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.