Thank you America

Day 605, 01:28 • Published in USA USA • by Ananias

I have had the distinct honor of serving in Congress for six terms, two as the representative for the State of Oregon and four as the representative for the state of Florida. To coin the old Grateful Dead lyric, “What a long strange trip it’s been”. I began my eRepublik political career as the optimistic idealist with a knack for building consensus that I am in real life; an in a few short days I will end my eRepublik political career as the same optimistic idealist that first elected to the hallowed halls of the eUS Congress on Christmas Day 2008.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to see a really great player and friend, Zcia, elected to the role of Party President for the United States Workers Party. My hope is that he will experience even a fraction of the joy I experienced in that role. In 9 days, I will participate in only my second congressional election in which I am a voter alone and not a candidate.

Divested as I soon will be from the political necessity of decorum and tact, I guess I am free now to share with you all of the perceived inequities of public service, the injustices of partisan infighting and the indignities of ad hominem attacks in the media....so here goes…

Ready?

Okay.

First off, a short message to Claire Littleton: Thank you so much for everything. While perhaps unintended, you probably contributed more to my enjoyment of the game than any other individual player that I have met and for that I am deeply grateful.

And more importantly, thank you to the citizens of the eUnited States of America, I am so very, very blessed for the opportunity to serve.

Whew, I feel better for venting…now on to the primary focus of, what will likely be, my final article as a politician in eRepublik. I want to share some of the learnings I have gleaned after six months in Congress and at the forefront of Party politics in the eUnited States.

Partisanship is overstated and overrated

I have often been called out as a partisan for doing things like introducing the 52 state plan (back when we still controlled Baja, Mexico) or when extolling the qualifications and quality of USWP candidates for Congress; and, in some aspects, that is justified as I am thoroughly convinced, and have been thoroughly vindicated, of the extraordinary individuals that comprise the United States Workers Party. The critical point that I attempt to make regularly is that I have never been delusional enough to believe that the population of extraordinary players in the eUS are constrained to any single party.

For what its worth, I believe in you America. Every day, with every new citizen, the eUS contingent of quality, contributing citizens grows. And yet the alarming trend is not that of the rise in eminence of any single political banner, the truly alarming trend is that so many of us subscribe to the notion that the projection of RL fears of an isolated political ideology gaining power overrules the in-game reality that the political banner for which we are associated will remain FOREVER subordinate to the national flag to which we swear allegiance.

Perhaps the most disappointing realization that I have come to in my congressional tenure is that the irrational fear, and subsequent vitriol, which accompanies the RL rejection of a single party state is promoted at the expense of our most productive, and powerful, characteristic as a nation: A unified nation comprised of a single, focused team.

The enemy is at the gates America. Do the political banners over the heads of our citizens truly mean more to us than the national flag under which they unite in defense?

This is our moment America. Regardless of our RL repugnance at the political ideology which underlies the formation of our ranks, the reality remains that it is the extraordinary nature of our unity which will win the day, not the design of the logo on the political banner under which we fight.

America’s greatness is founded in the diversity of our imaginative and innovative ideas to overcome the challenges we face as a nation, rather than the defense of our rhetoric.

In challenging times, with invasion eminent, we so often cling steadfastly to the notion that by answering the question, “What would I do in real life?” we can somehow resolve the in-game issues that we face. The absurdity of applying inflexible RL logic to in-game challenges is tantamount to stating that if we only wish hard enough that the movie we have seen a hundred times will end differently and then somehow when the credits roll we will somehow experience greater satisfaction.

What we are too often missing is the value of “suspension of disbelief”. Awhile back former president Scrabman wrote an article belaboring the perceived dominance of role-players rather than game players. The point that he missed, with all due respect to my great friend Scrabman, is that it is the suspension of disbelief in a fictional environment which lends itself best to the greatest prize, innovation. Let me be clear, we cannot come together as a team and even approximate victory for the eUS without the suspension of disbelief which accompanies the perspective that congressmen have actual constituents for whom they serve, or that the national treasury contains treasure with an actual intrinsic value, or that hostile nations are overtaking actual and valued territory rather than a few well placed pieces of data on the internet which comprise a game board.

We need role players to provide the out-of-the-box thinking and innovation which is only available when suspension of disbelief is applied to a fictional environment. So put your thinking caps on role-players, suspend your belief, and develop something completely new. But do it as part of a unified team…because when the game-players and the role-players combine for ideas, our potential as a team becomes limitless.

So, while I certainly have much more that I could say and much more promotion of the idea of America as a unified team, I will do so under the auspices of my new project, eNOVA. For now, I bid all of the outstanding congresspersons that I have served with, the great administrations that I have served under and, most importantly, the greatest citizens in the New World that I have had the honor to serve, adieu and thank you.

I am proud to be a small part of the most extraordinary team in eRepublik, the eUnited States of America.

This is our moment America. Let’s seize it together…as a team

Honored to serve,

Ananias