One Dollar = One Vote, The Democracy’s New Math

Apparently, I’ve awakened after a long winter’s nap. I don’t recognize many of the institutions I used to rely on for sanity and common sense. I look around and find a divided country based on racism, fear, economics, and rhetoric. Hitler used a similar division in Germany to enflame normal people and the Nazis came to power and millions died. Once upon a time, our conversations and cooperative form of government helped to prevent things like that from happening here…but not so much anymore.

Not too many years ago the Supreme, well, supreme Court decided that dark money could fund elections. And that, dear friends, was the end of meaningful discourse. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you might be on…conservative or liberal, the days where dollars buy votes is upon us. It’s horrendous. It’s not handing out cash to people at the polls, it’s billionaires personally funding huge campaigns by both parties to create discord and conflict among the voters…among us, our neighbors, our colleagues. In days gone by, people might disagree on some issues but could usually work things out with civility. Now, dark money funds organizations to prevent civility and compromise.

Some people have talked about term limits. I don’t think that would work. The RNC and DNC would “qualify” candidates and pull the strings using dark money to manipulate the voters. It’s disheartening. Clarence Thomas goes on dark money funded vacations and he’s supposed to represent the “fairest in the land.”

It’s not about the human issues anymore. It’s not about “we the people” as individual voters anymore. It’s about who can spend the most dollars to scare people into voting for them. I hope our kids can fix this shit show we’ve left them.