scrabman responds...

Day 534, 16:13 • Published in USA USA • by scrabman

I've had a lot of people asking me a lot of questions over the last 6 weeks that I've been President of the eUSA. I get at least 50 PMs a day and I try very hard to reply to them all even though some are incredibly hostile. I get sniped in the media and I'm okay with that from the standpoint that I understand that I'm a public figure ... but then I get people asking why I do or don't respond. So I'm going to try to give some simple responses to the most common types of questions that I get and see if that helps people to understand things.

Question 1: Why are you hostile toward your opponents?
I don't know where people get the idea that I have to hold hands with my political adversaries and sing kumbya. Do you think that Obama took office and gave a thought to asking Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to stay? Do you think he was wanting to ask Rick Santorum, Ann Coulter, or Pat Buchannon to be in his cabinet? If so then why?

As many of you know, I'm 35 years old and I'm a lawyer in real life ... as I understand it I'm the oldest President in RL terms that the eUSA has had. I deal with people all day in the courts of my city where I have to get things done without paying a lot of attention to how my opponents feel. If someone snipes at me I deal with it and I don't ask them later if I hurt their feelings. If my client isn't getting what I'm telling him I sometimes have to be very blunt because I have limited time to get him ready for trial and do my job as his attorney and advocate.

That is my experience that I bring to this position. With the very limited time that I have I find that sometimes I have to skip to the end of the discussion and that makes me look like some sort of tyrant ... wielding the very limited power of an eRep President. But I am a strong President in terms of dealing with issues and that makes me look like a jerk to many. I'm not here in this position to be your friend, I'm here to get the job done and that makes me different than the last several eUSA Presidents who have been somewhat weak in that department.

Question 2: Why don't you acknowledge the haters as having valid points?
I really fail to see how it's my job to "acknowledge the hate." I also don't think many of them really want to have me do anything for them ... they just want to hate on me because they think that I'm ____ (fill in the blank with USWP, liberal, stupid, arrogant, etc.).

For those who do care I respond to their PMs ... and I respond to almost all of my PMs ... I take their questions in the Forums ... and I try to reply to them in other places too. But when someone gets in my face and is yelling at me I'm not going to bother to try to have a civil conversation with them. I deal with that stuff all day in my law practice and I'm not going to deal with it in my fun time.

If you could see the staggering volume of PMs I've sent and received and you could see the way that I respond to those who ask me questions in a nice and meaningful way vs. those who start their PM with obscenities and accusations then you might understand. I wouldn't wish this job on my worst enemy.

Question 3: What was the deal with this BIG THING?
There have been several articles published lately that should make it abundantly clear what the BIG THING was. Let me start you off with two of them:

http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/the-truth-about-peace-victories-793563/1/all
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/should-we-help-our-allies-1-794413/1/all

As many of you are aware, we are part of a large alliance known as ATLANTIS and our primary rivals are another large alliance known as PEACE. Romania is the strongest nation in ATLANTIS and Indonesia is the strongest nation in PEACE. Those two go toe to toe in various ways with the support of their allies. Many of you may not have been paying attention to all that was happening in the world last weekend but there were a lot of battles happening across the globe that I would never have paid much attention to before becoming President. Most of these battles may have looked unimportant except they were part of a larger strategy to support Romania in an all out assault on PEACE on multiple fronts.

We were poised to do our part when the time came and did, in fact, make several maneuvers to support our allies (discussed below). However, the battles that needed to be won by Romania to trigger our action were never won and it left us idle. I wanted to fight as well but we were never in a position to do so and I refuse to waste the collected taxpayer gold of our nation on a battle that can't be won or can't at least achieve a strategic objective (such as delay, diversion, capturing a strategic resource, or creating a choke point). If I had gone forward with one of our attack options we would be a weaker nation today than we are at this moment. We are stronger for not fighting than if we had and the articles that are detailing these fake Q5 weapons that PEACE apparently fought with this weekend means our gold would have been wasted. I can only hope the Admins will fix this to make future battles fair instead of how Romania was beaten back every time this weekend through game exploits.

Question 4: Why did you attack Portugal?
Do you remember this from the week before last?
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/potus-ignore-invasion-warnings-fight-in-croatia-785967/1/all

That was a diversionary tactic that was used by PEACE to try to keep our citizens from fighting to support our ally Croatia where PEACE was trying to win a battle through Hungary. Part of our attack on Portugal was about the same misinformation campaign that was waged against us the prior week. Another part of the attack was to open a battle front with Russia that would have cost us 1060 gold and a War Declaration. Though the game listed us as already at war with Russia my advisers pointed out a game mechanic that saved us 1060 gold and gave us a new battle option for a region that has high diamond production should we have the future opportunity to stage a successful attack. Further, the attack on Portugal put them on edge and was meant to make the Portugese less likely to fight in support of PEACE in the pending battles much like they were trying to deter us from defending Croatia the previous week.

Portugal was not a failed attack but was a strategic one and that was why it was done in the middle of the night. I had asked all citizens and the military to not fight until orders were received but many citizens did fight and now seem to think that I owe them something for their failure to follow instructions. The military were exemplary in their restraint during that battle and were able to conserve their resources for an important battle the next day to ensure that we could close our border with Mexico. Closing the border with Mexico makes us more secure and gives us more opportunities for alliances as the Swiss were not able to ally with us while that war was open ... our new alliance with the Swiss is a Military alliance as they are a very strong military force in the world and that strengthens us and our ability to achieve our objectives.

Question 5: Why are you so secretive and what about these secret battle plans?
Secrecy is the key to winning this game. We are fighting two wars with PEACE ... one happens on the battle screen but the other is a war of information. A lot of the efforts of the nations of eRep last weekend were coordinated including misinformation and feints. Much of that has been ferreted out in the press now and it is open for those to read about it. At the time it was important not to tell our enemy what the battle plan was. PEACE already plays the war of information very well as you can see from all of their trolling comments on popular American articles.

We've known that our plans regarding Russia were compromised for some time. Our own Kyle321n had come up with the plan known as Hellokitty that notorious traitors like William Shafer and Navy II were pandering around to our enemies this weekend and laughing about. We hoped to use this to our advantage and that was another reason for our attack on Portugal. Russia was worried about our attack on our single border with them and this, we had hoped, would deter them from engaging in other battles to support PEACE and the other battles, we had hoped, would keep PEACE busy while we worked on our objectives. Alas, it did not happen that way ... the plan was busted by PEACE cheating with illegal weapons.

Question 6: When can we have some real war instead of these war games?
Who would you have us attack? I get questions all the time like "why don't we just take Mexico" and now "why don't we just take Ireland" which presume that we are the most powerful force in the eRep universe. Well, we tried to "take Mexico" under the last President and it was an utter disaster. PEACE wasn't occupied with other wars so the attack was not coordinated and after a few easy wins everyone was all pumped up and then PEACE came in and easily pushed us out causing a terrible waste of our resources in the long run. We tried the same thing with France about 4 months ago with similar results.

The fact of the matter is twofol😛 1) we are weak militarily and 2) we need to have coordination if we are going to be successful in our attacks against countries who are allied with PEACE. We've been working on the first of these problems through the war games in Baja and I hope that we can continue to work on our collective strength through the war games with Ireland. A second objective to these Ireland war games is that we're seeing an immediate interest in other nations signing MPPs with us so that they can get in on the action. This puts us in a position of prominence thanks to the planning and execution of Equality 7-2521 and Harrison Richardson, the former who came up with this plan and the later who has been working on implementing it. It is also my hope that these new MPPs will open up more chances for us to fight abroad without having to leave home. The plan is good which is why PEACE is already trying to copy it.

Lastly, we have Treaties with Mexico and Ireland now that would result in penalties if we violated them. The Mexico Treaty is for a 3 month Non Aggression Pact and the Ireland Treaty lasts for the duration of our war games with them.

Question 7: Why did you attack the UK?
Ireland asked us to attack them. Ireland has a treaty with the UK that says they can never be at war. If Ireland had simply attacked us first then our MPP would have activated with Britain and they would be at war. So we amended the Treaty so that we could attack Ireland and allow them to preserve their Treaty. We are now asking the UK for peace to rectify that.

You can see the amended treaty at a link from this article:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/the-new-eusa-war-games-792404/1/all

Until Ireland amends their Treaty with the UK this is how things are. The UK has already been in contact with me as they also want to find a way to get in on the USA-Ireland war games ... it's the best party in town.

Question 8: Why can't we have war games every day?
Daily is wasteful. You can only fight x times per day for free (x being the quality level of your local hospital). So if you have a war game battle every other day then you get to fight on the day that the battle starts and then you get to fight again on the second day before it closes. Then you start over the following day with a new battle. Each battle costs about 70 gold and we need to keep getting contribution from the nations who have MPPs with us or we will not keep asking Ireland to start these war game battles. The battles must be started by Nithraldur and he and I have already hit it off to a great start with our Treaty. He said he can likely start the war game battles between 15:00 and 17:00 each time giving plenty of time to fight on two different days ... the farther away from 0:00 reset the better.

Further, everyone needs to please read this article about how to effectively fight and use hospitals:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/war-games-the-10-minute-stat-explosion-766461/1/all

Failure to use the highest Q hospital you have available will result in being a less effective fighter and worker. Further, because I'm not guaranteeing that we will have war game battles on a regular schedule I need to ask that every citizen try to keep his health as high as possible. This means that WHEN YOU HAVE HEALED AT A HOSPITAL FOR THE DAY YOU STOP ATTACKING.

Using this formula there is now reason why we can't have the best working and fighting force in the world with our numbers and our economy.

Question 9: Why did you run for re-election?
Because I'm a builder ... most of the USWP leadership are. We like to make things work. That is why I'm a lawyer. That is why I'm a community and civic leader. I've served on town council, I've served in civic organizations, and I've served as the advisory to County and Municipal agencies as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney. I believe in civics and government. That's why I'm here.

I like the fact that you get to see the game in a totally different way when you're President. Not all Presidents have looked at this chair the same way. Some are all "ooh ... shiny buttons ... and this one lets you have RWARRRWWRARWWRA". Others don't do much. I've tried to work on making government work better and that has been the stability that my supporters have talked about. It's not fun, it's not cool, and it's not sexy ... but it's who I am. And I enjoy having worked in the game on that level.

I've won the trust of my Party and several others, I've won the trust of my Military, I've won the trust of many. I want to finish building some things this term and one of those is the Military. I picked Moishe as my VP specifically for that purpose and he has been working behind the scenes all last term making steps to improve how we organize ourselves for combat while I've been working these war games to get our citizens ranked up so that we can be a penguin bowling awesome fighting force.

Question 10: Why do you have an ego problem?
I never planned to be the President but when I stepped in to fill the USWP Party President role when Rocco had to take a leave of absence I ended up liking it. Managing the largest party in the world is not a small task (and we have nowhere near 700 active members ... more like 300-400). From there my party honored me by asking me to run for eUSA President ... and to my surprise I ended up here. I'm not wanting power for myself and that makes me different from many other leaders. I delegate duties and I share the accomplishments. Every one of my articles tends to praise others for the work they did for me and for the country. It's not about me ... it never has been.

I'm not trying to be shitty here ... but if you look at the people who I ask to help me with these things they are serious people who are lawyers, ex military, law students, economists, etc. Most are significantly older than the median age of the eUSA players who are active. This does not mean they are better ... just that they look at the game in a different way. This is part of what our problem is when we face other countries as many of them are also filled with an older crowd who have independent means and have money they don't mind blowing on a fun release in between their jobs that are either stressful or mind numbing. That makes the way that I play the game a little different and forms a bit of a cultural divide that makes me look l33t. I'm not though. I'm just here to make things a little nicer before giving them over.


Okay, there you go. 10 questions and 10 answers ... plus perhaps some more. Flame on ... I'm off of here for dinner and night court.