Skip to main content

The Viral Candidate - Introduction

 

What if a public-school teacher ran for President of the United States?

Just to be clear, I am talking about me. What if an average American ran for president?

 Twenty years ago, this would have been unthinkable, as there was no inexpensive and effective method to disseminate information to enough voters. The PAC’s will certainly ignore anyone who has no interest in increasing their wealth, so where would the money come from?

Now we have social media, the internet, and GoFundMe. I can share information with the largest voting block without spending a dime; merely becoming viral will get me the support and start the discussions to bring voters around to a new (and old) way of campaigning. GoFundMe will allow a person with student loan debt and making less than living wage to go around the country and talk to fellow Americans about what they need.

This is the first thing that will separate me from the pack: I want to listen. I want to know what you need. What we are afraid of has been thrown at us for decades and addressing them on their own is one of the many band-aids on the bullet wounds in our nation. I want to listen to ordinary people about what has happened to their communities and what they want them to become.

Imagine America…

I want to make people’s lives better all over the country, and I won’t make any money doing it (other than that gorgeous presidential salary for 4 years of work). Okay, so I’ll make more money doing this for 4 years than I have made in the over two decades of full-time employment in one of the wealthiest areas in the country.

I want to run as the Founding Fathers would have approved; no political party and my Vice President is whoever comes in 2nd in the general election. This means, essentially, that I’m asking people to use ranked choice voting to determine whose experience will aid me in my quest to be a one-term, highly effective president.

Remember America…

              There are so many problems that need an injection of cash that, for profit reasons, businesses will not take on. This is where my favorite economic thinker comes in: the role of the government is to provide for the good of the citizens and regulate the economy, so the people aren’t exploited and can use their enriched lives to pursue happiness with their liberty protected. This is something we have not done in this nation for quite some time…since the 50’s really. And even then, large swaths of the population were left out of this prosperity.

We can learn from our mistakes, and the Enlightenment thinkers that we have stopped reading, and work together to make a nation that works for all of us, has a stable economy, and a community spirit that we used to have, and must have again.

Let’s Make Our America Work for Us!

~~~~~

              Now that you’ve read my introduction, you probably have a lot of questions. First, how can someone who has only been to a handful of states and countries possibly run the country? Well, obviously I’m not going to do it alone, and I have enough common sense to want experts and seasoned people from the field to inform my decisions. How will I find these people? By travelling the country.

              I do not want to run until I’ve seen the nation. I have a dream of this nation ensuring all the basic needs are provided for all its citizens. I know what that can look like in some places, but there are so many different communities and climates in the nation, that the only way to know if it will work is to see the area for myself. I, like many of you, am a kinesthetic learner and need to see and work with something to learn about it in a meaningful way.

              How will I see the nation? Luckily, after I teach summer school, I do not have a contract lined up for the next school year. Therefore, I propose to start travelling this fall and do it if there is the interest and money to continue. Obviously, I don’t have any money because I’m a teacher, so I would set up a GoFundMe to travel around the country without overspending. I will use my own car and drive around, staying in hotels and with kind strangers along the way. I will document it all on YouTube, which I would start as The Viral Candidate.

              This series will either be dreamy fiction or a powerful nonfiction…only time will tell. Follow me on an idealistic journey around the country, talking about what people really need and how the government and industry can give that to them.

             

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Musing on the News - Book Bans

                 Time published an article on 4/20 titled “New Report Finds That Book Bans Have Reached Their Highest Levels Yet.” As an avid reader I am immediately bothered by this, but I think it is worth explaining why.               First, over half the country is functionally illiterate, and even more don’t like to read, so who are we banning books for, anyway? It’s not like online ads that subliminally change your thinking. If you want to read a book, you have to physically get it, let someone else know what you’re reading (checking it out of a library or buying it in a store), and spend hours reading the material, depending on how fast you read. Reading is also self-selecting, as you can figure out by the book cover and back if you want to spend the time to decipher its contents. Reading social media and news is anonymous (except for the data points being collected on ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Viral Candidate - Kids

Kids               I don’t want to run for public office, I never have, but if I did, I would focus on our children and how to set them up for future success. As a member of the first generation in this country predicted to be worse off than their parents both physically and financially, this is particularly important for me . Kids are our future, and we need to do a better job taking care of them and enabling them to have the quality of life we wish for them (which I’m assuming is better than the one we have made for ourselves). I’m a public-school teacher of middle and high school students and have been for over a decade (since before the iPhone came out and teaching fully metamorphosed into an exercise in frustration). As a public servant and one who has a heart for the future success of our nation through the next generation, I find it important to address what we are going to do for our descendants (while figuring ...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Hold

  The Viral Candidate – On Hold               I really don’t want to run for office. I’m an idea person, not an implementation person. I have a lot of ideas that I think would do a lot of good. I realized that all the political candidates have done something “noteworthy” in politics or life before trying to run the country. This feels elitist, but also ensures intelligent, capable people are the ones running. Or maybe those are the people who refuse to run because our political landscape has gotten so toxic. With that thought, I want to finish some of my ideas and do something larger than being a high school teacher before I try to imagine a national political campaign. Therefore, I am putting the Viral Candidate project on hold for a year.               I have been trying to find a way to build a platform and have done so with little guidance so far...
Post a Comment
Read more