The Bastion: Unity
Day 2,692, 12:45
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Published in Netherlands 
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by
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by Spir Tus
In this column, The Bastion, I will take a look at the political system of a country/community and I will expose the conspicuous things. This column is written from my point of view, the view of an active politician in the community. Probably I will miss a lot of facts, legislation and perspectives, but this is how I see things. The aim of this colum is to enlighten people, give them food for thought and make them aware of certain worrisome situations.
This is the second article in the series, which suprises me (the first one you can read here: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2408415/1/20). In the end all my articles are very similar. This time I won't talk about legislation or the law book, but just about my view on certain things. It will be a sort of analysis of the state of our country. This will be very biased, because it is written from my own perspective. So there will be a lot of people who see things differently. Please leave your opinion in the comments.
Unity is very important, especially for a small country like us. We can't achieve anything as a country when we're divided like we are right now. We are a country, divided into two parts. I am sure everyone in our country is experiencing this division, but maybe not everyone will know what I'm talking about.
The first thing you maybe think, when you see this article: This is about ReL vs I&W. It's not. Well, partly it is, but that's not the focus. It's true there is a division in the political landscape, but this division isn't bad. In fact, this division is very good for our country. No, it doesn't give us unity, but at least it gives us activity. Activity is the soul of our community, and without it, our country is dull and the game is dull.
What division am I talking about then? This division isn't only present in our country, but in whole erepublik land. It is the division between the soldiers and the politicians, the military module and the political module. In eNL, in general soldiers don't participate in politics, while the politicians don't fight. Of course we have to nuance this statement. There are soldiers who participate in politics (generally speaking the active people from ReL) and there are also politicians who fight, although sometimes not according to the state orders.
This division isn't just a factual difference between those two groups of people, but more of a feeling both groups have about each other. At least, that's my own observation. I could be wrong. The soldiers say: the politicians don't fight, fight wrong, and aren't helping our national MU with being in other MU's around the world or eNL. Politicians say: The soldiers don't participate in our community by not joining IRC and the forum, and only have criticism on the government regarding Foreign Affairs and Defense, without doing something themselves to help solving the things they see wrong.
We need more unity in our country. We need those two groups accepting each other, and their opinions, and help our country together. This means the soldiers should be more active in helping improving things they think needs improvement. Just having criticism isn't going to work. Come with ideas, join the forum and inform yourself. The forum isn't just politics. It's also an important source of information. Our laws are on there. Yes, the game is here, but how you have to play the game, is decided on the forum. Don't expect government officials giving you information only you care about, when this is available on the forum. If you can't find it, ask for it. If it isn't anywhere, someone will provide you with information. If you think communication or the provision of information has to be improved, help improving this yourself. We are a small country. Everything you have to see could be important. The only thing holding you back is you. There aren't only bad people on the forum. If you have experienced this yourself in the past, the forum has changed. Everyone is welcome to help improving our country.
This also means the politicians should be more active on the military module. Of course, this isn't always possible. In general politicians are much younger (erep years) than soldiers, which means they are still in Div 1, and should mostly train. But the ones who aren't young, should join our national MU, and fight according to the MoD Orders, just like everyone else. Not with your own gain in mind, but with the wellfare of our country, and our military power. Both groups should move closer to each other. So the politicians also should move closer to the soldiers. This means not only using IRC and forum for communication, but also use the options the game provide us. Use the feeds to give others information, write articles to inform others, and chat with others on the DAF MU Chat.
I would like to see some more unity in our country. I have respect for every single citizen of our country, whatever their opinions are. There are quite a lot of people I don't agree with, but this doesn't mean we can't work together and can't respect each other. It would be great if people can look past personal issues and just help with improving our country, participate and having fun, together. The question is, are you all ready for this? A lot has to change to improve this I think. But this will only be an article to stimulate you, and as I said, giving you food for thought. Please respond in the comments about this. Maybe you think this is complete bull shit. Maybe you have something to add which is bad about the other group, according to your own experience. If the latter is true, please keep it nice, and don't make it personal. I don't want more division, I want more unity.
A Bastion of Truth
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Comments
It certainly gave me food for thought, as you call it. It certainly won't do any damage if we were going to look at this problem, that you describe, and analyse it.
Voted. I hadn't really thought of the division within the country in this way before. While I was reading this, I found myself easily identifying as a politician more so than a soldier because of my mistakes when I first began playing this game. Compared to most D4 soldiers that are around my level, I have about half the strength that they do. This is because when I first began playing, I was driven to fight as hard and as often as possible because eAustralia was constantly under threat from our neighbours. Because I have such low strength in D4, it requires much more of me to be able to have the same impact that tanks like Weekstrom and Fhaemita have on the battle.
Anyways, my thoughts about unity: I do think it would be better for our country to have more communication and, of course, I believe that there is always room for improvement.
I must say, during my time in this game there has always been conflicts and divisions in each country I have been to - so eNL is not really a special case. These divisions arise naturally from what I have seen and it is rare for a country to be so unified together. Some conflicts arise due to colliding views of how things should be so that it is hard for one side to easily see or to understand why or how the "opposition" views those same issues. So, I am not sure if this can truly be solved by having more people on IRC and the forums and more "politicians" in the DAF especially since it has become so personal between some players.
"But the ones who aren't young, should join our national MU, and fight according to the MoD Orders, just like everyone else. Not with your own gain in mind, but with the wellfare of our country, and our military power."
This is hard for some of us who have been members of private MUs, like me, for years now. Myself, I have been a member of ST6 for quite a long time (longer than I have been in eNL) and I enjoy the community. Nevertheless, I do fight hard for eNL when needed.
A divided country isn't always bad. But in this case the gap is getting bigger and that isn't a good thing imo.
Yeah I understand it is hard to leave a private MU and join the State MU. However I hope there are some politicians who are able and willing to transfer to DAF. I think we should think about something for the future, so politicians will be more involved in the military stuff.
would you give up 30-90 weapons a day? that is what private MU's and foreign big MU's can offer.
I don't know. If you are more interested in helping your own country instead of personal gain, maybe you would. But I don't expect anyone to transfer from big private MU's to DAF. There are also people in small private MU's, which offer less or the same as DAF does.
well helping your country is also possible in other MU's. and those weapons do help them fight more (also for eNL).
" in general soldiers don't participate in politics, while the politicians don't fight"
While it is true only people in D4 count as real soldiers because of the much higher amount of points you win in D4, there are still quite a few people who are both.
Most of these people are either primarily soldiers who also do politics or politicians who also do military stuff. I don't think there are many people who are equally doing both.
I think Fhaemita, lancer, djirtsdew and myself count for equally doing both, I agree that's not much but we don't have many D4 soldiers to begin with.
And then you have to ask yourself the question, do you want to become more like these people? Both at the same time? If this means you don't have a lot of strenght in D4 (no offense) or are in a foreign MU, then I would say, No. Just moving closer towards each other will help to get closer to the ideal of active, strong soldiers who are trying their best to help the country as best as possible by fighting and being political active. At least, that's what I hope.
we all know this is true...on the other han😛
battle of Eastern Netherlands versus Hungary 😉
D1: 1 point
D4: 0 points
Pointwise theres more to it than saying only D4 counts. I wish it were so, in our case..
Even if we won all D1 rounds we wouldn't have won. All the organisation and real tanks are in D4, D1 has a lot of luck involved whether or not 1 or 2 organized hitters are on a side.