Notes from the Wilderness
Day 2,057, 02:45
•
Published in USA 
•
by
•
by wingfield
It is difficult to imagine the situation we are supposed to be in right now – under foreign occupation, our leadership thoroughly discredited and recovery prospects remote – when sitting comfortably at home, with a laptop, playing a browser game, living in (relatively) civilized countries that generally respect the rule of law.
I am seeing several articles where people are roleplaying life under occupation, recounting their individual struggles. This is all harmless fun. A little suspension of disbelief never hurt anyone.
Meanwhile, nothing meaningful will happen until we get some proper leadership and co-ordination again. To do that, we must unite those sections of our community who are willing to talk sense and get down to business. We need to ignore those who retain their obsession with the AFA and those who seek to continue the approach that brought us undone, namely the “Unity” disaster.
There must be at least one Top Five party with a revamped approach. Any party seeking to move forward and make a difference must have one objective. That objective is to win government. The party must reach the top five and hold its place. It has to be absolutely independent of the existing order. It must get people into Congress, when elections can be held.
The people placed in Congress by the revamped party must work for the voters who put them there and the party that selected them. It is a wasted effort sending people to Congress just to have them subjected to a meta-game forum that ties them up with procedural red tape. The proper approach is to use the party’s Congress representatives as a bloc to wield influence and set conditions for supporting the ideas and aspirations of other entities represented there.
Never again should parties act as a base for e-warlords and their submissive followers. These players have manipulated forums and opinions to deter in-game challengers. The rules imposed on party forums deny opportunities to emerging talent. When people have the influence to rise in their party in-game, by building popular support, long may they prosper!
Never again should party leaders join cross-party cabals to foster their joint domination of the political scene. We have seen where the handpicked time servers have gotten us. They have proven a monumental failure and should be consigned to historical oblivion.
As for “unfriendly” parties such as the AFA and unreconstructed Unity holdouts, it is time to keep them at arm’s length, without making their destruction the raison-d’être and only focus of party existence.
Parties are about their members being on the same page and their leaders and representatives not dancing to anyone else’s tune. Neither should those leaders and representatives sit about meekly saying nothing for fear of upsetting anyone.
Get out there and be political, folks! Make those party bosses realise that challengers will be coming for them every month and that they cannot fend off all opposition.
There is nothing to lose anymore!
Facebook
Twitter
Discord
Comments
Beware, party bosses! We are coming to get you.
Well said Wingfield; party presidents are always accountable to the membership of the party. Hopefully in time consensus can be reached among the disparate groups within the eAmerican Community.
voted
I have seen a couple of puppets, in my day. I'm sure that there are more than I know of.
Voted
Speaking of roleplay article, might try writing one myself.
[removed]
voted
Well written article. Voted and subscribed.
v s
Excellent analysis Wingfield. You should carve in stone that 'The proper approach is to use the party’s Congress representatives as a bloc to wield influence and set conditions for supporting the ideas and aspirations of other entities represented there.'
What is this notional party going to do to counter the fact that our opponents do roughly twice the damage our alliance does each day? This sounds like one of Bruno's rants, long on wind, promises, and theory, short on concrete solutions.
Step one: do away with unity. Step two ??? Step three: prosperity!
I want to see step two, and I especially want to see how we get to step two without the AFA, which, it's pretty clear now to all but the utterly dense, is a Serbian front group, getting enough influence in congress to completely, maybe even permanently, wreck the US.
I'm talking about taking parties and using them properly. A better organized and supported political module will have many flow-on benefits. I don't have to justify my ideas and I'm doing far more about fixing the problem by writing articles than any amount of criticism against dissenters and reformers will ever achieve.
By taking parties, I mean members taking back their own parties, of course - not the sort of PTO merry-go-round that has sullied our eUS community.
So no specifics, just underpants gnomism. When you have specific plans -- what "flow-on benefits" are you referring to? -- lay them out. Otherwise, you sound just like Ajay Bruno, without the Serbian ptoers behind you (although many of them are, for some strange reason, voting for your article).
So it would appear that you are not interested in solutions but simply in bagging those who call for change. Typical tyrants' reaction to criticism. Then you label me as an Ajay Bruno type and immediately prove yourself to be an hard-bitten Unity puppeteer.
I suggest that you crawl back into your hole. The changes that are coming will sweep you away, along with the rest of yourt Unity crowd.
How does someone who has never held, or run for, political office, who takes no part in the political aspect of this game besides voting, who knows none of the people in office, and hasn't for YEARS, become a "tyrant?" This is the other thing you have in common with Ajay: like Ajay, anyone who disagrees with you is an "elitist tyrant."
Once again, my offer stands: give me SPECIFICS on the benefits of your shapeless proposal, and if they hold up, I'll gladly throw all my tyrannical, elitist power behind you. I have no stake in the current leadership, don't even know who they are, so the idea of me being part of some elitist clique is laughable. Until you give those specifics, you're just another Ajay, thundering about the "elites," making sunshiney promises about how things will be better if only people support you, without actually explaining what it is you plan on doing to make things better. Promising unnamed "flow-through benefits" isn't a plan, and neither is attacking a two clicker for being a "tyrant," simply because he has the temerity to point out you're blowing wind.
You, sir, are an insufferable jerk. You lost your argument when you tried to suggest that I am like Ajay Bruno and the AFA. That is the biggest insult anyone can use in the eUS but it says more about the user than the target.
I do NOT have to provide the answers. I am highlighting the problem and the factors that make it worse. There are plenty of prospects for improvement simply by opening up the political system. Pity that dinosaurs like yourself can't cope.
Go away. You have wasted enough of my time already.
Although it is comforting to continue with old familiar policies when faced with a crisis, it has been noted before that it is foolish to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Maybe this approach will work. Maybe it won't. But it is clear that something different needs to be tried.
Another slogan in place of a plan. What, SPECIFICALLY, is doing away with unity going to accomplish? How will it make up for the huge disadvantage we are at militarily? And if it doesn't work, what are the costs, and is the risk of paying those costs worth it? Without knowing the SPECIFIC advantages of doing away with unity -- the benefits -- it's impossible to make a reasoned decision. All you have, then, is slogans and the vague promises of underpants gnomes.
Honestly, I have no personal stake in this. I am eBelgian, and I do know that, facing a PTO threat in our country, if what we try does not work - and it did not this last month - then we have a responsibility to our voters to step back and look at another way of doing things. I don't know specifically what doing away with unity would accomplish, but what specifically has unity accomplished? There was a plan, and it has had limited if any success. It certainly seems to outside eyes that the eUS is not better off with this plan. So what do you really lose by trying another approach?
Unity has accomplished the only thing it was meant to accomplish: it has fended off a PTO, going on a year now. About the only thing the anti-unity people can say against it is that the US got wiped, but that has nothing to do with what unity was about in the first place, and the US has been wiped before, when there was no unity, so it's really just some disaffected people trying to seize an opportunity to push their own agenda, much like Ajay does. I don't want "different," I want BETTER. And before I can see what better is, I need SPECIFICS.
Comparing me to Ajay Bruno will get you nowhere fast.
“Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. ”
― Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
While the above quote may be misinterpreted as "underpants-gnomism" it is in fact step 2.1 -Recognizing that change is needed once priorities shift.
When Unity was initially implemented the goal was to maintain an entire nation built upon a previous version of eRepublik. It is through the faults of previous leadership roles that we now have the possibility of beginning anew.
We must rebuild eAmerica together through consensus and mutual cooperation before we are able to reclaim all 51 territories and defend them successfully.
To continue drawing a comparison that infuriates poor Wingfield, Ajay, too, promises "change." Would Pirsig consider that a quality change? What we need isn't change, but IMPROVEMENT. And before we can decide what an IMPROVEMENT is, we need to see a specific plan. And after all Wingfield's indignant sputtering and attacks, and your quotations, we still don't have a plan. Just underpants gnomism. I think at this point it's plain there is no plan, just, at best, replacing Tweedledum with Tweedledee, and risking a PTO in the process.
[removed]
[removed]
Wow. I love the comments.
@ George Barker - what you are misunderstanding is.....we don't have to CARE what you think. If we want change, and enough people support it, it will happen.
It is obvious that you will NOT have your mind changed, so why waste our time trying?
20-odd posts, and not one answer to the simple question: what SPECIFIC plans do you have to "change" things? Gee, I wonder why my mind, and those of the vast majority of people in this game, can't be changed. I guess we're just too stubborn to appreciate the subtle, unexplained brilliance of your underpants gnomism.
I am more than willing to listen to ideas that get rid of Unity while still ensuring The Puppet doesn't put someone in the CP chair. Toss me ideas, I'll toss them to my Party. I am incredibly interested in solutions, not just the call FOR solutions.
Really though, we would still be wiped, Unity or no Unity, so other than an uncommunicative president elected by a system that was mothballed, I'm super curious what new failures you speak of.
Hope and change, etc.
voted
There are quite a few people with the same thinking. This message should probably be brought into party recruiting, and will help to draw the anti-establishment people away from traitorous AFA. This game is not just changing the way people think, its also mechanics too. You should run for PP or something sometime and get like minded people to join you in forming a party which can eventually get congress seats. I'm sure there are enough people if you can get all the people who think this way into one place.
Hmmm, interesting idea. I like it.