Last night we failed as a country
•
by Tom McDougal
I took some time for quiet reflection today and thought about what is happening to the eUSA. Last night was a perfect example of what is wrong in the country and what is still going wrong in this country. Last night the eUSA failed. Every party, every person, and even me, we all failed. We made the mistake of thinking our petty squabbles were more important then helping our allies. We need to create a system where we no longer cry USWP, LIBS, BUTTHOLE HATER TROLLS or PEACE when ever something goes wrong and instead we talk about how it went wrong and what we can do to fix it. Last night what went wrong was the election. Everyone involved was more interested in sniping each other and screwing over their “enemies “ aka anyone not in their party to help our friends in Peru , and Croatia. Sure you can argue that we saved Greece but the PTO there was only an attempt to distract us, and we fell for it hook line and sinker. Parties in this country would rather elect people with no grasp on then game in their own party then well respected and well known candidates from other parties this inflicts immeasurable damage to us as a country. What do I propose to do about this problem you ask ? Well I have a few solutions.
1
I know we have a few people looking into the feasibility of combining political parties to prevent PTOs but no one has tried to sit the parties at a table to talk about it. We will never see if it can be done till we sit down and talk together about it. So I propose we start a cross party congressional ethics committee which can do as little as define what is ethical behavior during congressional elections, or at the most actually combine all the major parties to stop any PTO in the eUS and more importantly in my mind stop all the flaming and pointless bickering that is taking away from the real arguments in the press and on the forums.
2
We could all grow up and stop acting like children. This is the idea I have been preaching but it’s almost impossible to practice since as long as there are one or two people slinging mud and insults its hard for anyone to rise above it. We all need to actually actively try to act like adults if this is going to work.
The simple fact is these ideas won’t work unless people put aside their differences and look at our problems objectively I just hope we haven’t reached the point where people find themselves unable to do that.
Facebook
Twitter
Discord
Comments
I have been saying all of this for...2 months+
Wow, it seems like everyone is getting this idea lately! Maybe something will finally be done about it.
Here's to improving our country! Cheers.
It feels like the iron is hot. Will we strike?
The Dept of State went around PM'ing parties asking them to send voters, to no avail.
1: I've been thinking about this recently, too. I've gone so far as to consider that everyone should just join USWP, and we rename it United States Political Party, or something, and it would basically just be the entity where all US politics take place. All elections would take place out of out of the game mechanics, except for presidential elections. The huge gaping flaw here is that new players won't be into this at all, and that there's bound to be a lot of people kicking and screaming about this until it finally falls apart in, say, 6-9 months.
2: terrible idea
Harrison: did you pm individuals or just party leaders?
Harrison i'm sure you did and i'm sure no one sent any. Everyone was to busy trying to snipe some seats. The point of my article is to point out how the parties failed not how the government failed.
From what I saw, those 'messages asking for movers' happened far too late to really mean much.
If we're going to combine parties, we need two viable ones. Because a one-party system is effectively a dictatorship. I'd sooner start my own party of one person than join a system that would be so rife for abuse.
Seriously, the system used by the real USA works reasonably well, so it would work reasonably well here too.
I'm not saying one party is the end all be all of this discussion i'm saying that there should be a serious discussion about this between the parties.
There will always be too many parties. The only thing that will stop the "sniping", is if they go back to the beta ways of doing thing, and doing away with regional voting period.
Until then I don't trust the citizens to their own greed-for no benefit personalities, and believe this will continue to happen. I remember vote moving ever since the first congressional elections after V1, so it's always happened (since Regonial elections came around), it's just more organized now.
/me raises hand - this guy voted in Croatia.
Great article Tom. I'm ready for the eUS to be more united.
I'm sorry but I really don't think the country failed last night. I appreciate the call for helping other countries but the fact of the matter is we had our own election to deal with.
Well, I never got that message, and being too poor to pay for a moving ticket, I'm not exactly a voter who can help out very well in the "move to vote" schemes. Nonetheless, perhaps mobilizing a group of people from all parties who are a political version of our Airborne forces, a mobile anti-PTO force with different divisions and a chain of command, capable of rapid deployment and present in reasonably large numbers, for example, would be a better way to resolve this problem in the future.
this article is truly horrific
@Pat. Agreed.
Great article, Tom. Voted. Let me clarify a few things:
1. We in the State Department didn't get word of the South American PTOs until late in the day. Whatever intelligence we received was passed along to the appropriate channels in the Administration and Air Force.
2. I personally spent a good deal of time in IRC trying to garner support and voters. All party presidents I could reach promised to try but many/most had no voters left in IRC. I think if you contact sever PPs they'll verify this.
3. Given that our Air Force was trying to prevent PTOs in Croatia and Greece our resources were stretched very thin. This was compounded by the eRepublik outage. Word could not get out, tickets could not be donated in time.
4. The sniping really wasn't an issue. I guess I *COULD* get all bent and start throwing around accusations and voicing my suspicions but that won't get us anywhere. I will state, for the record, that any vote commitments I received were nowhere near the estimates of voters needed to prevent the PTOs or even stop one in Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia or Colombia. And I'm talking a ratio of about 1 voter for every twenty needed down there.
5. There *WERE* efforts made by the Air Force and other organizations to help prevent this. In no way am I criticizing their efforts or of the commander or the AF.