[TRG] Blacklisting

Day 3,104, 15:29 • Published in USA USA • by J.A. Lake

Blacklisting is viewed as the eUS Congress' greatest tool to enforce discipline and to punish wayward Congress members. It was a seldom-used tool, utilized to block four individuals from participating in Congress on the eUS forums prior to December.

In the "law" passed following the mass-blacklisting of 24 members of Bear Cavalry, Blacklisting is defined as:

1. No post approval in Public Congress.
2. No access to Private Congress.
3. No access to SCI.
4. Disqualification from requesting and receive funding from the CBO.
5. Disqualification from holding any office listed in the Constitution and Code.
6. Disqualification from re-entry into the eUS, should they hold foreign citizenship.

In essence, if you are blacklisted you are disallowed from being a participating member of Congress. That is pretty serious if you're intent on attaining higher office or even on simply playing the game.

My contention is that blacklisting is an awful means to enforce the rules, and it is for two reasons. First, it has demonstrably fractured the community. Second, Congress is not mature enough to wield such power.

"Blacklisting is the most powerful tool in Congress' hands, and you wield it like a kid who found his dad's gun."

Let us embark on the less contentious of the two points first. I believe that the community has been damaged by blacklisting.

It's no secret that the mishandling of the game has killed off a vast portion of the player base. Those few who survive must live together or the community shrinks. In short, every player counts.


Every person we ostracize is an effort to downsize our community. Blacklisting is directly counterproductive to making this game last.

Beyond that, it fractures the community. The December Blacklisting is more or less unprecedented, so there is little to go off of historically speaking here. Members of Bear Cavalry and of the Socialist Freedom Party continue to believe, in some quarters, that Congress has little authority beyond what it can enforce in-game. Many also believe that participation in meta-Congress is essentially useless. Should anyone be surprised that blacklisting confirms these thoughts?

When you force someone to sit the metagame out and still play the real game effectively, you are creating a bloc of people who know that the metagame is extraneous. It becomes obvious to them that the metagame is bureaucracy and politicking forced into existence simply to make life difficult. Why go back to that?


On to my next point. Congress is not mature enough to handle this responsibility.

Let's start out with some quotes from the recent discussion on the Amnesty Bill.

"Beg at my feet if you want back."

"Time out isn't finished if you say its finished."

"...this is a pretty sad attempt to get out of wearing their dunce caps in the time-out corner."

"It appears we have a group that just wants their toys back..."

Fortunately for people who like to cringe, there is an entire "Library of Congress" that documents years of Congress members acting like this. It's discouraging that this is the system within which Congress wants people to work.

Despite numerous claims that a bar had been set for removing blacklist status, the discussion bounced from "apology" to "contrition" to "acknowledgment of wrongdoing" back to "apology" and so on. Congress does not know what it wants, not exactly.

Beyond that, demanding an "apology" is so puerile and ridiculous that it is embarrassing. Children demand an apology when their toy is broken. Adults go to court and hash it out before a judge.

What's an apology? That's a relatively subjective definitions. Apologies can be faked. There are a ton of variables at play there. It's just plain stupid to demand people apologize for breaking the law.

The point here isn't to hurl insults at Congress. It's to demonstrate that Congress does not have the maturity to wield a tool like blacklisting. It is too destructive to the community to be entrusted to a Congress that calls people dunces and demands they beg at their feet for readmission.

It may be best to simply do away with blacklisting. It's a tool that insults the intelligence of party officials, ostracizes players, and gives a decidedly childish Congress far too much power. If Valiant Thor or General Ajay Hutt Gipper Bruno tries to get into Congress, party leaders should be smart enough not to put them very high on the ticket. If they do get into Congress, the Speaker should know that they have little if any valuable input and not approve their posts.

Congress does not need to dictate who can participate or not. Congress cannot handle the responsibility of dictating who can say what, where. Moreover, Congress should not have that power. It is destructive, exclusive, and arbitrary.

It should be abolished before it can do any further harm. We must confront the fact that it is clumsy and inefficient. As evidenced by various blacklisted people running for Congress, it is wholly ineffective at punishing wrongdoing.