There are moments in America when you read the news and honestly wonder if the country has accidentally wandered into a rejected Netflix screenplay coauthored by Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel after a long drunken weekend rave in the basement of the Department of War.

We are told, daily, hourly, relentlessly, that there is no money.

No money for childcare.

No money for struggling seniors choosing between medication and food.

No money for veterans waiting endlessly for care.

No money for teachers buying glue sticks with their own salaries.

No money for affordable college, affordable housing, affordable insulin, or apparently affordable eggs.

Somehow, miracle of miracles, there is money for a Trump reflecting pool, a ballroom, a gold-plated vanity project Oval Office that was designed by Saddam Hussein’s decorator and now what sounds suspiciously like a politically flavored revenge slush fund.

According to reports, the Department of Justice announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” tied to the settlement of Trump’s IRS lawsuit.

A billion-point-seven-seven-six.

That is not found in the couch cushions money.

That is maybe we could fund schools, hospitals, roads, overall infrastructure, reduced prescription drugs, childcare and children with functioning textbooks money.

And forgive me, but when politicians begin using phrases like anti-weaponization fund, I instinctively start checking whether democracy still has a pulse.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are out here clipping coupons, arguing with insurance companies over whether breathing is considered a pre-existing condition, and praying their air conditioner survives one more summer.

Next thing you know, there’ll be a ceremonial moat around Mar-a-Lago with emotionally supportive swans.

What makes this especially surreal is the sheer disconnect between what average people are experiencing and what our demented and senile leader appears focused on.

Families are drowning in grocery bills and medical debt while Washington debates reflecting pools and ideological grievance payouts.

At some point, you stop asking, “Is this appropriate?” and start asking, “Are we being punked?”

And yet millions of Americans still cannot afford decent elder care for their parents.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but if we somehow locate nearly two billion dollars, perhaps the first call should not be to compensate January 6th felonious insurrectionists who brutalized and killed police officers along with compensating the Trump family because their feelings were hurt.

Maybe the call should go to veterans, schools, caregivers, exhausted parents, or seniors rationing pills like they are contraband rather than rewarding bad behavior, installing a gold ballroom or erecting the Arc de Fat Fuck Face.

But what do I know?

I’m just over here trying to afford blueberries.