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[DirkGently]

23. Money works, but it's not the only thing that does.

This whole, "instant worldwide communication" thing we have going cuts in a lot of different directions at once. Some for better; some for worse.

One of the potential upsides is that people / candidates / ideas are not utterly invisible without millions in advertising dollars.

It's going to be interesting as the flood of dark money CU unleashed fails to transform the entire political landscape into a series of billionaire-backed shills. The panic and rage in their eyes when President Scott Walker doesn't happen.

All those dollars down the drain.

But the perception that money is the only thing that counts is part of the problem, too. Part of what we see going on in our own party is the drumbeat that only well-ensconced beneficiaries of the wealthy in-groups are viable candidates, so we may as well roll over and turn the whole party into a slightly less offensive version of the corporate subsidiary the Republican Party has been for years.

We need to beat those empty suits, and their backers and their networks of insiders. Beat them well and beat them often.

We can't start soon enough.