Post by Glüc on Nov 12, 2016 15:16:28 GMT 1
Azul everyone,
Lüc told me it was ok to use the podium to say a couple of things about the upcoming campaign, so Id like to thank him for that. I wrote this in a bit of a hurry (ok, to be fair, it took me three days, but it still felt like a hurry to me), so I hope theres not too many mistakes in here
Wednesday, even though it was my birthday, I woke up nauseous after only a few hours of sleep. It was not a good day. What happened in the US is terrifying to me. It's not OK.
Don't worry, I know there are people in Talossa and in the MRPT who preferred Trump over Clinton and I get that people are sick of hearing about the US, so I'm not going to go on a rant about why I think that. In Talossa the party lines are drawn quite differently from the rest of the world. Each party has its unique Talossan ideology that doesnt match one on one with the politics of the rest of the world and thats cool.
The point I was trying to make is that in the rest of the world there is a divide going on that will not be easily healed. A divide that concerns the deepest of our personal convictions about right and wrong. Thinking about this made me put some of the problems in Talossa in a different perspective.
In the past years we have gotten into personal and emotional arguments in Talossa about politics. How should we change the orglaw be changed, who should lead the cabinet, who is responsible for what, etc. Questions that are relevant but never needed to become so personal. Sometimes it got to the point where people left or had to take a break because they no longer felt part of the community.
For me it also got to the point that I actually felt that it would be a problem for Talossa if Citaxhien Miestra or Sir AD became PM. I also am afraid to admit that occasionally I have felt relief about Miestra not being here for a while to confront us with our flaws...
Like I said, since then Ive gained some perspective. Because the issues that people got into arguments about werent, as far as I could see, about the core if our moral identities, they were about personalities and about our different ideas on how to make Talossa better and the flaws in each other.
In fact, Miestra is very active on facebook and while Im not, I do occasionally read her posts and they only make me respect her and remind me that to me, her ideas are much more sensible than those of many others. And this reminds how wrong I was to feel threatened by her. And how we all as Talossans have been wrong occasionally in letting things get personal.
I know there is still hurt out there, a lot of which we are not responsible for, and it would be foolish to think we're going to solve it all with some fancy speeches. The best we can do I guess is look at ourselves and try to not let politics get more important than our sense of community.
The truth is that we all want Talossa to be active, and democratic, and diverse. We just disagree on how to get there. And many of our political opponents have put a lot of time and effort in building Talossa, and not always do people get the recognition they deserve for this.
The truth is also that Talossa is a community that lets people from all across the world, with different ideas and a completely different worldview get in touch with each other and discuss all kinds of stuff, language, music, world politics, whatever. People with similar ideas about the world can disagree vehemently about Talossan affairs. However, the opposite is also true. For example, two people with a completely different worldview can agree on the way forward for Talossa, and even found a Talossan party together. That's kind of cool right?
Another truth is that negative activity was a problem last election, but this election we are faced with a completely opposite problem: it's awfully quiet in Talossa. When we had something to fight about, it motivated people to be active and challenge each other. Now it looks like people arent motivated to be active at all. Another reminder that some sense of conflict isnt really that bad, we just need to find a balance in which we can disagree vehemently about politics, but not let things get too personal. And we need to find ways to engage Talossans in Talossan activities without having to be active in partisan politics.
For those who havent done so yet, I would recommend reading the speeches of Inxheneu Crova and Marti-Pair Furxheir. I like the idea of s;reu Crova to introduce some sort of reward system beyond what we have now, even though Im still unsure about the implementation. Particulary, who decides what kind of actions get rewarded, the government? I do see some objections to that, but that shouldnt stop us from trying to find a system that works. Mpf raises some very good questions that arent very easy to answer and makes an important point about planning for the long term future of Talossa. I hope that despite the current calm in Talossa, we do manage to find a way to honour the big moment for Talossa that is the 50th Cosa.
Anyway, back to what I was trying to say. Don't get me wrong, I hope we do well this election. We have the best, ideologically consistent platform, with concrete, realisable goals for Talossa. We have a great Cosa team with both experienced legislators and ambitious new citizens. Last term we proved again that we are the party that best represents its voters, by being the only major party not to miss a vote (not the first time we achieved this feat), and by working together with other parties to pass legislation on important planks of our platform, such as a major step towards mandatory party lists. Ian Plätschisch in particular deserves credit for this. We also have the best leader, Lüc da Schir, guiding us through good times and difficult times with steady hand. I look forward to hearing his closing speech (assuming there is one).
But dont just get obsessed with politics. Improving Talossa can be done in many ways, through legislation, but also by taking up non-partisan administrative functions, like helping to update the website, building a civil service or joining the college of arms, and by just doing something fun, organise a game, discuss recipes, talk with Talossan friends online. If you just focus on winning elections, you lose part of the Talossan experience.
And like I said, I hope we do well, but remember that our opponents want the best for Talossa as well. If they get personal, part of that is because they too care about Talossa. And if people criticise us, it helps us do better next time. If another party wins, it IS ok. If the RUMP wins, that IS ok. This government may not have been as succesful as we hoped it would be, but my impression was that bipartisan cooperation with the RUMP went pretty well. Sir Cresti is a good PM, a good person and a great Talossan. If the FreeDems win, that IS ok. The FreeDems and before them the ZRT have brought diversity and renewed activity in Talossan poltics and their attack on flawed institutions is healthy for Talossa. Dien too, is a great Talossan who stands for his principles and would make a good PM. If some other party rises and competes with us for the centrist vote, that IS ok too. New ideas help Talossa move forward. And lastly, if Sir AD or Sir Mick or Lord Hooligan or Carlüs Xheraltescu or Dame Miestra became more active again, even though we might lose some seats as a result of it, it would still be great news. In fact, what should worry us these particular elections is that we may be getting too little competition from the other parties. As a result of this we are about to gain seats this election, I have no doubt about that. What we should hope for is that other parties do well too.
I wish everyone a positive and succesful campaign.
Lüc told me it was ok to use the podium to say a couple of things about the upcoming campaign, so Id like to thank him for that. I wrote this in a bit of a hurry (ok, to be fair, it took me three days, but it still felt like a hurry to me), so I hope theres not too many mistakes in here
Wednesday, even though it was my birthday, I woke up nauseous after only a few hours of sleep. It was not a good day. What happened in the US is terrifying to me. It's not OK.
Don't worry, I know there are people in Talossa and in the MRPT who preferred Trump over Clinton and I get that people are sick of hearing about the US, so I'm not going to go on a rant about why I think that. In Talossa the party lines are drawn quite differently from the rest of the world. Each party has its unique Talossan ideology that doesnt match one on one with the politics of the rest of the world and thats cool.
The point I was trying to make is that in the rest of the world there is a divide going on that will not be easily healed. A divide that concerns the deepest of our personal convictions about right and wrong. Thinking about this made me put some of the problems in Talossa in a different perspective.
In the past years we have gotten into personal and emotional arguments in Talossa about politics. How should we change the orglaw be changed, who should lead the cabinet, who is responsible for what, etc. Questions that are relevant but never needed to become so personal. Sometimes it got to the point where people left or had to take a break because they no longer felt part of the community.
For me it also got to the point that I actually felt that it would be a problem for Talossa if Citaxhien Miestra or Sir AD became PM. I also am afraid to admit that occasionally I have felt relief about Miestra not being here for a while to confront us with our flaws...
Like I said, since then Ive gained some perspective. Because the issues that people got into arguments about werent, as far as I could see, about the core if our moral identities, they were about personalities and about our different ideas on how to make Talossa better and the flaws in each other.
In fact, Miestra is very active on facebook and while Im not, I do occasionally read her posts and they only make me respect her and remind me that to me, her ideas are much more sensible than those of many others. And this reminds how wrong I was to feel threatened by her. And how we all as Talossans have been wrong occasionally in letting things get personal.
I know there is still hurt out there, a lot of which we are not responsible for, and it would be foolish to think we're going to solve it all with some fancy speeches. The best we can do I guess is look at ourselves and try to not let politics get more important than our sense of community.
The truth is that we all want Talossa to be active, and democratic, and diverse. We just disagree on how to get there. And many of our political opponents have put a lot of time and effort in building Talossa, and not always do people get the recognition they deserve for this.
The truth is also that Talossa is a community that lets people from all across the world, with different ideas and a completely different worldview get in touch with each other and discuss all kinds of stuff, language, music, world politics, whatever. People with similar ideas about the world can disagree vehemently about Talossan affairs. However, the opposite is also true. For example, two people with a completely different worldview can agree on the way forward for Talossa, and even found a Talossan party together. That's kind of cool right?
Another truth is that negative activity was a problem last election, but this election we are faced with a completely opposite problem: it's awfully quiet in Talossa. When we had something to fight about, it motivated people to be active and challenge each other. Now it looks like people arent motivated to be active at all. Another reminder that some sense of conflict isnt really that bad, we just need to find a balance in which we can disagree vehemently about politics, but not let things get too personal. And we need to find ways to engage Talossans in Talossan activities without having to be active in partisan politics.
For those who havent done so yet, I would recommend reading the speeches of Inxheneu Crova and Marti-Pair Furxheir. I like the idea of s;reu Crova to introduce some sort of reward system beyond what we have now, even though Im still unsure about the implementation. Particulary, who decides what kind of actions get rewarded, the government? I do see some objections to that, but that shouldnt stop us from trying to find a system that works. Mpf raises some very good questions that arent very easy to answer and makes an important point about planning for the long term future of Talossa. I hope that despite the current calm in Talossa, we do manage to find a way to honour the big moment for Talossa that is the 50th Cosa.
Anyway, back to what I was trying to say. Don't get me wrong, I hope we do well this election. We have the best, ideologically consistent platform, with concrete, realisable goals for Talossa. We have a great Cosa team with both experienced legislators and ambitious new citizens. Last term we proved again that we are the party that best represents its voters, by being the only major party not to miss a vote (not the first time we achieved this feat), and by working together with other parties to pass legislation on important planks of our platform, such as a major step towards mandatory party lists. Ian Plätschisch in particular deserves credit for this. We also have the best leader, Lüc da Schir, guiding us through good times and difficult times with steady hand. I look forward to hearing his closing speech (assuming there is one).
But dont just get obsessed with politics. Improving Talossa can be done in many ways, through legislation, but also by taking up non-partisan administrative functions, like helping to update the website, building a civil service or joining the college of arms, and by just doing something fun, organise a game, discuss recipes, talk with Talossan friends online. If you just focus on winning elections, you lose part of the Talossan experience.
And like I said, I hope we do well, but remember that our opponents want the best for Talossa as well. If they get personal, part of that is because they too care about Talossa. And if people criticise us, it helps us do better next time. If another party wins, it IS ok. If the RUMP wins, that IS ok. This government may not have been as succesful as we hoped it would be, but my impression was that bipartisan cooperation with the RUMP went pretty well. Sir Cresti is a good PM, a good person and a great Talossan. If the FreeDems win, that IS ok. The FreeDems and before them the ZRT have brought diversity and renewed activity in Talossan poltics and their attack on flawed institutions is healthy for Talossa. Dien too, is a great Talossan who stands for his principles and would make a good PM. If some other party rises and competes with us for the centrist vote, that IS ok too. New ideas help Talossa move forward. And lastly, if Sir AD or Sir Mick or Lord Hooligan or Carlüs Xheraltescu or Dame Miestra became more active again, even though we might lose some seats as a result of it, it would still be great news. In fact, what should worry us these particular elections is that we may be getting too little competition from the other parties. As a result of this we are about to gain seats this election, I have no doubt about that. What we should hope for is that other parties do well too.
I wish everyone a positive and succesful campaign.
