[TRG] Law

Day 3,081, 09:50 • Published in USA USA • by J.A. Lake


If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

Isn't that the old adage? Law is as ancient as society itself, a concept developed in the Bronze Age and carried forward, refined, and improved through to the modern era. It's the reason you can't kill your neighbor for cutting down that tree you liked and the reason you can't drive 95 miles per hour (153 kilometers per hour for non-American readers) through your neighborhood.

Law is immutable. Law is the equalizer. Law is that social contract that staves off Thomas Hobbes' State of Nature.

Naturally, as Law is such an integral part of our lives outside the game so too would we carry it into the game. However, the eUS has done a dismal job of doing that thus far.

This was illustrated to me during an argument between two fellow citizens on the SFP forums over Wooky Jack and his return to the eUS in violation of his blacklisting. So, let's unpack.

"Even if he held Aussie CS, he was a US Citizen, and always was going to want to come back. Yes, he did circumvent the [Expletive Deleted]. So, any moral high ground he had was shattered by the fact that he broke even MORE laws getting CS. And these aren't the "biased and cronyist" laws, these are IES laws that have been supported and existed forever."

Let's start with the first sentence:

"Even if he held Aussie CS, he was a US Citizen, and always was going to want to come back."

Here we have a Congressman declaring that yes, the eUS Congress can punish foreign nationals, and yes, that punishment can be based on baseless belief of intent to return to the eUSA. This destroys the notion of jurisdiction and evidence-based justice in one fell swoop.

The final two sentences demonstrate the real issue at the core of this. The determination that "moral high ground" plays any part in legal proceedings is disturbing due to the absolute subjectivity of morality. Beyond that we see the implication that this is the way things have been done "forever."

What we see here is the open declaration that there is no such thing as law or legality in the eUnited States.

Law as determined by Congress is enforced (or not) at will by Congress. I could cite examples of major political figures fighting against the "democratically elected" dictatorship only to have the transgression hand-waved away as the result of irresponsible use of a bot, but the same transgression resulted in the blacklisting of 24 eUS citizens.

What we should have seen was a 25th addition to the blacklist. Breaking the law is breaking the law, as many SFPers have been told since December. So be it! This is undeniably true. Unfortunately for Congress, however, the law must also be enforced equally.

Now, the point of this article is not to dive into another declaration that Congress is dictatorial in nature, so I will leave the Congress-bashing at that.

Real law does not exist in the eUSA. How do we fix this?

For one, we must rewrite the Constitution. As it stands, it is completely useless as a basis for any legal challenge to a citizen's actions, and what's more is it does not provide any sort of protections for a citizen from the Government. Indeed, as it stands the Constitution lays out powers but no checks on those powers.

Next, we must make a conscious effort to enforce the new Constitution fairly. In discussions on amnesty members of other political parties offered their fear that amnesty for those blacklisted in December would serve only to demonstrate that the law has no teeth. I counter that the law does have no teeth, or rather its teeth are selectively used. The law cannot be politicized.

There is another option.

Congress can stop pretending to be police officers. If Congress is unwilling to rewrite the Constitution to create a fair law code and protections for the citizens, then Congress should forfeit the right to persecute those citizens based on arbitrary and ill-defined laws and punishments.


For example, the formal legal definition of blacklisting (a tool used for years) came into being only after the largest mass-blacklisting in eUS history and was made to impact cases of blacklisting retroactively. That's like being convicted of robbery and sentenced to 3 years in prison only to find that a year into your imprisonment the State House has increased the penalty for robbery to 25 years and you've now got 24 to go.

What sense is there in obeying the law if it can change depending on who is being prosecuted? Why would anyone feel compelled to obey the law if it is enforced arbitrarily and politically?

The law has no teeth because it was written without teeth. In fact, it was written without arms or a brain. In the eUSA law is nothing but a tool for the ruling political class to ostracize those they don't like and include those they do, blacklisting everyone from pariahs like General Ajay Gipper the Hutt to the 24 loyal Bear Cavalry members blacklisted in December.

I urge everyone reading this to consider pressing your party leadership to put pressure on Congress to wipe the "legal" slate clean and create a working code of laws, so if they insist on playing at law enforcement at least it can be done fairly.