Another log on the fire

Day 2,022, 17:49 • Published in USA USA • by fingerguns


Like a month and a half ago I asked the question 'When will we know we don't need UNITY anymore?'

It was really starting to feel like it would never go away and people were becoming a little too comfortable with a very flawed system that was meant to be temporary. The system was producing weak candidates who barely put any effort into winning votes or legitimate support. They could ride this tide or that and their being elected would have next to nothing to do with them as a candidate.

When I ran for CP in January, I put out like 5 or 6 articles and campaigned my butt off. I did the debates, promoted the debates, did the party questions, etc etc etc. That was just 5 months ago. Now we're lucky to get 2 articles out of a candidate and neither one will be especially substantive. A wank piece about wanting to run and then a list of people who they hope will convince you to vote for them. The rest is just MM-ing and riding social tides.

The last election was a total snoozer. The candidates answered all the questions the same. They all had roughly the same cabinet. All 3 were very experienced working on the national level and the homogeny was coma-inducing. But that's not even the worst part. The worst part was when people who did have strong opinions about the candidates were told to be silent and get their priorities straight. When people began to snap out of their comas and start to look at the candidates critically, the differences between them became more evident. Don't point it out though! Oh Lord, no. That's what trolls do. I guess it's not enough that we are forced to participate in this system, we're not even allowed to form opinions about things anymore. Opinions = butthurt = HELPING THE PTO! RARRRRARRRARRRAAARR

Back to that in a minute.



A handful of people have taken the need for change seriously and have spent the last month and a half working on ideas to really help with this problem. There has been work on changing the Unity process to a straight popular vote. There are actually 2 main proposals for that kind of system. One would work more or less the way it does now with parties hosting their own primaries HOWEVER they would then contribute vote totals to a national primary. 50 for this guy, 20 for this guy, and so on. Essentially a popular vote among the actives. The other proposal is really the same thing, outcome-wise, but the methodology would be different. When this latest round of Unity started, a national popular poll was tried, but the technology wasn't where we needed it be. There is word that the technology is now ready and we could have more success with it. Popular vote among players who care.

There have also been proposals floated out there to have something like an electoral college where representatives are based on party population and blah blah blah. To me, that's a terrible idea. To me, that's doubling down on Unity. Changing the system is obviously needed, but making it more complicated or making it more 'institutionalized' is a step in the wrong direction. We need to be heading toward the total abolition of Unity, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, other people have been working on getting rid of this PTO. There have been some setbacks (obviously), but the only reason we have Unity is because of the PTO. If we can get rid of the PTO, we can get rid of Unity. We don't need Unity if we can afford a split vote among real candidates. Now if every citizen of this country was helping with the ATO, we could probably be rid of Unity by now. That's a fact. However, not everyone wants to help for a variety of reasons. Some don't see the correlation, some just don't care that much. That leaves us with 2 options- either try to convince people to help with the ATO that haven't been helping, or be okay with people making boatloads of multis to substitute for the people who won't help.


Did that make your skin crawl? I hope so.

The problem with multis (other than the obvious ethical problems), is that those who are willing to make them aren't typically people you would trust to use 60+ votes with integrity. I mean what happens to all those multis when the PTO threat is gone? Do they just let them all die? Not likely. We keep talking about how we want fair elections and we want vote results that reflect the actual will of the people, but what happens when a single individual is getting more votes than the average top party has active players? That's what is coming if we can't get our actual citizens working together to fight off this PTO.

That is also being worked on. I have been encouraged by the groups of citizens who are coming around to the idea that ATO is another element of this war against Serbia. It's national defense. The Serb PTO of a top party woke some people up and I am optimistic that we will soon have the LEGIT numbers coordinating to get the scum out of here and reclaim our country. It turns my stomach to think that we've become so desperate and bogged-down, as a nation, by infighting that we would allow monsters to be created to fight monsters. We have the resources legitimately. We don't NEED to stoop to that level, but we have to stop being so stubborn.



So if all this work is being done, why is the Unity system exactly the same this month? Why is there just as much discord and complaining as there has ever been? Why hasn't anything really been implemented yet?

I don't really have an answer for that anyone would find satisfactory. Progress is being made, it's just happening slowly. I know party leaders are talking to each other and people want to make sure they've worked out all the kinks before they put something forward officially to change the Unity system. I suppose it's because if you come forward with a flawed system to replace a flawed system, you'll get torn apart and no progress will be made at all. Knowing that people have been putting the work in and we're so close to change has made another month of crap elections that much more frustrating. The flaws in the system are halting MAJOR progress.

MUs and other groups are slowly coming around to working with ATO efforts. They're motivated by different things and old people they couldn't trust are being replaced with new people that they trust a bit more. So...It's slow-going, but the progress is there.



Don't get me wrong, Tenshibo and Paul are both awesome people and totally valid candidates. I think Paul represented MORE change in this election than Tenshibo did because of his willingness to make AIM such a big part of national defense. It wasn't appeasement for votes (obviously), but a belief that if these sides are going to come together and move forward together, it's going to take a lot more than lip service. I am personally disappointed that he lost because I really believed in what he was trying to do and I think it could've made a massive difference in our ability to take down the PTO, win the war against Serbia and end Unity once and for all. It wasn't just a baby step, it would've been a leap forward.

We have to be okay with a month of 'baby steps.' We cannot let this deter us and stop us from moving toward better days, not to mention VICTORY. And who knows, maybe we'll all be surprised and make some unexpected leaps in the next month? Not impossible.



People are raging now, mostly in the Feds and AIM (mostly in the Feds lol). Reasons have been given and they're going to react the way they're going to react. But once again we have another month where certain reactions are considered acts of terrorism by the establishment and their lapdogs. People literally said 'get over the butthurt' BEFORE ALL THE VOTES WERE IN. That's just ridiculous to me. The first articles were posted late last night and they were immediately jumped on as being unjustified butthurt and being harmful to America. Shortly after those articles started being posted, more 6th party votes came in that flipped the outcome. Things were still in flux and yet feelings and opinions were not allowed. Suck it up. Just deal with it. Quit your crying. You agreed to this system. You only want a popular vote because it would benefit you- Unity 4 Ever. Down with the Feds.

*sigh*

Things will cool off. They always do. But I hope they don't cool off the point where we have this same conversation a month from now. That passion and that fire people feel is what drives change in this game and makes it better. Quit trying to snuff out the few remaining embers of interest. We are so close to making real progress. We are SOOOO CLOSE to real change. We keep getting in our own way, but I really am optimistic that conventional war on conventional battlefields will stop us from totally losing perspective. This is my hope, anyway.



Thanks for reading,