To: Minister of Immigration and Naturalization
Status: Leave of Absence
Effective: Immediate
Length: Indefinite
Reasons: Unspecified

Harvey...

Thank you for participating in Leave-In-A-Huff Week. Here's your button, and your complimentary "I Left In A Huff" T-shirt...

No, seriously, this isn't good. Ari's been talking about the strength's of Shireroth's non-democratic system over at the OAM, and there are many, like that we don't get official parties/factions and we don't have to navigate endless legal bureaucracy.

But the weakness is that we have to persuade each other of things informally, and that tends toward the grand dramatic gesture. Both sides need to show how serious they are, and eventually that descends into rebellions or storming out or whatever. It's typical passive-aggressive behavior - and I'm usually the king of passive-aggressive, so don't think I don't recognize it. You're mad at everyone else, so you try to make them feel so bad about themselves that they change their mind. Shireroth's government is uniquely suited to that, and I kind of hoped that our legendary patriotism was enough to hold us together. Now for some reason it isn't. Maybe Erik's right and it's some sort of weird mystical effect emanating from the flag change.

I can't convince you, or Andreas, or Erik not to do this. All I can say is that I left Shireroth in a huff once - during the middle of the great slump - and I'm still regretting it. Like I said last night, I'm a little embarrassed to love Shireroth these days - but I do love it, and even though sometimes I think leaving it is an option, in the long run I know it isn't. It's just a tactic to try and get people's attention. But it's a negative-sum tactic that just makes more people leave to get more attention, it's one that I've personally sworn off (well, the oath technically only binds me until this June, but I'll renew it) and it's not something we can sustain long-term.

We can't both have an active, political Shireroth, and have a tradition that you leave in a huff every time something annoys you. We can't have this become, as Andreas called it, "the Shirerithian Solution." Let's work on institutions that will solve these sorts of problems in the future.

Thank you for that, but, well, you're wrong. Completely, unfortunately. I'm not doing this to be all angry and prove a point and deprive you all of my presence like a toddler holding his breath until he gets his way. I'm doing this because I'm defeated in the sense that i got nothin' left to put up the good fight and I can't justify digging a little deeper right now. Shireroth isn't making me happy and is potentially making me a more angry, frustrated, unpleasant person. Last night's chat put a fine enough point on it if I needed to clear up any doubts. Shireroth is a bloody mess of a barely functional community, but for the moment I'm more concerned about myself.

Besides, it's a Seldon Crisis; it doesn't matter what individual people do. Things will work themselves out, or not.

I hope you will return as citizen when you feel that the situation is right, Harvey.

But don't think that I feel somehow guilty about your leave, in the contrary. If that would have been the reason (to make me feel guilty), I can only look to you with disgust: I have never put down my citizenship, or went on an extended LOA, out of protest. As a minor noble I have protested in the past (most during one of Erik's rules), I even considered quitting (but not very seriously), but I knew it wasn't right and would give the wrong signal. After al, I was a minor noble in a feudal nation and he was the Kaiser. And I knew that one day, I could reveng... errr... rule myself and hopefully get the same kind of respect. If you leave because of me, or my policies, I can only say that you hurt yourself and Shireroth. But not me (but, yes, maybe my feelings, but... meh ).
And like I said: what I wrote is only when you do this out of protest.