After this post is published, I'll be de-registering from Atlasia. I have no idea whether I'll stay gone permanently, temporarily, or what. None of that really matters.
After experiencing a terrible night in real electoral politics, piecing together recently some aspects of my actual life and dealing with people in this game who seem to want to start veiled BS on a consistent basis (as opposed to good ol' fashioned straightforward BS; this time, in non-partisan threads for a game perk that I've been providing for what seems like an eternity now),
I've asked myself why I'm still doing this. I have no real reasonable answer. To the most important people in this game, my party: I really wanted to be Chair again. I'm sorry that I don't have it left in me to continue with this silliness. Unfortunately, I think this is the time to exit - I'd never quit while I had a job like that. Nix should be Chair - I think he's the only one who can do it justice from day one at this point. I never really got to take "my break" after June - the need from others kept pulling me back into this game initially, and then I began to enjoy screwing around once again. The reality, however (and any person in party leadership will tell you) is that this crap gets old. I'm sick of having to deal with perpetually misinformed n00bs that are told we're the bane of existence. I don't have the energy (and for this particular aspect, never have had the energy) to pretend that I like or fake conversations with dozens of people through PM to thwart this sociopathy, and frankly, no one in our party ever really waged large-scale PM smear campaigns like multiple people have done and continue to do against us (yet we still whooped and continue to whoop their asses time and time again all across this country).
When this game continues to slide downhill, I won't be around to blame. It's cute how some think that the best and most crowd-sourced structure in the game is somehow the one to blame for its demise. Just because
you are not on the inside doesn't mean that we are the problem or that it's one or two people calling the shots. Nah, it could never be the cult that the
currently-dormant wolf in sheep's clothing built solely to elect himself to office and collapsed about five seconds after his second term began (and about ten seconds before he went AWOL for most of the term). It couldn't be
the people who poured in off-site
zombies in order to build pan-ideological cults. It couldn't be fact that two-thirds of the game currently does nothing to define itself save for how it disagrees with Labor's policies. Well, the so-called architect of your problems will no longer be around - grow the f[inks] up and find someone/something else to blame.
I'm tired of dealing with people who are just as shatty as I am but never want to show their actual selves. It for a fun game does not make. This is a simulator. A large number of people in here have the same aspirations and tactics from a broader perspective: stop acting so pious. I always thought being an honest asshule could be fun, but it's not when all of the other asshules want to play faux outrage and keep their faux personas intact. Labor's been the big bad wolf for a while, so lots of younger players don't realize just how screwed up the people who message them consistently from the time they join truly are. They're using you, dum-dums, just like every power player and every party in this game does. It
really bothers me that there are people who actively have done this stuff for years and years. Do you
ever get tired of using people for magic internet politics?
I'm tired of trying to create an actual ideological atmosphere with policy contrast, only to have proverbial empty suits crap all over it. You're a moderate? Great. Most people in this game are not actual moderates - they play moderates because that's the easy peasy route to get elected without actually having to be loyal to a movement. Hell, some of them are in my (former) party. That's why the center of gravity always leads to centrist parties emerging - too many Miss Independents who want to have it their way and can't be bothered to pick a side (and yes, there are only two). This isn't real life, ffs - stop the moderate hero softcackery and stand for something other than sheer opposition to something else. That's what is killing the game. When reform can't emerge because everybody's crowding around the center with their hands down each others' pants, you get people such as myself, Xahar and others that will consider any action that will stimulate the game and cause something to happen other than a bunch of centrists having mild disagreements on long-solved aspects of economic and social policy.
As far as I'm concerned, Labor won the game given its ideological limits and potential awhile back. When Nix was elected, I'd say. If that wasn't good enough, we just won 3 out of 5 regional seats just a couple of weeks ago, which is the best we've ever done. Two months prior, we elected Xahar, for Christ's sake. The Senate is the most expansive, most stable in terms of cycles and most ideologically similar delegation we've ever had. Definitely not in the same case as the JCP, but we were never trying to be the JCP and never will be. We flipped the dynamic of the balance of power in this game on its head, saying screw the (up until that point) center-left and redefined the balance as the actual left. JCP, Liberal, whatever - it's all the same crap from different eras. The easy route of broad center-leftism that results in relatively easily-accumulated political power. We fought for our victories, and our power always came with a handicap. So be it. It's been a lot of fun. I started out against the odds and helped build - along with several other great people - the best damn political party to emerge from dissolution. That's a f[inks]ing fact. Not only would I wager that we've had more fun, but we've also got more done, organized more effectively and taken the all-too silly aspects of this game with a bigger grain of salt than most can carry. Will it hold? Who knows, but it won't be my worry anymore.
This Progressive Union nonsense is trouble, and sensible veterans across party lines know it. It has nothing to do with the slights that they've given Labor, which is just icing on the cake for some on my side of the aisle. That's why there have been multiple discussions on the cancerous growth and what it'll mean for Atlasia if left unchecked. The Progressive Union's growth, composition and recruitment efforts is indistinguishable from the surge that we saw when wolfentoad started dragging people in from the forum and from outside sources like Stormfront, effectively over-inflating the game. Mark my words:
this one and
this one will be the Second Coming. I don't think they mean bad and I'm sure they're good kids for the most part, but no one starts out meaning bad in this game - just wait for it. Hopefully, they'll avoid that fate in the game.
It's not just a Labor thing, and I hope that some from the right who privately agree with me will ultimately come forward and call this nonsense out for what it is: a breeding ground for the people who hang around/hold offices in this game for years and years - yet talk about how they don't take it seriously - to cultivate their hordes of buttenbuddies for those elections in which they're totally going to run, on issues that they're totally not going to articulate and with voters that know no better.I don't see a bright path for reform nor for the left in the near future. Honestly, the members of the actual left can probably help out the game more by allying with the Federalists and cack-blocking the cancer before it metastasizes. The Right knows that it's a threat, too. This is not an ideological issue. You can't fight a force that has no solid base of ideology
with ideology. Does the Right want to continue losing prominent players to this force as it grows? I know it doesn't. They'll of course have to fight with themselves: between the situation of a weakened left that allows them to win and the game being eroded by these issues, it may not pan out well for any of you guys. The Right has recently intensified its emulation of the long-standing centrist strategy of pandering to as many people as possible in order to win big elections, but they know that they can't beat the kings on their home court - only when a party like Labor alienates enough of the middle can they win.
So basically, I choose to go out on top. I choose to let go of it all because essentially, I've done everything I wanted to do at this point. I choose to not let the real problems of this game use me as their scapegoat any longer, so that they may be proven wrong in the end. I choose to try to have an actual life this winter. 
"A real pro knows when to walk away."
I genuinely don't have issue with anyone in this game - it just all comes down to how people want to portray themselves. Honesty, it boils down to this: stop acting like Popes and innocent children when you're Terry McAulliffes and Mitt Romneys. I don't carry these grudges outside Atlasia, and I hope that when we run into one another elsewhere, there won't be any hard feelings.
Maybe I'll come back at some point, and maybe I'll too play a softcack moderate hero if that is the case. I figure there'll be some who want to troll or argue with what I've said, but it doesn't really matter to me at this point. Spin it, bicker, banter, try to get a reaction: whatever.
I do have
a bag of goodies for those people, though: they know what to go do with them.
