It’s a point of frustration that I have even noticed locally among the donor types, a shaken belief that always lingering in the background, they were in charge and had more control over our republic form of government than other people who just showed up and voted in elections.  Because they give political candidates thousands of dollars in local races or millions in national ones, there is an assumption that they are really in charge and that candidates win, lose, and do as they are told based on who gives them money.  In the past, this has hidden itself behind some other behavior, and so long as it wasn’t too noticeable, nobody asked too many questions.  That was the world that George Soros manipulated with his billions of dollars, and those like him, and essentially what has caused so much trouble in politics.  Again, I have watched this at the local level closely, and I know all the people involved, many of whom I like personally.  It’s a path paved to Hell with good intentions but always ends in disaster.  The media will lock itself to whoever has the money, and the political tide always flows to where the money is coming from, primarily left-wing causes.  The willingness to say to the world, I give more money to politics, so I’m much more in charge than everyone else, tends to fuel left-wing causes by default, even if the donors consider themselves Republicans.  Because such ways of thinking are authority-based, they align with Marxist sentiments, so all the money-class influencers tend to think the same way, that they are in charge, and everyone else needs to fall in line somewhere downstream.  That is the meaning behind the threat of Alex Soros, the young kid not yet 40 who inherited all his dad’s money for political activism to destroy the world according to what their money can buy with influence.  But times are different now, and Trump, the leading candidate for the next presidential election, called the kid a degenerate, and that is something new.  Something all those donor class types are going to have to get used to, especially young Alex.

The trend in the future of politics will not be toward more money invested; it will be in the creative use of marketing.  Of course, the machine wants to be oiled, and the entire political machine these days, as America formed, wants everyone to keep pouring money into it, including the whole Fox News business model.  The assumption is that influencers like Fox News or the New York Times could heavily influence the kind of politics that people voted for so that the more money spent, the better the results.  Of course, the people wanting that money to flow in their direction wish to maintain such a belief system.  But what is new is a collision of two things: the realization that playing such a game did not give us the results we wanted as a society.  And that with the decentralization of information, political candidates no longer needed the media to get their message out.  Trump is very much a creation of this new way of doing things, and the donor class moved to support DeSantis because they believed they had more control over the political process than they had, and they have been shocked by what they have witnessed in 2023.  No matter how much money or negative news coverage they created, it has not moved the needle away from Trump.  If anything, it has only solidified the base of those candidates more.  So what’s all that about?

Ironically, I had great clarity on this issue while traveling a lot lately, not just seeing different cultures around the world and how they do things but hanging out with my grandchildren while visiting Disney World.  Here, they had access to the best things that the media could buy with 100 years of being at the top of the pyramid, which is what Disney essentially is: a media empire that believes it is the ultimate donor-class investor.  And with people from roughly 30 to 70, Disney is all they know and the traditional news powerhouse for information.  But my grandkids could have cared less about any of those sentiments.  Disney hasn’t made any new great musicals for their generation, and they don’t care.  Instead, while we were in line for some magnificent rides, my grandkids were excited about the latest YouTube drop of Skibidi Toilet, a whole topic.  I was in line with them watching the video drop that jumped to 1 million views within 15 minutes of airing.  Disney can’t do that, as most media companies can’t even comprehend that level of engagement.  The future of politics will be who can best utilize new media, not throw money at the traditional form, which has been easy and gotten us all into so much trouble.  The Trump presidency is a new media endeavor that will change politics forever.  As they have classically thought of themselves, the donors are learning how little control they have over anything anymore.  And it’s painful for them.  But the world will not be the same for young Alex, the Marxist makeover of his dad George and their many billions invested to essentially buy whores in the media who will do anything and say anything for a little bit of easy money. 

With Trump calling Alex Soros a degenerate, he is essentially establishing his independence from the money machine which has traditionally ruined politics.  Alex thinks he inherited the ability to body-slam any political rival with sheer money from his dad.  But in this world of tomorrow, a person like Alex could spend billions of dollars in traditional media, and achieve nothing, not a move of the needle in the least.  And that isn’t just because it’s George Soros and his kid, but that’s the rule for everyone.  When people talk about how they want to drain the swamp, they also mean the money that flows into it, making the water as deep as it is.  People weren’t kidding; they are tired of not having representative government, and we are witnessing a reasonably peaceful rebellion against the donor class who have screwed up so much over a long period.  Alex Soros cannot do as his dad has because the media has lost its trust and power. Therefore, no amount of money can give them back their reputation.  There is no sucking up to Disney with millions of dollars in ad revenue because the next generation isn’t watching Disney; they are watching Skibidi Toilet episodes, which have replaced the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon programming.  And, for the first time in American history, political candidates are now free of the donor class, which is what Trump’s political investment has displayed with great fanfare.  He’s right to call Alex Soros a degenerate.  But so are a lot of them, and what they are learning entirely too late is that people are upset with how the donor class has tampered with their lives by simply outspending normal people to have more of a voice in politics than they should.  And it has been shocking, but is the state of the world of tomorrow and the politics that manage it.

 

Rich Hoffman