There's a certain irony to a democratic party that's not able to give people the candidates they want. Reading the articles makes the whole party sounds like some MLM scheme. You have to pay to get in, raise X dollars every quarter to stay in, and get out there and lean on your network if you want any kind of leg up. But I feel like it makes sense that it would be that way, I think it's a symptom of how we view money. I think a lot of people see it as a morally negative commodity - not so much that having a lot of money makes you bad, but more that if you're good you don't need money. My wife is a grant writer and there are so many grant organizations that say their grants can't be used for salaries - as though accounting software and paint brushes are what's keeping at risk kids from falling into destructive patterns. But there's this societal trope that goodness is it's own reward and that the people who help don't need to be compensated for it. I think that gets mirrored in our political system. When we want something good, we have the belief that the goodness of that thing is enough - that it has tangible value. The people who don't believe that, the ones who believe dollars have tangible value, are the ones who are right and the ones who get into the positions as gatekeepers. I'm not saying that there's not value in being good, I'm saying that good is not the antithesis of money (not in this society anyway) and if we want to see beneficial change, we have to change our relationship to money.
I've long since become convinced that the only way to get elected in this country is to spend a shit-ton of money. The people who have shit-tons of money vote Republican. So if you want to run as a Democrat, you either have to roll up a lot of quarters or do the Democrat-lite shit that rich liberals want. And then Bernie Sanders came along, with his rolls and rolls and rolls of quarters, and they said "fuck him anyway." More than ten years ago, Jon Stewart argued that politics is dominated by the extremes because the moderates have better shit to do with their time. I know my wife's business (delivering babies) is awash in zealots and true believers that burn out after two, three years tops. The problem is, if you're trying to make a living you've got to trip over these people who think they don't until they wise up and fuck off.I think that gets mirrored in our political system. When we want something good, we have the belief that the goodness of that thing is enough - that it has tangible value. The people who don't believe that, the ones who believe dollars have tangible value, are the ones who are right and the ones who get into the positions as gatekeepers.
I think there's a lot of value in local government for this reason. Like, our city council is made up of people who generally want to help shape their immediate community. When there was a company that wanted to level some woods and build a new grocery store while strip malls were empty and in need of renters, the council stopped it and demanded the grocery make use of existing structures. It wasn't changing the nation, but it had more impact on me than 90% of national legislation.
For me personally, it's getting over the idea that money doesn't do good. I was thinking about getting a camel through the eye of a needle, which I think talks to a lot of our societal hangups - this idea that in being rich we can't achieve goodness. But I got to thinking that's more of a proverb against hording wealth. Like, if Bill Gates made all that money then sat on it until he died at which point his kids pissed it away, that wouldn't be good. But in making all that money then devoting his life to spending it to benefit people, his richness has done great good for this world. He's going to die pretty much penniless, he's made sure of that in his will, and I still believe there's a value to that. But it doesn't mean he had to spend his life penniless - and what he's doing is a testament against the idea. That's where my thoughts are at this point at least.