How Cerb and Pfeiffer Became Friends

Day 3,212, 11:47 • Published in USA USA • by Cerb


How Cerb and Pfeiffer Became Friends

You've undoubtedly read many a tale about what Pfeiffer has done here, or there, and why everyone loves him and/or loves to hate him. You know the Legend of Pfeiffer, but what do you really know about the man? I’ll tell you how I came to know Pfeiffer.


For this tale, we journey back to March 2011. Glove is President, having just been elected on a wave of populism after the rather substantive (but not media-heavy) Julian Mizu GoalieBCSC presidency. The 'eUSMil' (later known as simply the JCS) is still the dominant and the official military arm of the nation. Although SEAL Team 6 is a rising star, militias remain somewhat uncommon. Nevertheless, friction between government leadership and eUS Mil leadership (known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff) is at record levels. Back in Harrison Richardson's presidential term, then-Chairman of the JCS NXNW disobeyed a direct order and was fired but declined to be fired. The problem of the eUS Mil not recognizing governmental authority had led to an unanswered question: Was the eUS Mil autonomous?

In February 2011, Congress amended the eUS Constitution to clearly delineate the chain of command coming from the President, giving him/her the authority to actually remove the CJCS or VCJS, and require that they be voted in by branch leadership in the first place. The amendment also created reporting requirements and required that POTUS and SOH have access to the eUSMil budgetary documents and commune lists. This amendment faced heavy opposition from the eUSMil, but it was passed. Of course, the eUSMil dragged their feet in complying with POTUS/SOH access, and in doing so, created a separate document which barely had any useful information on it. It had no accounting of how money was spent, notably. And of course the eUSMil was still a MAJOR budgetary line-item.

Now, based on the aforementioned events, you may be wondering where Pfeiffer comes into this story. Patience is a virtue, my friend. Please read on..


Your favorite lawdog, Cerb, was Speaker of the House for the Feb-March 2011 term, in addition to being Secretary of State. At that time, the Secretary of Defense was generally seen as an empty suit, responsible chiefly for being the gatekeeper to militia funding and occasionally attempting to coordinate military strikes. However, the eUSMil would not allow anyone from the government to give any orders about battles or battle priorities. In fact, then-Chairman Bradley Reala refused to allow anyone from his leadership besides himself to idle in government-military coordination channels, or even RUN FOR OFFICE.



In the interest of SOME brevity, I'll forego some details and simply note that in early March, Bradley had leaked information from the PDB. Seemingly unconcerned about the consequences of the leak or the Executive's authority, Bradley also dragged his feet on reporting requirements and POTUS/SOH access compliance.

At this point, Pfeiffer, who had engineered the accountability amendment described above, knew it was time to dismantle the eUSMil's structural support from the pursestrings of Congress. However, then-SOH Cerb was reluctant to kick over the apple cart just yet, and had agreed to partial compliance from the JCS with regard to access and reporting. Pfeiffer was infuriated with the JCS' intentionally-incomplete compliance, and wanted the matter pressed. We had a bit of a disagreement on IRC, and Pfeiffer requested we speak by phone. This request caught me off-guard - early 2011 was well before most of us used any voice chats to communicate regularly, and I had only ever spoken to Speedcat on the phone. However, the context and nuance of text is often lost, and I recognized we could have more efficient dialogue over the phone.



Bracing for an oral version of the famous Pfeiffer flamethrower, I initiated the call. James S. T. Pfeiffer actually turned out to be a very reasonable fellow who understood the politics and wanted to hear the basis for my opinions and concerns. We spoke at length and came up with a solution. In subsequent conversations with Pfeiffer, and other great minds including Inwegen, Cromstar, Avruch, and Vanek, the amendment was put into written legalese during the remainder of March 2011, and so began the start of a working relationship and then a friendship.

Over the years, I have trusted Pfeiffer to be a confidant, an analyst, a colleague, and just a good friend. He has never let me down.

What's the point of all this? Appearances are not what they seem. I personally prefer to develop a few close friendships as opposed to a multitude of mere acquaintances, and I like to think I have almost-impossibly-high expectations for friends. Pfeiffer is such a friend.

It's true that if you display willful ignorance or oppose game mechanics development, Pfeiffer will aggressively fight you. But as a friend, he's one of the best allies you could have.


When Inwegen runs for President again, I'll do the 'Cerb and Inwegen' version. 😉


I'm voting for Pfeiffer, the savvy politico and good friend I spoke to on the phone for the first time back in 2011. You should vote Pfeiffer, too. You may not be his friend, but you can be sure he’ll work as hard for the eUS as he does for his friends.

Thanks for reading,

Cerb
Former eUS everything, Current Pfeiffer friend.