MSL: A House Divided

Day 584, 11:42 • Published in USA USA • by SirEkim

I normally like to stay in the political shadows and simply observe, but I feel that I have been personally brought into this argument and the following article contains things that must be said.



“A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.”
-Abraham Lincoln, June 1858.

Although Abe Lincoln said this in a time of real civil war in which our great nation was falling apart, I feel there is no time better than now that it can be applied to our great eNation. In this latest Congressional election, this country has become more polarized than ever. Political attacks have been fired from both sides, the USWP and the anti-USWP coalitions, which is to be expected, but I feel that this month completely crossed the line.

The first complaint I have is with both parties groups running quality candidates against each other. This was obvious on both sides with the most notable examples being the Libertarians running PrincessMedyPi against Ananias in Florida and the USWP running Bill Forder against Joshua Hoss in Wisconsin. All of these people are great and would make (or have made) great Congressmen. That’s the exact point I’m trying to make. Why are good players being run against other good players?

I have an even better question than that. How, by kicking them out of Congress, are we improving our country? Shouldn’t the goal of all political parties be to improve our country? How is kicking Ananias or Joshua Hoss out of Congress improving our country?

Another example of this divide between improving our country comes from my conversation with Claire Littleton, the Party President of the Libertarian Party. When Congressional campaigning started, I sent a message to Claire to request an endorsement for my re-election. She responded saying that the Libertarians would not be endorsing anyone in West Virginia. I was fine with this, and went on about my own business. Well, later on, I learned that other candidates had joined the race, notably Jaxon Leith and Richard Brophy. Both of these guys would make great candidates, but why run them in West Virginia of all places?

My answer came when the ICCCR results came out. Despite being told that the Libertarians would not endorse a candidate, I was dismayed to learn that Claire had gone ahead and endorsed Richard Brophy for Congress. My first instinct was to try to find out what was going on. Here is a paraphrased snippet of the response Claire told me:

"If it were a personal matter, I would have voted for you, but I'm a Party President and I have to do what's best for me party, unfortunately."

Shouldn’t the interest of the party be in bettering the country? This leads into my next point, the hypocrisy that the parties are running. If you remember from a few months ago, “RightCon” threw a fit when the USWP decided to run their “51 state strategy” claiming that unqualified candidates would end up in Congress. Well, it appears that both the USWP and anti-USWP coalitions are running 51 state strategies, each running unqualified candidates. But this election has taken it to the extreme. The ICCCR, which is supposed to be the “Independent Council for Congressional Candidate’s Review”, are now even endorsing unqualified candidates over qualified USWPers.

Look at Kentucky, for example. Jasper Ferguson, an excellent Congressman, was denied the endorsement of the ICCCR to a player who has been around for 11 months but has only fought 30-some times and only has 1 hard worker medal. Then when there were two equally qualified candidates, they went with those who were not USWP.

I hate using myself again, but instead of giving a neutral “strong state” rating, which I believed was warranted, the ICCCR leaned toward Richard Brophy because of popularity. Is sending over 3,000 food to new players, sending 300+ private messages almost daily, and constantly finding new ways to improve our country not deserving of a neutral “strong state” rating?

And then, in literally the last 15 minutes of the election, my opponent gained 6 votes, putting him in the lead. Luckily for me, I still had my vote, so I was able to come back with a tie, but for crying out loud, what have I done to deserve being sniped? In fact, I wasn’t the only one to be sniped. There were several players on EVERY side who were sniped. Anyone who denies that this happens is flat out lying to you. Anyone who claims that only one side does this is flat out lying as well.

Just for the record, though, I in no way, shape, or form believe in entitlement, but I believe in common sense. I believe that the more we focus on the small things, the more likely we are to be destroyed by the bigger things. Until we focus on our enemies instead of each other, how will our “house” ever stand?

I leave this article with a question to everyone, and I mean EVERYONE (USWP, Libs, RightCon, or anyone else) who take place in attacking each other. How can we EVER expect to rise up as a nation and become a world power if we spend all of our time attacking each other? How are running good candidates against each other helping our nation? How are endorsing newbie candidates over qualified candidates for the sake of eliminating political rivals helping our nation? How are sniping qualified candidates helping our nation? If you truly want what is best for our nation, you MUST put all of this political crap aside and work to better our nation.

You can NOT have it both ways. Take your pick, your party or your country.

-Ekim

EDIT: Apparently some people aren't understanding my argument about running good people against each other. For that reason, I'll clarify:

We are running good candidates against each other while other states are being left up to be taken by noobs who two click and don't even contribute. We have 51 regions to fill, for crying out loud. There is no reason that we can't put good candidates in the "weak states" and have an overall better Congress instead of running them against each other and having a half-Great, half-Crap Congress.

EDIT 2: It looks like we're already making some progress. Let's see if other party leaders can follow:

Claire Littleton - Libertarians