Endless solicitations for donations and requests for money for political campaigns make up 75% of my email junk folder.
The absolute meaninglessness and crassness arrives every single day, multiple times a day. Everyone is doing it, and so they all feel like this is the best way to spend their time and what they should be doing.
“If you aren’t doing your job, you should be fundraising.”
But lets stab the pause button on all of it. What is your job? These people all are part of a great machine known as representative democracy here in the United States of America. But since the primary form of political power and political speech is actually money, we can dispense with vast sections of what used to be political reality. Senators no longer need to deliberate, Representatives no longer need to represent. Political animals no longer need to do anything other than raise and spend money. That’s all there is to it. The money is the fuel and the Machiavellianism is the toolbox that the fuel is channeled through. The dark triad runs politics: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psycopathy.
So I get messages from Jon Hoadley, from Gary Peters, and a rogues gallery of other political animals all seeking just one solitary thing. Money. The toolbox has only one tool in it, the sopping paint-roller of fear. Money to buy writing about fear, and to instill it into the population. To squeeze us all using fear, appeals to fear, declarations of fear, condemnations using fear, it’s all the same message. We need money to terrorize you all, so that you will all give us more money, so we can ramp up the terror. More fear, more money, more fear, more money.
This is why politics is broken. This is why all of the norms are shattered. This is why the world is slowly and inexorably circling the drain. There is nothing else, no other messaging. No other communication. They don’t represent us, they simply solicit for money and vomit forth giant sopping loads of fear.
Fuck fear, fuck money, and fuck politics. This is why they fail, this is why it’s all crap.
This all came to a head with my US Senator, Gary Peters. I honestly don’t know who he is or what he stands for. The only time I ever got any communication from him, or I should say, is copy machine and letter folder, and envelope printer, and postal meter, was yesterday in a solicitation for money. I didn’t read anything in the actual letter. I just folded it up and slipped it in the recycling bag at home. It’s the same thing I do with the mental image of whoever Gary Peters is, I fold him up, and slip him into the recycling bag in my head. Right along with Gary Peters is Jon Hoadley. Whoever he is, whatever he stands for, the only time I hear from him is when he wants money. Again, I don’t care about him or what he represents, because it is all meaningless. It’s money, it’s fear, it’s politics.
Don’t ask us for money. Don’t make that ALL that you do. Engage with us, reach out to us, there are a lot of us but isn’t that a part of your actual job? And so, we return to the previous line above for a point: “If you aren’t doing your job, you should be fundraising.” And the answer is written as plain as day, you just aren’t doing your job. So all you are doing is fundraising and thinking that that is your job. That is why we are so very tired of all of you. You don’t know us, you don’t talk to us, you don’t represent us. You spend no time actually interested in your constituents and think that this is all a game of celebrity political whack-a-mole.
There is no love lost. It’s all lazy, mendacious, and corrupt. You wear a bright blue vest with the word DEMOCRAT written on it, and so we vote for you. Not because of who you are, but because we have reduced everything down to two colors. We vote and we elect you into office and we know that nothing will be accomplished, that the very best any of us have to hope for is a kind of silent trudging through the maintenance of the status quo. Life has a ritual, a pattern, a routine. As long as the routine is not affected, all the rest of it is just inconsequential political theater.
So, trot about on the political stage and waste your lives doing nothing for nobody. We aren’t watching, we don’t really care, you are all completely out of touch with the rest of us, that all of this is just an immense comedy. It’s a sham and we all know it. But none of us care to fight it out because there is no hope of change. There is nobody who will listen, there is nobody who actually cares, there is just another meaningless fear-driven solicitation for money.
