This morning millions of emails will be waiting in the inboxes of already-annoyed Americans.  Two main broods are responsible: Democrats and Republicans.

Also, this morning folks in the southeastern part of the US can steel themselves for the   tens of billions of noisy cicadas—a double emergence of two different broods—are beginning  to pop out of the ground.

There are a couple of differences: 1. The Democratic and Republican email broods emerge every election cycle. Mercifully, the bugs’ rare, synchronized event last occurred 221 years ago; 2. Both chatter incessantly, but the cicadas are compassionately silent when it comes to matching gifts.

[Agitator note: Fortunately, we’ve not been silent on the subject of matching gifts and, unlike the cicada that’s basically harmless to humans, as Kevin warns in  Sham, or Lighting Money on Fire, the potential for legal damage from phony matching gift offers from the politicians is far from harmless.]

I digress.  Rather than prolong a rant on the digital sewage that passes for fundraising appeals – “Save the nation.  Send $3  by midnight to qualify for the 600X match”–  it’s a great time to share a rare and quite public view of the working of a serious donor’s thought process.

The example’s name:  George Conway.

Conway is a well-known, deeply  respected  conservative lawyer who made his career and reputation on the right for decades. But, since Trump’s election in 2016 he’s been a  highly visible  critic of the former president. Criticism that’s come at great cost to both his family and in his personal life.

So you can imagine when the news broke last month that Conway,  who’s divorced from former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, agreed to headline an event for the Biden Victory Fund  AND wrote a check for $929,600 — the legal maximum an individual can contribute to such an entity.

Although the minimum gift suggested in the invitation for that event was $500, as both a fundraiser and citizen,  I find it instructive and inspiring to follow George Conway’s public and emotional explanation of how and why he arrived at his giving decision.

For video of Conway’s explanation on CNN click here.

Printed distillation of  George Conway’s words:

“If you told me that I would do something like that and support a Democrat and … headlining a fundraiser in Washington, asking Democrats to give to a Democrat, I would have said, ‘well, you know, this that’s just pure fantasy. …but the evolution was just watching how Republican Party has become something that’s completely unrecognizable.

“Four years ago, I voted in my 10th presidential election. And, for the first time cast my vote for the Democrat for the first time.  And I did that because I felt that Donald Trump was a threat to the country,  a threat to democracy. He doesn’t care a whit about the country. He doesn’t care a whit about the Constitution, about the rule of law, and he wants to undermine the country, its rule of law for his own political purposes.”

When asked by the CNN anchor why he made such a large contribution when it’s not in his professional interest as a lawyer and because the funds may be part of his kids’ inheritance, he answered:

“There was a moment while driving my car and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, well  I’m gonna ask these people to give money. I hate asking people to give money. I don’t even like asking people to give me money that they actually owe me!

“ I want to set an example. And I thought about the what the law allows. I’ve only given once to a Democrat, but that was only for a lunch for somebody who was being honored; a law partner of mine., And I gave $30,000 to the Trump victory fund in 2016. But my wife was running the campaign, and I was like, there was a reason.

“And I thought, why am I doing this? And I thought to myself, ‘It’s like, this is for all the marbles. I mean, after what we saw on January 6th and afterwards, and what we see him [Trump] now saying that he basically wants to turn the government into a vehicle for retribution against his political enemies…. I mean, he wants to turn the country into a Banana Republic, which he tried to do four years ago.

“ And I thought you know, there’s nothing more important than this. And yeah, it’s gonna come out of my kids’ inheritance, but the most important thing they can inherit is living in a constitutional democracy.

“And that was the moment when I said, I have to do everything I can.  I’m going to give them the maximum and no, I’m not gonna regret it. I mean, I’ll regret not doing it.”

Roger