Oh my. I'm... back?

Day 2,750, 22:42 Published in USA USA by Francis Valiet

It's... well it's been a while.

I have to admit, I can't exactly remember why I left. I remember I was getting busier by the day. I remember I was getting frequent messages from a couple members of the AFA who didn't really like me. I remember the general feeling that the game was stagnating. And I remember there were a few players who were more concerned with protecting the Old Gaurd than they were with giving newer players much room. Also, or perhaps related to that last one, I seem to remember a few power-brokers who were doing their best to try to influence things by turning other players into puppets/mouthpieces. Charming. It must have been an amalgamation of these things that eventually drove me to stop logging in.

Regardless, it's been a while. I was feeling bored, and on a whim I remembered I used to have fun here, so I thought I'd come back for a tour and see how things were. Maybe I can manage to squeeze out a bit more patience this time.

Quite a bit's changed, hasn't it?

We're a dictatorship now? I'm still trying to figure out the full consequences of that, but the most noticeable one is that as far as I can tell, Congress has been rendered about as useful as an Appendix (edit: by which I meant the rather useless organ, not the section of a book which can admittedly be quite useful, to the frustration of the analogy's usefulness). That seems a shame. If that is the case, is there a draw to paying attention to politics any more? Has ambition to run for Congress been replaced with the desire to be appointed to someone's cabinet?

We're in an alliance with Russia now? I'll admit I grinned at that.

Gipper doesn't seem to be everybody's fave obstructionist to deride anymore. Is he still yammering on about how Serbia is our natural ally? (or am I mis-remembering this?)

The article writing tool now saves drafts?!?!?!? I remember I used to write my old drafts in google docs and transfer them over for fear my faulty internet would crash and rob me of my article. Or was that another game? It's been so long...

Didn't we used to hold the general position that expansion outside of the continent was generally wasteful? Seeing our flags fly over much of North Korea, the Philippines and Brunei was a bit surprising.

So, I'm thinking I might stick around. I've read a few articles that make me worried that the stagnation I started to feel before I left might have only gotten worse. Hopefully that's not the case.

Anyway, cheers!
-Francis