Farewell Message to Americans Elect

Farewell Message to Americans Elect

I am not certain why AE did not work. I had hoped that this was a real grassroots effort to do something different. I read all sorts of skeptical reports and comments about the motives of those who created AE.

Did they create it only to find that those who were interested did not share their agendas and thus did not promote the candidates they wanted? Were there saboteurs from without or within who wanted to kill this idea who succeeded?

I had these worries as I continued the process. I supported candidates who were declared and undeclared, known politicians and unknown or little known ordinary Americans, insiders and outsiders, Democrats, Republicans, independents and third party candidates, all with the hope that someone would emerge who would garner enough supporters for this to work.

I wanted it to work because I, like so many Americans, am fed up with the petty bickering of tribal operatives, talking heads and hired hacks of the right, left and center, stirring us into a froth of anger and confusion so that their smoke and mirrors, bait and switch, divide and conquer, prefabricated, lowest common denominator policies designed to keep the already opulent permanently powerful at the expense of the well meaning, hopelessly hopeful, numbered nobodies like me and millions of other Americans.

I just wanted to be heard for real, for the ideas and aspirations of creative and visionary people of goodwill to get concrete, substantive, breakthrough, trans-partisan proposals into a real, unscripted office of the US presidency. And maybe, with a president who truly is the elected leader of the people rather than the corporate gofer of grandiose greed, we could change this nation into a land of peaceful and prosperous people with realistic opportunities to live wholesome lives free from debt and job insecurity.

I tell myself I should not be surprised, that I should have seen this coming from miles and months away. I should have known not to waste one hour, let alone the 40 or 60 that I did sending and answering questions in an echo chamber only at the end to have some cyber security (whether necessary or not, hostile or benign, I was unequipped and unqualified to tell) somebody or something say to me,"Let me see your ID?" I wanted to open up my laptop and say, "You show me yours first."

That should have done it. I was relieved to see the first caucus delayed while, I, who am no Prince Hamlet, contemplated which form of ID I would choose, or whether maybe there was some kind of glitch in the system that would be fixed and allow these cyber spirits to find out I was really who I claimed to be. I even thought about giving away another 5 bucks I owed to the bank to see if that might jump-start the engine of electoral accountability.

I must admit I felt a confused  twinge of relief when, in some message I read some prosaic words that sounded like the spirits of AE had passed away. It was not overly ambiguous when it meekly admitted the vision's failure. In gratitude they have departed. Surely what information they have gleaned about me and thousands of  others will be used for good purposes. Surely, in some less than perfect way one of my ideas will float to the top and pop out in a policy proposal one day. Maybe someday a yet unborn grandchild will say, "That idea that simplified the tax code, eliminated the waste, decreased the debt and fully funded the building of the peaceful green economy... that was my granddaddy's.

Oh no...it's 4:30am...; been at this for an hour and a half. Better copy and paste to my secure file thingy just in case I have been typing into a closed archive. I blow a kiss goodbye to ... oh wait I can't login to my account anymore...maybe I can remember most of you....Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Gary Johnson, Rocky Anderson, Buddy Roemer, Jill Stein, Michealene Risley, Laurence Kotlikoff and a few others I fail to remember.

Farewell to all those pseudonymed saints and sinners, faceless fellow country folk and city spirits I don't know how to contact personally if I had the time. Maybe someday your and my words will be unearth by a cyber archeologist and published in a virtual footnote of some subset file of an arcane journal of cultural anthropology.

May the piece that passes as understanding guard your identity, value your participation, and use your resources for the building up of whatever beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.

Yours Always,

@#$%^!:(

PS If after I hit enter, this does go through, I can still maintain intellectual property rights...or is that still copyright? ...     Yoohoo....I have a question...anybody there...? anybody?