The New Era of eUS Politics - Part 5
wingfield
Go on! Be brave! Vote anyway!
An Open Letter to All New Citizens
I have been writing a series of articles addressing the problems in the political module in eRepublik as it has affected the eUS. These articles can be read by clicking on the following links:
1. We no longer have a government
2. Rights and Wrongs
3. Zombie parties and political control
4. Effective parties – the way back
These articles are instructive reading but you need more before you move along in the game. First of all, you need to understand the present “State of the Nation”.
Political parties
The basic political unit in eRepublik is the political party. The five biggest parties in a country have infinitely more power and influence than minor parties. It works like this:
1. A top 5 party president nominates the party’s slate of candidates for Congress. No one else gets a look-in.
2. Party presidents nominate or endorse candidates for Country President. There can only be five candidates in the election. The candidates endorsed by the top 5 parties get priority over all other nominees for spots on the presidential ballot.
These two factors guarantee an effective lockout of minor parties and their members. Competition for the top 5 places is therefore fierce.
If enough citizens band together to hold one of the top five parties, NOTHING can be done by the other four parties or the rest of the population to stop that particular party being held by its members standing together.
The critical mass to hold a top five party is somewhere between one fifth and one sixth of the active political citizenry.
Even if the four other top five parties are held by a close alliance of citizen groups, a fifth party with the critical mass of members can never be completely locked out.
The current party arrangements
In the eUS, four of the top five parties are closely aligned at present. The fifth party, called the American Freedom Alliance (AFA), is bitterly opposed to the other parties but has the critical mass of followers needed to remain a force in Congress.
The AFA is intensely disliked by most other eUS citizens but everyone forgets that dislike is not sufficient to exclude the AFA’s political clout. It currently has the numbers to remain viable.
Do not be swayed by the AFA’s propaganda about patriotism and political takeovers (PTO) but also, do not be fooled by the wishful thinking in government propaganda which tries to suggest that the AFA threat can actually be removed. It can’t.
Now, I said that the other four top five parties are closely aligned. In fact, there is an alliance of those parties bent on maintaining permanent control over the eUS political system. It is just as unhealthy as the AFA in that it has locked down our democratic freedoms and caused total stagnation in the country.
The other four top five parties support an arrangement called “Unity”. Unity is as bad as the AFA.
Why are the AFA and Unity bad?
The AFA pays no regard to democratic principles. It is led by a player who has a single goal. That goal is to become President. The leader of the AFA appropriates the name of a great American leader and uses it to attempt to deceive us.
The American Freedom Alliance (AFA) has a name that contains three lies in one title! To build support, it infiltrates enemy citizens into the country via the citizenship module. Many of its leaders fight on the side of the countries invading us.
Unity, on the other hand professes to be patriotic. However, it is simply a cabal of control freaks who think that ordinary voters are not entitled to a free vote. They ensure that only hand-picked time-servers get to control their parties and that no one outside their circle ever has a chance to become President.
While the “Unity” establishment can never remove the AFA “threat”, neither can the AFA achieve its objective. It needs one third of the votes in a Presidential election to take over the country, something which is almost impossible.
So we are trapped in a never-ending cycle of lies, scare campaigns and the denial of democratic rights, while Unity can never obliterate the AFA and the AFA can never take power.
A plague on both their houses!
What the eUS needs is new talent. It needs leaders wishing to serve instead of ruling.
It needs to reject tired old dinosaurs locked in the mentality of political domination.
America needs a fresh start.
Next: Keeping your powder dry.
Comments
Free Americans don't need a government!
This is the least intelligent thing I've read all week.
Pity you don't have enough yourself to read it.
Oh I read it, it was just retarded. Without a government we would have no army and without an army we would be speaking Russian/Chinese and America would no longer exist.
You clearly can't tell the difference between common sense and the propaganda of the dictators.
I also note that your party is the one that sold its sould and brought in the dictatorship.
Oh, I thought we were talking about real life.
With you on this one boss 07
eGovernments are obsolete.
v7
Voted.
Meh
Good writing, but you kind of lost my interest after pt. 4
Not as if you'd know anything about it after only two months playing and lapping up the propaganda of your overlords.
Nice article, subbed.
V 82
07
Looks about right.
v111
You're done, and you have been done for a long time.
AFA gets over 1/3rd in the CP vote in most months
More falsehoods
In the past 8 elections, AFA has gotten over a third in 6 of them, so no, it's a fact. Look it up yourself. You can't say something is false when the results page says otherwise.
[removed]
Actually, I'll apologize as you are technically correct. What you are not allowing for is the fact that some people vote for your candidate because of their disgust for Unity. The best example was when you ran Candor, easily one of the best candidates put up by anyone for a long time.
My real point is that you don't have a genuine 33% voting bloc all of your own. It is swelled by dissenters. Your true figures can be found in the twenties range, as shown by most recent Congressional elections.
I say that Unity can't remove you, while you can't take the eWhite House. With that stalemate, we should all be moving on, irrespective of ANYONE'S merits or otherwise.
v144
continuing a coherent expositin: nice read. Kindly explore the potential of forums as a force multiplier - and the issue of transparency. That would be of interest to me.
The forums are a muffling force, not a force multiplier - and they represent the death of transparency.
Not all forums, of course, but certainly the ones we have.
I agree. I've been playing this game since 2007 and I've never seen anything so ridiculous. eUSA is almost wiped and we still see a daily procession of campaign articles from the Unity Parties and others.
What good is a President when there are no more free territories left? I probably won't bother voting for anyone this cycle. Presidential campaigns are a joke when Hungary, Serbia, and the others have divided up the US amongst themselves.
AFA actually proposed cooperation with other parties, inclusion in the system to end the stalemate. It was rejected out of hand. AFA had a respected presidential candidate in Candor who promised to bring not only AFA into the government, but also major parties outside of top 5. He was rejected as well. AFA is far from perfect, but Unity followers have instituted a dictatorship and they're quite happy with it. People like you and me aren't. AFA's attempts to participate in a democracy have caused the the other four (Unity) to abolish democracy. The main bulk of responsibility for this ongoing crisis should rest squarely on the shoulders of Unity leaders.
AFA wants democracy? Simple: Make the serbians around this country go away to their original country and fight for it honorably instead of trying to take their enemies from within with cheap tricks.
If a day comes when the AFA does that and curbs the PTOers, then yes, you will be legitimized and there won't be a need for the unity procedures we are all tired of. You blaim the elitists for the unity? Don't blame them for something that started at your own responsibility.
There is no PTO, and we have enough Americans in AFA, as well as in other four parties, to make sure we prevent any hostile acts from occurring even if people had bad intentions. You aren't American either, no one is asking you to leave. No one is asking to leave hundreds of Croats and Albanians. You want to end the crisis? Include AFA and prominent figures in parties outside of top 5 in the government.
No one's asking hundreds of Croats and Albanians to leave.*
Difference is: I'm not here to PTO the country, you guys are. Or do you really think I believe you guys won't get your hands on our treasury if you guys elect an AFA CP?
Most of the factions are neutral, the hundreds of croats and albanians around are here as allies fighting against a potential threat: you.
Indeed. Thanks for the read. As a come-from-away (eCanada) I hope to add some fresh blood to the political organism that is the eUSA.
Wingfield for CP
Thanks for the interesting article.
I thought it was a bit too early to start getting involved in politics, but with Ronald Gipper raising some issues from his last correspondence, I wanted to get a better idea for myself what exactly was going on.
@Wingfield - let me get your 2 cents (no one responded to my query amongst the friend feed) - Ronald explained to me how his party was originally WTP before overthrown and presumably moved to his current party AFA. Was that justified or no?
In principle, no party takeover is justified. However, there are some very deep past issues involved (grievous sins on both sides) and I prefer to operate on the clean slate idea - we have what we now have and we should leave well enough alone.
Good luck your going to need it! If the other four of the top parties think your a threat to their power they will slander you and your party.
I'm not running for anything right now. It is more important to take the fight to the power-brokers. If they think that I am a threat to them, then I must be getting it at least partly right!
My party tolerates me and I stay because of that. It also has no illusions whatsoever about the evils of Unity and others.
yet another article crying about the obvious problems, but offering no competing solution that is viable.
One of the "usual suspect" quotes, along with "you don't know what you are talking about" is: "you point out the problem, yet you give no solution"
When the people who hold the reins say that, note that THEY do not have a solution either, they just run the problem.
The solution that I have been screaming right through these articles and whenever else I have spoken out in the past few months is the bleeding obvious: RESTORE DEMOCRACY NOW!!!!!!
People who don't like a particular solution always cry that it is not viable.
No, I analyzed the problem, and described my solution here: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-kemal-ergenekon-replacing-unity-one-person-one-vote-system-2275460/1/20
"RESTORE DEMOCRACY NOW!!!!!!" begs the question "HOW?????" And my article is an answer to that.
With the current strength of the PTO team, having 2+ serious candidates on the actual in-game CP balot is plain suicide. If you don't know how to do the math, tell me.
"We want the mechanism to elect a president just like the eRepublik election module does, while disregarding the votes cast for the PTO candidates."
That is the fatal flaw. It does NOT give one citizen one vote. It gives only selected citizens and forum dwellers a vote. It presumes to disqualify anyone not "cleared" by the regime.
RESTORE DEMOCRACY NOW! - How? Abandon out of game charades like Unity. Stop calling opponents PTOers. ALLOW PEOPLE TO STAND FOR POTUS without Unity blessing.
The math is simple. 5% participation in the selection of UNITY candidate = 100% tyranny and zero integrity.
How does it not give one citizen one vote? Every party is allowed to hold the primaries in whatever way it wants in my proposal. You could do it by in-game PMs, an in-game article, whatever.
Tha math is simple, with 2 non-AFA candidates with equal backing, the AFA candidate becomes the POTUS.
Lies! 😃
There is not America left we has turned on our backs belly up like a dead fish Operation HAM is failing, we are losing in VT, next the Capital falls and not to mention i dont see many people fighting to save it. I dont use RL money to buy gold and i still manage to avg. 250k-500k a day in damage and i know that there are more gold players out there that can do so much more than that.
Voted! Great article!