I had hoped both those questions would be answered by Sorry It’s Not Funny, but I may or may not have fucked up royally there, as that album was supposed to answer that exact fucking question. The whole point of the album was to introduce myself to the world as a candidate, yet, it’s possible my own naivety or perhaps arrogance led me to believe that the words alone could change the world. The unfortunate result was my removing the tracks on the album about running for President and announcing I was no longer running.
It’s worth sharing that somewhere around this time, circa end of 2021 and start of 2022, I realized the 25th amendment somewhat allowed me to choose whether this would even be a problem or not for me, since the vice-president would need to be the leader of any such attempt to remove me from office due to my prior psychiatric diagnosis. To be clear, the 25th amendment does not prevent someone with any psychiatric diagnosis from becoming President whatsoever. I’m not sure how relevant the part about the 25th amendment is, but that’s how I remember precisely when this decision was made to not run for President after a year of working towards it. That’s also precisely how the word precisely should be used, and also why it’s a shit-sandwich of a word in many cases, because it’s not quite accurate enough to give you the exact moment that decision was made, if there was a specific moment at all.
That may sound like I’m trying to get you to listen to Sorry It’s Not Funny (hey, why not?) or to be intrigued about the tracks that are missing from the album. The best way to address that is to simply answer your question here as best I can, since the lyrics on this missing tracks probably did not do the subject justice or else maybe I never would have taken that year-long hiatus from pursuing the Presidency.
So, who am I?
I’m just a dude. I don’t know what else to say about this. Read my book or watch Voices or Choices or listen to my stand-up or music and draw a conclusion, I don’t know how to answer this question.
Why am I running for President of these United States?
Strap yourself in for this one, because it doesn’t even make sense to me, but that’s not stopping me.
In truth, I do not really want to run for any political office, and I sure as fuck don’t truly want to be your next President. That being said, I just don’t know what else to do.
I hate to tell a story to answer your question as if somehow trying to virtue signal, so let’s avoid that, but, if you disagree with my candidacy, I challenge you to find a way to make this country safe for people like me, since that’s the fucking problem.
You may not like the fact that white skin is covering the body of someone writing about oppression, but, it’s also likely you’re not familiar with “psychiatric oppression.” Honestly, I hope you never do become familiar with it, but, that’s yet another problem problem: feeling safe enough to talk about it at all.
If I talk honestly about psychiatric oppression, it may scare the living shit out of people, or, most probably, they’ll just ignore it.
Why would I assume people will ignore it?
When there’s no way to solve the problem, the mind may just be forced to ignore or to to convince you that it’s unsolvable. Otherwise, you might just say “fuck it” and try to solve the fucking problem. So one may say it’s a trait we developed through evolution to ignore certain things, or accept them, maybe the Bystander Effect is related, I don’t really know, but psychiatric oppression has obviously been ignored if it exists right now in every state in the Union.
I just don’t know how to explain how intimidating changing the world becomes when you discover that there is no federal law forcing law enforcement and medical professionals to involuntarily commit and/or forcibly treat people for supposed psychiatric disabilities; instead, every single state has independently come to that same conclusion on their own, that this is not just okay, but should be the law.
Now comes the part where even I wonder if I might have something, let’s say “different,” about me, because I realize how fucking ridiculous it is for an individual person to pursue the office of the Presidency just to change the mental health laws, and even more ridiculous for that same person to say “I’m not issuing any Executive Orders and I have a personal policy, or algorithm, that says I’m going to veto every single bill that comes across my desk, including, but not limited to, legislature about the very issue that I’m running for President over,” which is clearly at this point our mental health laws.
It’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
And it’s also ridiculous to sentences with “And,” especially after repeating the word “ridiculous” so many times unnecessarily, and, moreso, ridiculous to even consider the possibility that a person should be abducted from their home by law enforcement, taken to an emergency room, and held against their will in a psychiatric ward for an indeterminate period of time just because they write so fucking awfully.
I just wish I could tell you that I had much more to say, because I do care about a lot of things, maybe more than your typical person, and maybe about some things more than others. The trouble is, if you vote for me to be President, you may expect me to act like a bit of a maniac, and maybe I would expect that too, and use every power of the executive branch available to get every fucking thing I or you could want to be passed. That’s a fucking bloodbath on our own soil and I don’t know how else to explain it, hell, even if the federal government passes a bill with unanimous approval that outlaws involuntary psychiatric procedures, we may still have a bloodbath, because that law needs to be enforced in the states somehow, and even a group of 100 U.S. Senators and 325 U.S. Representatives agreeing on this fucking thing still doesn’t mean it’d be safe since the states themselves, every single one of them, has already decided to use force against people labelled mentally ill.
So, what the fuck? How can we feel safe? And fuck you and me for both thinking that’s so wrong for the next President of these united states to ask.
I’d be damned if it isn’t ok for a citizen to demand their safety from the government that’s forcing them to participate in it by threat of imprisonment in the first place, unless this is some type of kingdom we’re all living in. So, I suppose that confirms it for you, that I’m just another citizen up until Inauguration Day, at which point I guess I’m a fucking sellout. Not to worry, if you vote for someone other than me, which will ultimately be a losing ticket, you can take solace in knowing I’ll end up being forced by my own fucking country (or, specifically, every individually state that makes it up, including the District of Columbia) to spend my 4-year term in a mental hospital.