If you are reading this blog, you will note two aspects of my blog that might be salient. They will only be evident if you look closely. First, there is no Paywall. I charge nothing for my ideas. Indeed, I encourage you to repost or use my ideas in any way that you think will help others. Second, there are no advertisements. I take no money from anyone. I am beholden to no companies or corporations for endorsements or financial remuneration. If anyone does not like what I say, that is their problem. I am free and unencumbered to say it and you are free and unencumbered to read it. No sixty second sound bites from anyone before you can plow ahead. The only thing standing between you and my blog are the bits and bytes of your computer and the speed of your Internet provider.
I point the above out because it seems that what is obvious to me is not obvious to others. Most of us know that the USA and its government is seriously broken. It is dysfunctional, immoral and often now illegal and unconstitutional. What is the biggest reason for this? Simple. Money and greed and the power that money begets. Ergo, if money is as they say, “The Root of All Evil,” than how can asking for more money fix the problem. Imagine if there were a fire burning in your house and you tried to put it out by throwing money on it? Well, that is what too many people are trying to do.
Many bloggers are now asking for money before you can read their blogs. How do they think this will make the world a better place to live? “Just give me money and I will share my wonderful ideas with you.” In other words, I am no different than the other greedy people who would sell their souls for a few dollars. I will sell my soul for a few bucks that I might make on Substack or some other place that allows Paywalls and advertisements.
If you think advertisements are benign and harmless, you are delusional. Madison Avenue and the corporate advertising machine are the number one brainwashers in America. They are the primary reason that people keep spending and spending. Madison Avenue exists to convince you that you are inadequate and that if you only buy product X, it will make you feel better and bestow happiness on your life. Than, you only have to keep buying more to stay happy. Think of the junk that you see every day trying to be sold to suckers to make their lives better. Not a prophet in history preached that you can have a better life by having more things. If you support advertising, you support this evil concept. The foundation of this concept is Greed that pervades Corporate America.
Next we have politicians whose every message ends with “SEND MONEY” or “DONATE TO MY CAMPAIGN.” I cannot think of a campaign or revolution in history from Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon or Lenin to Toussaint Louverture or Simon Bolivar or Gandhi or Martin Luther King, where they sent out advertising brochures or flyers asking for money. They might have solicited soldiers or workers but people not money were their primary objectives. You of course can argue that some of these individuals had the power and resources of the state to fund their campaigns. I concede that this is true. However, it is equally true that without people, their campaigns and revolutions would have failed.
I see too many politicians who seem to believe that if they can only get enough money, they will then be able to buy enough advertising to convince you to vote for them. Nothing could be more stupid. Harris spent nearly a ¼ billion dollars more than trump during the last election and obviously lost. All of her money did her no good. Nor did her celebrity endorsements. The day after the elections, the DNC asked for more money to defeat trump’s policies. [By the way, the CEO of ActBlue, the major fundraiser for the Democrats has a gross salary of approximately $500,000 dollars a year and many of the senior executives of this organization make well over $100,000 dollars a year. This should dispel any notion you have that fundraisers for the Democrats are benevolent donors of their time and energy.]
The other point about advertising’s power to convince anyone to vote concerns the voters themselves. How many trump supporters do you think changed their mind because they listened to or watched a Harris ad? How many Harris supporters do you think changed their mind because they watched a trump ad? And what of the thirty-three percent of the people who did not vote? A percentage that has remained roughly the same since the first voting in this country for George Washington. Nearly every election a third of Americans DO NOT vote. How many of these non-voters do you think changed their mind to vote for either Harris or trump because of some cute and slick campaign ad? Madison Avenue is laughing their asses off every time an election comes around because they are the real winners. As the famous pianist Liberace once said, “I am laughing my way all the way to the bank.”
Einstein once made the following two profound statements, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them” and “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We are insane if we think that we are going to change a system based on greed and money by simply donating more money to fund this system. What could be more preposterous than this idea?
Let me tell you a little story that I experienced in the 2024 election. A friend of ours from church decided to run for state representative. I believe that she supported many if not most of the same policies that I do. However, I told her as well as others that I knew that I was no longer donating money to any campaigns. We discussed some ideas at church one day and she was very pro-education, and she thought that we needed to do some things differently. I gave her my personal card and said that I would be happy to discuss some of my ideas on education. Ideas that come from teaching for over fifty years now. A short time later, she sent me a notice that she was hosting a campaign fund raiser. I was somewhat surprised since I thought I made it clear that I would not donate money to anyone for a campaign effort. I was also perplexed since I believed in her ideas, and I admired her personally. Nevertheless, I decided to stick with my convictions about money. Instead, I sent her an email saying that “I would not make campaign donations, but I would help her with phone calls, signs or going door to door.”
Weeks went by. She never called to set up a time to talk to me about my theories of changing education nor did she ever call to ask me to help physically in any way with her campaign. Come the election, she lost to her opposition by a 56 to 44 margin. Would my help have made any difference, or would my money have made any difference? I have no way of knowing.
During the last election, being a guest on Podcasts has emerged as a new political tool and strategy. Judging by the election results, it might be a better strategy than the money wasted on advertising. Some data concerning the visibility that trump gained versus Harris gained on podcasts are as follows:
Trump’s Appearances/Mentions: Trump has been mentioned in or appeared on a significantly larger number of podcasts, with nearly 70,000 instances, according to Brookings, citing Ivy, a podcast discovery service.
Harris’s Appearances/Mentions: Kamala Harris has been mentioned in or appeared on a little over 12,000 podcasts.
This data suggests that while Trump had more individual podcast appearances, he also received substantially more mentions or coverage across a wider range of podcasts compared to Harris.
A friend of mine recently called me up to tell me that I should watch Pete Buttigieg on a Podcast called Flagrant with a guy named Andrew Schulz. Four other young males of various ethnicities all casually dressed flanked Shultz and Buttigieg as they engaged in a casual banter about life and politics.
This podcast and others of the same ilk have nothing in common with the traditional sit-down interviews that politicians used to have on shows such as Face the Nation and 60 minutes. Podcasts like Flagrant are like sitting in your buddies living room or Arizona Room and slurping a beer while casually discussing the latest news. Not a woman was present in the room with Buttigieg and Schulz. A more or less macho image pervaded the discussions. It seem macho has become the new norm in politics today. Women can stay in the kitchen while the men hide out in their man caves and solve the problems of the world.
My friend had asked me what I thought of Buttigieg? I wondered if Pete attending all the macho podcasts was a strategy to set him up for the next election cycle. I have a strong belief that is what his advisors are endorsing. Perhaps this is being pragmatic and simply making maxim use of the new media. Or perhaps it is targeting the same demographic that trump targeted so successfully. I queried ChatGPT to get the results on trump’s election demographics. They were as follows:
| White voters (overall) | ~80–82% | Largest core group |
| White evangelical Protestants | ~82% (South); 43% of R base | Bedrock core |
| Latino voters | 46–48% | Historically high support |
| Latino men | ~54–55% | Key swing within Latino support |
| Asian Americans | ~40% | +10-point gain since 2020 |
| Black voters | ~15% (esp. young men) | Doubled since 2020 |
| Young men | ~55–56% | Social media & influencer effect |
A reasonable estimate for men aged 25–45 is around 50–52% of Trump voters. This is a majority of his voting demographic. Watch some of the podcasts like Joe Rogan and Flagrant and you tell me what demographic you think they are appealing to. Rogan averages 11 million views on Spotify and Flagrant (numbers are not public) is estimated to be in the millions with specific episodes passing ten million viewers. With these numbers and the type of audience watching, millions of dollars on traditional advertising is a waste of time and money.
Conclusions:
- If you want change in this country, do not send another dime to a politician.
- If you must fund any politician, look at how many PACs they subscribe to or how many lobbyists they get funding from. Stay away from any with PACs hiding under aliases like Patriots for Freedom or Americans for Liberty.
- Donate your time and talent to anyone running for public office before you donate any money.
- Encourage your choice for office to get out there and talk to people. Consider people for office who can really relate to the people who are going to elect them. Any lawyer that went to a private high school and then graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard and never served a day in the military or put in an honest days work is not likely to know the problems of the common people.
- Think before you send any money to anyone. What are they going to use your money for?
- If you have a printing press in your house or a tree that grows money, than by all means, send all the money you want. While you are at it, could you send me a few thousand dollars?
P.S.
Before I could even get this blog up, I get an email from the new “Hero” of the Democratic Party telling me the following and three times asking for donations in the same email.
“We will need to run the largest and most effective campaign in history for the next five months to win the general election. The same billionaires whose money could not stop us before, are throwing everything they have to crush us. And the reality is that they are going to go after any candidate in any part of the country who dares to champion working people.”
“What we will achieve together sends a message across America — and throughout the world.
The people can topple political dynasties. The people can build coalitions. The people can win.
So join our movement and lets bring forward a new generation of leadership.
In solidarity,”
Zohran Mamdani
Aging Capriciously 