Opus 2026-405: Worth Your Salt

I was part of a zoom meeting recently and the question came up of how to support candidates and causes that we believe in without having all of our contribution be wasted.  Several of them lamented on all of the emails and phone calls they were getting from different political candidates.  They couldn’t understand how and why they were suddenly being hit by these things.  My memory tells me that it wasn’t sudden, that they’ve been hit quite a bit.  My ears go up when people talk about answering the phone and finding some kind of telemarketer on the other end.

I get a few of these, but not many because I don’t answer the phone unless I either know who it is or I’m expecting a call from a local business or doctor.  As a result, I don’t go on their list of hot calls.  I don’t respond to emails no matter how official they sound.  I delete them.  If given the opportunity to report spam, I will do so.  I still get more than I want, but not near what others get.

That still leaves the problem of supporting people and organizations that need support.  I know it goes against our intuition and our knowledge, but there are politicians running for office that need us to back them.  The problem is that my experience says that it’s almost impossible to actually be of assistance.  Years ago, I made a contribution at the encouragement of a Talking Head that I listened to on the radio.  He had a member of Congress and and she either was asking for contributions for herself or for someone else, I can’t remember.  Since I had at that point confidence in the talking head, I took his word for it and I believe I contributed $100.  At that point in my life that was a significant and almost sacrificial contribution.  I have no reason even today to doubt the congresswoman asking for the donation or the person I was donating it to.  They were worth the money.

The problem is, they didn’t get the money.  In this case, the amount that I donated was more than consumed by all of the follow up calls, surveys and other points of contact that had to be paid for somehow.  In the long run, my contribution cost the campaign money because they kept thinking that I would give them more.  Of course, they may have also sold my information to another campaign and generated income for themselves.  It’s hard to know.  Gradually over the years, the interruptions to my life faded away.

But the lesson was learned. 

homo unius libri