DOJ argues for paying reparations to 1/6 seditionists

This may seem like a small matter given everything else going on, but its symbolic significance is great:

Jan. 6 defendants whose convictions were wiped out by President Donald Trump are entitled to a refund of restitution payments they made to cover damage to the Capitol, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The department’s determination could result in hundreds of payouts from the federal government intended to cover the cost of repairing about $3 million in damage to the Capitol from the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Traditionally, pardoned defendants haven’t been able to get back any money they were required to pay by way of restitution to either the government or the individual victims of their criminal acts, even in situations where the pardon was arguably issued to void a wrongful conviction.

What the DOJ is doing here is signaling that not only were the crimes that the 1/6 seditionists were convicted of committing not really crimes, their actions were so brave and praiseworthy that the government should take the extraordinary step of paying them reparations, in the form of reimbursements for the fines they were required to pay as part of their punishment for the crimes that were really heroism. Trumpism requires more than the alteration of the past: it requires a literal inversion of its meaning.

The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As
compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses,
more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters,
more books, more babies--more of everything except disease, crime, and
insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was
whizzing rapidly upwards.

Nineteen Eighty-Four