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The Socialist Freedom Party (SFP), which SOME people are saying is the last, best hope for e-mankind, concluded its internal preference poll for Country President endorsement. It was a nail-biter between longtime SFP stalwart Franklin Stone and the old warhorse, media mogul, and longtime friendly to the global anarcho-syndicalist movement, George Armstrong Custer of the Federalist Party.



PRE-ELECTION ENDORSEMENT POLL RESULTS


Brother "Freewheelin'" Franklin Stone won the contest in a squeaker. He celebrated his win with a quick jaunt down to the race track.



Brother George Amrstrong Custer, gracious in the face of this shattering disappointment, showed us his wild and crazy side when we delivered the news to him at his retirement community. (Note the slight smile!)




COMBAT BY SMOKE

As part of its never-ending process of self-renewal and democratic socialist reconstruction, the SFP has been experimenting for some time now with new approaches to its ground-up, people-first, internal processes. Here is how the scientific/mateerialist polling was conducted this round...


First, as a streamlining measure, any candidates considered to be nincompoops, dingbats, mooncalf-ding-dongs, knuckleheads, cuckoo simpleton dipstick half-wits, or ding-a-lings were filtered out. That left only Stone and Custer.


Second, as part of its on-going commitment to the healing power of revolutionary sing-alongs, the Party's Revolutionary Committee chose a theme song for this round of Presidential elections. Jimmy Reed's famous 1960 blues groove, "Big Boss Man", written by Luther Dixon and Al Smith, captured the spirit of the Executive Office so clearly, It was an easy and obvious choice. And when a performance of it by jackleg backporch musical primitive and current SFP party prez, Pfenix Quinn, was unearthed in the archives, it was an easy decision.

Third, and most importantly, the Party devised a form of head-to-head, mano-a-mano, combat that to help clarify which of the two candidates best represents the interests of the international e-proletariat and oppressed masses of bored players at this important historical juncture. This method also recognized the importance of treating these two ancient hippies with the culturally-appropriate respect that they deserve.

The process worked as follows:

* Each candidate was blindfolded and locked inside of a cedar chest for a half-hour.

* Dedicated Party workers continuously blew chronic herbal smoke, if you catch my drift, into the box.

* In order to maximize the immersion experience, a variety of flower-fogs were used, including Bammy, Bammer, Black Russian, Bone, Broccoli, Giggle Smoke, Joy Stick, Lettuce, Maui Wowie, Panama Gold, Texas Tea and Whifty.

* The candidates were released from the boxes, turned around in circles serveral times, then had the blindfolds removed. They were provided with tasty snacks of various kinds, which they consumed at a startlingly varoacious pace. At this point a slightly fuzzy Old Man Custer asked if he could be seated, whereas Stone, a combat veteran, after finishing off a plate of socialist cookies, asked if anyone had a bit of "real stuff" that he could twist up while we gabbed.



(First point went to Stone.)






* The candidates were peppered with salty questions prepared by the RC's Ideological Sooth-Saying and Facticity faction.



Q: The univesrality of economic mechanisms propagated by Admin has inculcated a vision of the New World dominated by a mechanical, geometrical and methamatical way of thinking, the outlook of a wonky engineer, a watchmaker, a crackhead or a goddman TikTok influencer who perceives e-life, the individual player and the community as a machine whose complexity is nothing more than a tangle of camshafts. Such intelligence reduces everything to the level of an object, like a Pythonic programmer who drinks too much coffee. When not wounding, such an approach is anaesthetizing; it is an intelligence of predation, not an intelligence of living beings. Your thoughts?

Stone: Yep.

Custer: Agree.



(No points given.)



Q: Who rules the world?

Stone: (Glaring at Custer) The goddam Establishment.

Custer: (Grinning ever so slightly) Agree. But whatcha gonna do about it? At least with me it will be more entertaining.



(Half-point to Stone. Full point to Custer.)




Q: Is it possible to be a "terrorist" in eRepublik? What would that look like? Or to put it another way, does eRepublik enocurage violence?

Stone: Players like to play out their real life traditions in this game, however brutal and repugnant that might be to others. What inspires that kind of game play is not so much any specific ideology as it is a chance to have a thrilling cause, a call to action that promises a kind of glory and esteem in the eyes of fellow players, especially those who share a real world national, religious or cultural context.

Custer: Well said, Stone. I'd add to that that a good strategy for ameliorating the worst excesses of that kind of game play would be an international, multinational well-being-oriented and psychologically satisfying program aimed at making the hatreds that often underlie such play less virulent. The elements would be to emphasize things like shared communal needs, as well as some kind of compensation for and means for understanding of previous transgressions. Basically, further enhance the game and the metawork to embrace calls for a new beginning. Carefully phrased apologies cost little and do much. At the end of the day, we're talking about developing a true dedication to diplomacy and negotiation, instead of allowing the reflexive resort to violence inherent in the game model to dominate the play.


(Point to Stone. Two points to Custer.)





Q: Let's talk about voting. It is a paradox, right? Its technical rationality, drawing a profound result from a simple count, draws all kinds of discourse from sociologists and political scientists. But the numerical details conceal a massive irrationality, don't they? Why does number have political virtue? Why should majority, which as we all know is malleable and often modified due to all kind of ruses in the modes of balloting, be endowed with the attributes of a norm? Such approximations are simply not tolerated in most domains where human thought is at stake. The partisans of what turns out to be just and true are often entirely in the minority to start with. Everyone knows that number, the majority, gained from lists that most folks know little about, at the end, have no real meaning.

Custer: Is that a question?

Stone: Is there any more of that real stuff to twist up?


(There was a short break druing which Stone lit up yet another one and Custer wandered off to the loo.)


Q: OK.. put it this way. Tell us your view on active versus passive numbers in politics.

Stone: There is some ambivalence in which we can take comfort and refuge. Voting, balloting, is a passive number. It may or may not, in any particular season, be a reflection of an entirely other number, which is active, a number referring to demonstrations, strikes, insurrections and other forms of direct action and resistance to the Establishment. That active number, however large at some times, is alway tiny with respect to the passive number. The active number is valorized only when and if, as part of the risk-taking of an act, or in the tenacity of a given organization, it is traversed by the collective will.

Custer: (returning from the loo) What did I miss?


(Point to Stone.)









Q: A musical question. Regarding the old folk song "The Golden Willow Tree", sometimes sung as a sea shanty, sometimes more as Appalachian mountain ballad, who sunk the Turkish Revelee and what was their reward?

Custer: Oh! Oh! I know! I know! It was the cabin boy!

Q: Right. And his reward?

Stone: (deep sigh) Though the Captain had promised him gold and a bride, when the cabin boy swam back to the Golden Willow Tree after singled-handedly sinking the enemy ship, the captain says, 'I can't be so kind as to keep a foolish word' and refuses to let him back on board. In some versions of that song, the cabin boy drowns. In others, he swims away.


(The entire faction begins singing the chorus very softly, "As we sail in the Lowlands low...")


(Two points to Stone. One to Custer.)




The final tally: 5.5 for Stone, 5 for Custer. Stone wins, but Custer did well.