1984 and its “enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete,” bearing “the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

 

Might this be just one of others planned? In 1984 “scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.”

 

And there it is again: the fusion of power, propaganda, and intimidation disguised as patriotism in massive concrete. Orwell understood that authoritarianism eventually expresses itself physically. Not content merely to dominate language and thought, it seeks permanence in gigantic buildings, and endless spectacles celebrating the Leader and the State.

 

What once seemed satirical exaggeration now arrives incrementally, proposal by proposal, outrage by outrage, each one quickly replaced by the next before we have time to absorb it. One becomes exhausted not only by the events themselves, but by the sheer velocity of them. That, perhaps, is part of the strategy, essentially a Gish Gallop applied to governance itself: a torrential inundation of events, too many to process.

 

Anything is now possible with this administration. So, as a citizen, I turned to my two Senators and Representative, sending them the New York Times Op-Ed piece “Trump Just Took Us Somewhere the Country Had Never Been Before.”

Not that I expected them to actually read it, but at least to register my concern. I did get one reply. It was 1984-ish in its own small bureaucratic way:

 

“Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups: Senator Rick Scott (receipt@rickscott.senate.gov); The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly.”

 

Instead I heard:  “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Tragedy Over and Within Washington, DC

 

Matt Davies, Newsday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist

Who do YOU believe, a Congresswoman from Texas or our President?  Rather than writing commentary, I let them speak for themselves:

 

From Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett

No one knows what caused last night's tragic crash outside DCA.

Investigations are ongoing, and no one - not Donald Trump or anyone else - should be drawing conclusions until all the facts have been released.

But here is what we do know.

On his first day in office, Donald Trump froze the hiring of federal employees—including air traffic controllers.

Also on January 20, Elon Musk pushed out the Chief of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Trump didn’t appoint an acting replacement until after last night’s crash

On January 22, Aviation Security Advisory Committee members were told Trump was cutting members of all advisory committees in a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”

Also on January 22, Trump fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

In June 2023, the United States Department of Transportation Inspector General found that 77% of air traffic control facilities critical to the industry's daily operations were short-staffed.

FAA staffing shortages have been exacerbated by @HouseGOP's repeated near-shutdowns of the government and their refusal to fully fund critical government functions.

These programs were only funded because more Democrats than Republicans voted to prevent these shutdowns.

 

Trump’s News Conference (as reported by Associated Press)

Q: “Are you saying this crash was somehow caused as the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims?”

TRUMP: “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a much higher standard than anybody else. And there are things where you have to go by brainpower. You have to go by psychological quality, and psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various, very powerful tests that we put to use. And they were terminated by Biden. And Biden went by a standard that seeks the exact opposite. So we don’t know. But we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter and a plane. That shouldn’t have happened. And, we’ll see. We’re going to look into that, and we’re going to see. But certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that’s psychologically superior. And that’s what we’re going to have.”

Q: “You have today blamed the diversity elements but then told us that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistake. You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake.”

TRUMP: “It’s all under investigation.”

Q: “I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.”

TRUMP: “Because I have common sense. OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level. When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time, and they’re all coming in different directions, and you’re dealing with very high-level computer, computer work and very complex computers.”

Q: “The implication that this policy [hiring people with disabilities] is new or that it stems from efforts that began under President Biden or the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is demonstrably false. It’s been on the FAA’s website —”

TRUMP: “Who said that, you?”

Q: “No, it’s on the website, the FAA’s website. It was there from 2013 ... it was there for the entirety, it was there for the entirety of your administration, too. So my question is, why didn’t you change the policy during your first administration?”

TRUMP: “I did change it. I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy. And then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I signed a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”

 

To preserve my sanity I am trying to avoid watching news and writing about the actions of the Provocateur-in-Chief. But the politicalization of everything sometimes makes the latter impossible.  No sense analyzing the foregoing.  Matt Davies’ political cartoon says it all.

But nonetheless I slide on the slippery slope into the fray, focusing on the normalization of absurdity, perhaps for no other reason than preserving documentation.  Our Gish galloping Provocateur-in-Chief is a Festivus for one, airing his imagined grievances, celebrating the misery deportations will cause, daring anyone to oppose him, his J6 army locked and loaded.

An excellent article “Trump and the Collapse of the Old Order” By Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal goes deeper into the seismic nature of it all.  Here are some bullet points:

·       No modern president has achieved this level of complete cultural saturation. It gives him power in this ill-educated, broken-up, low-attention span country.

·       [T]he second rise of Donald Trump is a total break with the past—that stable order, healthy expectations, the honoring of a certain old moderation, and strict adherence to form and the law aren’t being “traduced”; they are ending. That something new has begun. People aren’t sure they’re right about this and no one has a name for the big break, but they know we have entered something different—something more emotional, more tribal and visceral.

·       There’s a sense we’re living through times we’ll understand only in retrospect. But the collapse of the old international order and the break in America’s old domestic order are shaping this young century.

She warns Democrats: not to talk but do. Be supple. The Trumpian policies you honestly support—endorse them, join in the credit….Most of all, make something work. You run nearly every great city in the nation. Make one work—clean it up, control crime, smash corruption, educate the kids.

Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far.  It is time for the Democrats to take some responsibility and implement change.

But, what about Republicans and Supreme Court Justices?  Are there are few brave ones in Congress and/or on the Bench who will recognize the uber-seriousness of this moment, and choose those critical issues that truly threaten Democracy, and do the right thing to preserve the three branches of government?

Traditional journalism is part of the problem; even Noonan’s article which although insightful, normalizes the dangers being created by these first few days of the new “administration.” 

 

 

2025: Year of The ‘Imperial Me’

 

Peter Sellers as The Imperial Me

I’ve written several “New Year” entries, some hopeful, some less so, such as this one after the Trump-inspired violence and invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6,2021.

 

Also, this is not the first time I found a profoundly eerie prescient message in an old movie such as the dialogue from the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd , written by Budd Schulberg and Directed by Elia Kazan, about the power of a megalomaniac. There are parallels to Trump’s first run at the White House.

 

On Christmas Eve Turner Classic Movies carried Carol for Another Christmas, Ron Serling’s warning to the world about the consequences of a nuclear holocaust modeled after the Dickens’ Christmas classic.  

 

While Serling’s 1964 TV movie is focused on the doomsday clock, a portion of the film directly relates to where we seem to be going in a 2^nd Trump administration: controlling the masses for the benefit of a few while abandoning decency and honor and lawfulness.  It is also ironic that the main character in the film is named “Grudge” as grudge seems to be a motivating factor in Trump’s Cabinet choices, all seemingly designed to destabilize societal norms.

 

The film portrays a wealthy industrialist, Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden), who like Scrooge, needs a lesson in ignoring the needs of mankind. As Wikipedia details,  Grudge emerges into destroyed ruins that he recognizes as having been his local town hall, where he encounters the Ghost of Christmas Future (Shaw). This Ghost explains that the town hall was wrecked in a disastrous nuclear conflict that killed most of the world's people. A handful of survivors enter, led by a demagogue called "Imperial Me" (Sellers) who wears a Santa suit and a cowboy hat cut into a crown. The crowd cheers as Imperial Me is paraded in and gives a speech exhorting each person to act as an individual in their own self-interest. Grudge watches his butler, Charles (Rodriguez), try unsuccessfully to convince the crowd that acting collectively for the greater good of all is essential for humanity's survival.

 

It is the dialogue that begins with Peter Seller’s appearance, playing a cult leader (sound familiar?) by the name of “Imperial Me” (sound familiar?) who gleefully whips up the rage of his followers to abandon all vestiges of civility and law (sound familiar?)

 

Here’s the part that can serve as a metaphor for Trump’s role in January 6:

 

IMPERIAL ME: Now, folks, the first item on today's agenda is this business of the people from down yonder and the people from across river wanting to come in here and talk about what they call our mutual problems, our common differences.

[ Crowd murmurs ]

Now, they want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about our problems. They want to debate, debate, debate about solutions until somehow they get their problems solved. They want to waste our time. They want us to commit ourselves to that kind of surrender.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

Unpatriotic!

They're...

They're insane.

Unpatriotic!

[ Shouting stops ]

Now, then. They don't come out in so many words and say that they want to take us over.

[ Chuckles ]

They're too clever for that..But that's what they want. They want to take over us individual me. And if we let them seep in here from down yonder and across river, if we let these do-gooders, these bleeding hearts propagate their insidious doctrine of involvement among us, then, my dear friends, my beloved mes, we'se in trouble...Deep, deep trouble.

[ Laughter ]

And because...Because we have now reached a pure state of civilization, the world of the ultimate me is finally within our grasp...This world where only the strong will exist, where only the powerful will love, where finally the word "we" will be stamped out and will become "I" forever. Because we are each the wise...We are each the strong...And we are each the individual mes!

[ All chanting "me!" ]

[ Chanting continues ]

CHARLES: Listen! Listen! No, listen!

CROWD: No!

CHARLES: Please!

CROWD:  No!

CHARLES: Listen! Listen to me!

[ Chanting continues ]

Please, let me speak!

[ Chanting stops ]

IMPERIAL ME: Let him speak.

CHARLES: To the best of our knowledge, we are all of humanity who remain alive, all that's left. Now, we have survived the Holocaust, and if we are to go on surviving, we must work together now. We must talk together.

[ Light laughter ]

And if other people want to join us, if they want to talk with us, we... we must listen to them.

[ Laughter ]

And we must respond to them. We must begin again. We must have law again and  ethics and honor and decency.

[ Laughter ]

These things were not destroyed by the bomb!

[ Laughter continues ]

This time, they must be made real! They must be made facts!  Only these things can guarantee our survival!

[ Laughter continues ]

The potential goodness of man.

[ Laughter continues ]

The potential morality of man.

[ Laughter continues ]

The capability... that's it! The capability of human beings to achieve dignity and decency. Together! Not "I" or "they," but "we." Don't you understand? The only alternative to that is nothing! Don't you see that, people?!  Don't you see?!

[ Laughter continues ]

[ Microphone bangs ]

IMPERIAL ME: That's enough. Bring him over here. Come. Bring him over here. You are charged with the treason of involvement. You are charged with the subversion of the individual me. How do you plead?

WOMAN: Guilty, guilty!

ALL: Guilty, guilty, guilty!

[ All shouting ]

[ Microphone bangs ]

[ Shouting stops ]

IMPERIAL ME: You anything to say? It's your right as an individual me, you know. Just say anything that comes in your head. You don't have to think about it. Just say it. Go ahead. Oh, you want to use the microphone?

CHARLES: I may be all the sanity that is left. I may be all the conscience that remains on earth. I can't let you kill me!

[ Laughter ]

 

The “treason of involvement and the subversion of the individual me,” chilling in every respect.  This was the America when Trump left office and we voted for a reprise.  The death of Jimmy Carter and the impending passing of the baton, again, to DJ Trump mark the laying to rest “we” and the reemergence of “me.”

 

It will be the 4^th anniversary of the January 6^th insurrection tomorrow.  Indeed, the American Flag should fly at half mast out of respect for Jimmy Carter, but as well for abolishing justice for the events of January 6, 2021. At least there will be poetic justice: it still will be at half mast inauguration day.

January 6, 2021, also a day which will live in infamy