Opinion: Coalition for Irresponsible Politics
I'm all for politicking, but let's stop pretending it's "responsible"
Written by Aexnidaral
Hi.
I'm Aexnidaral Seymour. I know most of you already know me, but some of you may know me better as "a shithead uselessfucktard shitbag who needs to be kicked out the region for extreme fail" or any number of other less interesting but equally insulting names.
Recently one of the last remaining vestiges of the politics of 2016-2017, the Coalition for Responsible Politics, (CfRP) shuttered for good. As any person thirsty for the tea would do, I decided to check their recently public-archived subforums to see exactly what went down. I had heard rumors. I wanted to take a trip down memory lane to when I was the Big Evil. What I wound up stumbling upon was something far more interesting.
Before being shuttered the Party left their Discord invitation thread up. Being still thirsty for that tea and wanting to see what shade had been thrown, my inner drama gay clicked the link and searched for my name. To my surprise Discord returned to me (drumroll please) nearly 500 direct results and about 20 pages of hits. Look ma, I'm popular! I did more digging into what was being said about me, but first I wanted to do some quick searches of other Europeians that were flashpoints or seen to be antagonists by the Party at some point.
Here are the grand totals:
Aex - 496 results, 20 pages
Rach - 432 results, 18 pages
WL / Gleg - 192 results, 8 pages
GraV - 53 results, 3 pages
Pichto - 91 results, 4 pages
That is just monumentally incredible! Look, I get that I'm often annoying politically but spending 20 pages talking about (largely) how much you hate me or how much you want me to be kicked out of the region because I'm a useless shitbag is a little much. If I'm taking up that much of anyone's headspace you may need to focus on something else. I'm neither that important nor that worthy of taking up so much time. But I get it!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to say that everything that was said in the forums or Discord are morally reprehensible, and we should all be outraged. In fact, fuck that. Look, this is a political simulator where we've all clashed, we've all gotten outsized egos, and most of our skin is thinner than we let on. We've all said terrible, awful things about each other to others under the auspices of it being private. We say things out of frustration, out of anger, or just out of sheer exhaustion. I've done it. We've all done it. No one has a moral high ground here.
What I am saying though is that it is hilarious, in a way that I can't accurately describe, that a political party who prided themselves as "citizens of Europeia who are working to encourage, foster, and advocate for the betterment of the political environment within our region" spent so much time not doing that at all. In fact there was engagement in some clear and disproportionately irresponsible politics.
One of the best examples of this are when GraV and I applied to join CfRP. Our applications weren't malicious; we weren't trying to be spies. I figured my application would be denied, and having been told similarly by someone in CfRP, I withdrew the application so as to not make a fuss.
There's dozens upon dozens of other examples of this kind of hypocrisy... I mean a lot of plainly nasty, cruel, and untrue things said about fellow Europeians in that chat. But what bothers me the most having read through it is the "Aex/WL/Rach turn everything into Us v Them while we advocate Us v Them, but it's okay because we're us, and they're them.", this "GOTV is awful but lets coordinate our campaigns and messaging to canvass for votes-- oh good they're on our side this time", irresponsible politicking while pretending to have the moral high ground. They played the part of Anakin thinking they were Obi-Wan and much like Anakin now they've got no legs to stand on.
As an outsider looking in, as someone who was seen as one of the primary antagonists for CfRP, it seems to me that the party was animated around combating me first and foremost when I was President. Then, when I started to fade away and become less of a Big Evil, Writinglegend took up that mantle. When Writinglegend started to fade away again, Rach took up that mantle. When Rach started to fade away again there was...not much left. Alliances shifted, politics shifted, and the primary pushers against the Big Evils retired or left.
I'm not here to pretend to have the moral high ground and say I haven't engaged in politicking or that I haven't said things I regret - because holy shit I absolutely have. I have engaged in dark, seedy politics, some of which I regret, but frankly no more or less than anyone else in Europeia that's held or run for high office. This is a political simulator; this is what happens. But we need to make sure we don't repeat some of this nonsense from behind the auspices of the morality of "Responsible Politics".
This is your mostly incompetent fool, that you don't want to be like signing off!