All money all the time

On July 3, 2026, Michelle Cottle wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled “This pathetic groveling is no way to rebuild a party.” She was referring to messages sent out to potential donors to Democratic candidates running for governmental offices. I am on many of the lists of such potential donors. I’ve noticed that being on one list leads to my appearing on many other lists to receive messages, mostly appeals for donations. I get dozens, if not hundreds, of fund-raising appeals every day. I have come to take a sadistic pleasure in removing as quickly as I can, appeals from candidates and causes that appear quite worthy of my support once I take a moment to read the content. Obviously, something’s very wrong with the fund-raising system for “progressive”causes and candidates. Cottle seemed to me to nail it with her locution: “pathetic groveling.”

Some messages start with “is there anything we could say to convince you…” Another recent message started with “Please please please please”.

There is real cause for alarm in some situations and people are sometimes really inclined to deny the gravity and urgency of bona fide emergencies. On the other hand, there is also the risk of becoming the “boy who called wolf” if one pulls out the emergency card too often or too readily dismisses peoples’ judgement about the appropriate level of concern. Consider the following message from “RESISTANCE PAC”.

With the heading “C-R-Y-I-N-G”; this message calls to the reader’s attention that polls show the race for Alaska Senate is tied.

Is that cause for crying? Or cause for normal campaigning? And who is “RESISTANCE PAC” anyway?

Television inures people to crisis. TV shows and movies are full of murder and other horrific events, all bombarding millions of overworked,  exhausted, workers trying to catch a break in their easy chairs from the unremitting stress of paying their bills. In that circumstance, TV programming aims to wake them up with short, alarming, frequent messages. The net result has been the transformation of our inboxes as described above, with a concomitant reduction of more thoughtful discussions of what would be good for our nation and world.

In some of the few recent commentaries on contemporary digitized political conversation, (e.g. Cottle,2026) a few commentators have pointed out that the power of knocking on neighbors’ doors, listening to their concerns in dialogue with our own, has proven to be a uniquely effective political tool, as in the New York mayoralty race in which Zohran Mamdani was elected. Ideas and concerns were exchanged; minds were changed. People grew in the process, without necessarily any exchange of cash.

In the end, then, inflammatory appeals to our anxieties and fears, demonization of the writer’s opponents, and appeals to our pocketbooks, have replaced political thought in the public arena. All that has been replaced by emotional manipulation, not by decree or coercion, but by the insidious effects of dollars and (non)sense. The processes by which we sell cosmetics to each other does not transfer well to the exchange of political views. For that, we need thought and conversation. Instead, we get recruited as foot soldiers in Donald Trump’s campaign to make us think about “all money all the time”.