Now that the political season is finally over, at least for a few months, it’s time for some personal thoughts about that process.

I know that the title of this post is not exactly how Reagan described the problem, but I kinda think my words are more accurate than his were forty years ago. When the Supreme Court decided that money is a form of free speech everything changed. Billionaires became “kingmakers” and the rest of us were supposed to somehow counter their million dollar free speech with our own donations. Now, money spent on campaigns has increased exponentially with no end in sight, and I can’t see that it has done anything but poison the entire process.

Some of you have likely read some previous posts here about how I was going to donate my Spring pandemic check to make sure that Trump was driven out of office. I did that in mid-August, and it did happen, but I could not have predicted the side effect of that donation.

In the four months since that check was written I have had over 900 emails telling me they need more!

They all say if I could just send another $500 for this and $1,000 they can drive the evil Republicans out of office. They said if I just send more money that seven Republican Senate seats are within their reach. Looking back, we know that they only flipped one of those seats. I guess they needed another couple billion or so to actually accomplish more.

900+ emails in ninety days completely poisoned me on the entire political process. In fact, we have learned that all the money they spent had almost no effect on the outcome of any election. Republicans voted for Trump, his totally disastrous job didn’t cause a second thought in any of the white Evangelical MAGA clan. It didn’t matter that 100,000+ citizens died directly as a result of his being in the Oval Office. It is going to require more than more money to turn that around.

I don’t think I will ever give any more money to a political campaign again. Trump has exposed so many faults with the way executive power is administered in this country. There needs to be some serious fundamental changes to our Constitution to fix our times. The problem with that of course, is just who gets to make those changes? Are we finally on the slippery slope into something other than a democracy for our country? Only time will tell. The only thing I can say is that I won’t likely be around to see that happening. Good luck to all you who will.

That’s not a good way to end this post, but right now it is the best I got.

9 more days until he is gone