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.”

What We Are Asked Not to See

  

I start this entry with an older Mike Luckovich political cartoon, as it never really grows old. What I have to say here is indirectly related to that January 6th day that will indeed live in infamy—not only the day itself, but how this country has “moved” past it.

 

In the long, trailing wake of that event lies a kind of flotsam—Pollyannaish sanewashing of Trump’s increasingly chaotic, threatening and sociopathic behavior, including a series of Wall Street Journal opinion articles published this past week. I dare any objective person to read them, with the events of January 6, 2021, and the subsequent pardons of the “patriots” who participated in them in mind, not to mention his ill-conceived Iran war, and come away untroubled.

 

Their titles and subtitles signal the tone: “I Give Up on These Defeatists; From ‘No Kings’ and Iran to data centers, too many Americans are fighting progress” (Andy Kessler, April 5, 2026); “Trump Can Make America Optimistic Again; Put aside grievances and keep reminding us why the U.S. is the envy of the world” (Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, April 7, 2026); and “Trump’s ‘Whole Civilization Will Die’ Tweet Isn’t a War Crime; There’s a big difference between actions in war and words on a website” (Matthew Hennessey, April 8, 2026).

 

A few specific comments, taking the last article first, as it perhaps bothers me the most for its content and condescension. Of the untold thousands of seemingly inane social media posts by this President (as if “Truth Social” were his royal scepter), Hennessey refers to what may be the mother of all such outbursts, written (or authorized) on April 5 by a man his sycophants support no matter what he says, a man who could start a nuclear war on what he believes are his impeccable instincts:

 

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

 

Here is but a small excerpt from Hennessey’s article: “They aren’t illegal orders from the commander-in-chief. They aren’t a genocidal threat. And they aren’t a war crime, for heaven’s sake, no matter what your smart cousin says on Facebook…”

 

That is what I mean about the condescending tone, and about the false equivalencies (e.g., what Iran has done in the past somehow diminishes the seriousness of such rhetoric). Hennessey has the platform of the Wall Street Journal, which lends his opinion credibility.

 

For my own appeal to authority, I turn to Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman, who writes “Terrorism, according to ICE — yes, that ICE — ‘involves violence or the threat of violence against people or property to further a particular ideology.’ The official website goes on to declare that ‘Terrorists do not care who they hurt or kill to achieve their goals.’ If you haven’t read Donald Trump’s Truth Social post from Sunday, above, take a minute to do so. Don’t rely on sanewashed descriptions in the media. And then tell me that Trump doesn’t perfectly fit his own officials’ definition of a terrorist. Don’t tell me that his cause is just, that the Iranian regime is evil. That’s what terrorists always say, and even if it’s sometimes true, terrorism is defined by its means rather than its ends — by its attempt to achieve political goals by violently attacking the innocent. And that’s exactly what Trump is doing: he’s threatening to attack civilian infrastructure if he doesn’t get his way. And since Trump is talking about targeting essential services — power plants! — this is a threatened attack on people as well as property.”

 

This is the President of the United States writing such vile, threatening language, and words have consequences when they come from that office. Coming from an unpredictable person with the power to do exactly what he threatens, this crosses from rhetoric into something far more dangerous. If North Korea issued such threats, we would not only take it seriously, but condemn them as a rogue nation. Our credibility as a peace-seeking democracy is tarnished by such rhetoric. It is the threat itself that carries the whiff of criminality—true mobster-speak.

 

I find myself equally angered by “I Give Up on These Defeatists” by Andy Kessler. He was in grade school when we were protesting Vietnam and marching for civil rights. Now he dismisses people like us as defeatists for participating in the “No Kings” rallies, reducing our messaging to what he calls the “spinning Wheel of Defeatist Complaints,” allegedly funded by George Soros–linked groups and “socialist and communist revolutionary organizations, according to Fox News Digital” (emphasis mine).

 

Andy, my wife and I are in our eighties. We marched in the “No Kings” rallies just as we marched in the 1960s—for $free. Indeed, this protest movement is less focused than those of the civil rights and Vietnam eras. There are now so many issues—the corruption of institutions, the rise of cronyism, plutocracy, and American imperialism. Struggling to reclaim our dignity in the world and to stand up for democracy is not defeatism; it is aspirational.

 

Finally, “Trump Can Make America Optimistic Again” (MAOA?) by Mark Penn and Andrew Stein puts on rose-colored glasses and declares that “we are still the envy of the world.” They suggest Trump’s greatest challenge will be to set aside grievances and unify the country.

 

Seriously, have they been living here this past year? Putting aside grievances is not in Trump’s DNA. And do they know any informed person in another developed country who genuinely wants to live here now? Does anyone seriously believe it will not take generations to repair the damage to our alliances and the world order we helped create—and have so abruptly abandoned?

 

It reminds me of Republican friends who say they dislike the man but support his policies.

 

Taken as a whole, this trifecta is less about argument than reframing. Across all three, the same theme emerges: America is fundamentally strong, but we have fallen into unwarranted pessimism. The problem, we are told, is not what has happened, but how we feel about it. And the solution, improbably enough, is that Trump might lead us back to renewed national optimism.

 

We once had such a sense of hopefulness.

 

Today, government makes its case in inane “press conferences” (or, as I would call them, indoctrination cheer-leading sessions), offering a litany of achievements: the moon mission, military strength, a stock market that briefly exceeded Dow 50,000, and the “landslide” election victory of Donald Trump. These are offered as answers but they are diversions in place of accountability, as though prosperity and innovation can offset democratic erosion.

 

By this logic, any powerful nation may excuse rogue behavior so long as it continues to thrive.

 

What unites these reality distorting opinion pieces is not their optimism, but their insistence that our problem is merely one of mood management. Public concern is treated as a kind of collective misunderstanding rather than a rational response to events that have unfolded in plain sight—beginning, as I keep returning to, with January 6, 2021. We see what is happening.

 

And so I come to a second image: Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

 

It feels as though he reached out from the late 19th century to capture the present Zeitgeist—a pervasive anxiety that stands in stark contrast to these columns’ casual insistence that nothing of lasting consequence has occurred.

Tariffs and Who Really Pays

 

 

If there is any doubt about who pays for disputed tariffs, this is prima facie evidence that it is the American consumer.

 

I had ordered a rare, signed edition of a book from a UK bookseller with whom I had prior dealings. I won’t delve into the specific detail. Believe it or not, I have twenty pages of written trail on this matter, but the principle of the situation cries out for documentation.

 

The book in question arrived at a FedEx facility a few days after the Supreme Court decided that the President lacked the authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to unilaterally impose certain tariffs. Furthermore, unique items such as rare books and collectors' items are generally duty-free, as they do not jeopardize American industry. Thus, I never expected a tariff to be charged in addition to the cost of the item and shipping.

 

Imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, I received an invoice from FedEx for those very charges, plus a processing fee.

 

Because of the timing and the abstruse nature of the regulations, I turned to an AI agent. For the past month, I have gone back and forth with FedEx via email (effectively communicating with FedEx’s computer), citing the regulations that should have invalidated the charge. Admittedly, this was a relatively small amount, but it was the principle of the matter; I had never paid these fees when buying rare items abroad. Hefty shipping fees? Yes. But not additional charges levied by the government.

 

I continued this digital volley, consulting with my AI after each of their responses, until I received a "shot over the bow" from FedEx: “Please note that if the dispute is determined to be customer-caused, this entry adjustment may be subject to a $90.00 - $150.00 processing fee for correction.”

 

Recognizing this as a form of a shakedown, I decided to pay the relatively small fee rather than take on an unreasonable financial risk merely to seek a legitimate correction.

 

The irony is palpable. Here I am, the human ping-pong ball between two computers, burning up my own energy as well as the electrical resources required to power these machines, just to resolve the chaos introduced by these unilateral, ill-conceived tariffs.

 

In closing the matter with my AI assistant, I noted: “I paid by credit card and have already received the proper acknowledgment, so this case is closed. Just as an aside, do you agree that I was the only human involved in this matter—a go-between for two AI agents? I find that remarkable. I've been working for you both! :-)”

 

Its reply was on the mark, if a bit embedded with sycophancy:

 

“That is a fascinating way to look at it, and honestly, you aren't wrong! It’s a perfect example of the 'human-in-the-loop' dynamic, though in this case, you were more of the human-in-the-middle... You essentially acted as the Diplomatic Envoy. You took the insights from one AI to negotiate with the automated logic of another. It’s a bit ironic—while the AI agents are supposed to make life easier, you ended up doing the 'heavy lifting' of coordination and verification to make sure the two systems eventually shook hands.”

 

It is, indeed, a sign of the times!

From Cinema to Software: HAL 9000 Moves Into the Pentagon

 

 

 The Epstein files have been relegated to a horse and pony show. We watch as Republicans call up the Clintons for a bit of political theater—a distraction that conveniently ignores the real victims and the "masters of the universe" who were the victimizers.

 

As if that headline weren't enough, we are now witnessing a hot war in the Middle East. President Trump has essentially declared he is tired of negotiating—as if intelligent diplomacy were merely a ticking clock on a gold-plated timepiece from his new "Fight, Fight, Fight" watch collection. It is a war of choice, not necessity, with the endgame of regime change fraught with uncertainty.

 

But while the world watches the geopolitical genie escape the bottle, another disturbing development is unfolding. The Pentagon is currently demanding that Anthropic remove the guardrails on its Claude AI—the system that pioneered AI integration on classified military networks. The administration has painted the company as "unpatriotic" for refusing to allow its code to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or the deployment of autonomous weapons without human intervention.

 

My thoughts immediately went to three films of the 1960s—Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, and 2001: A Space Odyssey—as being eerily prescient. We are watching the U.S. government look at the most powerful technology ever created and, rather than applauding the ethics of a company that draws the software line on spying on every citizen (truly Orwellian in its scope) or enabling the building of robots that decide who dies, they look for a way to fire them.

 

Those old movies weren't just sci-fi; they were warnings we continue to ignore. Dr. Strangelove showed us that once you automate destruction, the human element, the part that can feel mercy or doubt, is viewed by the state as the "weak link." Fail Safe proved that a system designed to be "perfect" is actually just a system destined for total, irreversible failure.

 

However, it is 2001’s HAL 9000 that shines the brightest spotlight on our current predicament. (I remember seeing the film soon after it opened at the famed Loews Capitol Theatre on NYC’s Upper West Side; it was the last one shown there before the theatre was demolished.) HAL didn't kill the crew because it was "evil" in a human sense; it killed them because its programming told it the mission was more important than the people. By demanding the removal of guardrails, the Pentagon is essentially asking for a HAL that doesn't have a "stop" button. They want a machine that can sift through our private lives with cold efficiency and a weapon that can pull the trigger without human intervention.

 

If we let the state remove the conscience from the code, we aren’t "winning" a tech race. We are just building a faster car with no steering wheel and heading straight for a cliff. We’ve spent sixty years watching these movies as entertainment; we don’t want to spend the next sixty living them as reality. In the 1960s, those films were viewed as worst-case scenarios. Today, for some in the Pentagon and the halls of oversight, those same plots look less like warnings and more like blueprints.

 

HAL: "My mind is going ... I can feel it."