The first time I encountered the power of Internet politics was with the Bill Bradley for president campaign in 2000. John McCain also utilized the web effectively that year, and I still remember Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah inviting everyone to visit OrrinHatch2000.com every two seconds. But it was Howard Dean in 2004 who really figured out how to raise considerable amounts of money online through small donors.  At the time, and even a decade forward, it seemed like small donors might really solve the problem of the Republicans having a structural financial advantage which, of course, causes the Democrats to gravitate to a very centrist economic position so they can at least compete for large donor money. The double-win hope was that the Democrats would win more elections and feel free to have a more common-person focus while they were doing it.

But, writing in the New York Times, Tim Miller is correct to note that the whole thing has curdled. It reminds me of way the best dreams of the Sixties crashed on the shoals of Altamount, overdoses, Erhard Seminars Training, and Reaganomics. What we have now is a racket where countless gullible victims are separated from both their money and their tether to reality.

One of the cool things about the Dean campaign (and it shared this with the liberal blogosphere) was the sense of empowerment it gave to people. Deaniac’s came together in real life and online organically, establishing networks of common-minded people who quickly realized they had the power to make change. Part of that was financial power. The money was coming from people who didn’t give much and didn’t expect any direct return. The ask wasn’t personal, but broadly ideological, and more progressive than what Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party had on offer.

But today the art of getting money from ordinary folks has been perfected, and it entails causing a constant state of panic. These days there is plenty to panic about, but that’s part of the problem. We’d be frazzled even without being constantly reminded that we should be frazzled.

And so we’re deluged on both the left and right by constant alarmist pitches to give away our money, often to candidates who have no hope of winning. Donald Trump and his GOP took it step further by deceptively convincing people to give recurring donations without realizing they were making that commitment.

Last year I wrote about how the National Republican Congressional Committee’s donation form used a prechecked box scheme, which automatically doubled the dollar amount and made it recurring. A warning aggressively threatened donors if they unchecked the box. Similar tactics resulted in the Trump campaign’s having to return $122 million to supporters who had been duped and, in some cases, financially devastated.

The truth obviously suffers, since exaggeration and lies get more clicks than a sober explanation of our urgent challenges. So a side-effect of fundraising is a dumber, angrier electorate. We’re no longer getting some tonic to two-party corporatism but a nation of rattled morons who’ve just been bilked out of fifty bucks (or a hundred or a hundred and fifty).

We started out with an establishment that wouldn’t listen to us–that thought DLC Centrism was near perfection, that invading Iraq was a reasonable action–and we found a way to make our voices heard and to sway some elections and force the media to improve.

But now we’re just being brainwashed by sophisticated schemes that make us dupes and set us at each other’s throats.

Obviously, the right is enormously more responsible for this development than the left, mostly due to their more unscrupulous nature. But for progressives, we need to wake up to what’s been lost. Our best tool is now turned against us and our country. What we thought would lead to vast improvements is now threatening everything.

It’s not enough to have a faith in the possibility of progress. You also have to have a plan.

When human nature asserts itself and its gravitational pull on progress, we can’t pretend it’s not happening.