You donât know my abilities, I donât know yours, but thatâs what makes it more exciting. Even stomping down coward gallenteans becomes eventually routine and I wouldnât mind to spice it up a bit.
But anyway⌠less bla bla more pew pew.
Here are your options.
Fight me in ships.
Pros: Probably the most fair sort of fight, since weâre both capsuleers.
Cons: Youâll never get a chance to lay your hand on me disregarding if you lose or win.
Firearms.
Pros: Safest pick if youâre afraid of pain and want it quick.
Cons: Youâll die before even reaching me.
Cold arms.
Pros: Now thatâs where it gets personal.
Cons: You might lose both your hands before you get a chance to touch me, hehe.
Unarmed:
Pros: The only way for you to guaranteedly touch me disregarding if you lose or win.
Cons: You still might get it difficult approaching me closer than my leg stretch.
Pick your poison.
While they remain democracies, anyway. Also, the people arenât always all that trustworthy. You donât have a government that can ignore popular sentiment when that gets out of control. Your society may have found the execution of Avent Eturrer satisfying; to the rest of us, it was a chilling display of public cruelty, the rage of a bloodthirsty mob, without dignity, grace, or mercy.
The best argument for the more hierarchical systems (the Caldari corporate feudal state; the Amarrian actual feudal state) is that you get a ruling class that is purposely prepared, often from birth, to rule. At the same time both societies have mechanisms for recognizing, employing, and rewarding merit (more in the State than the Empire, but even the Empire allows social advancement through consistent merit, especially across generations. Witness the rise of House Tash-Murkon).
We get bad patches, sure: indifference, corruption, and greed, and in some cases those lead to crisis-- but, then, also to reform. Same as you, I suppose. But while your society often seems driven by whim, ours is not so easily windblown.
(The Caldari people have ultimate say in their way, just as yours do, but by different means and mostly in extreme circumstances. Itâs the upper echelons that are sometimes tempted by individualism. The laborer and technician castes are broadly traditionalists, with strong expectations that the powerful exist to serve their communities and a strong rejection of selfish personal motives. The executive and chief executive classes abuse them at their peril.)
(Although sadly theyâre not always clever about it and can get terribly stupid. Itâs the kind of tradition the Templis Dragonaurs-- the real ones, not the egger alliance-- use to recruit.)
Please reply next time before eating camera drone.
Thanks in advance!
I step away from the intergalactic web console for a day and I come back to some B-rated x-rated holoflick. Yaâll are classy.
I would like to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand. Discussing the status of the Gallente Democracy and its future.
I am willing to throw my support behind an actual reasonable party to help re-establish true democracy within Gallente. Itâs time we progress forwards and not backwards. People are in need of help and welfare. The scars of the fully unleashed (in my opinion, I am sure that wasnât the last of them nor the last attacks) invasion of the drifters and sleepers are still being felt. Lives have been ruined, families destroyed, people abducted and missing. The fight still rages on in Tabbetzur.
I admit I donât know whom to trust anymore. From Gallente to Caldari. Amarr puppeting CONCORD and EDENCOM. Hell it seems even the Minmatar gots its own problems. I just know that New Eden is in need of genuine help and reform. Firstly starting with the Federal Gallente.
President Celes Aguard and the War-Hawks must go.
The people of Gallente must wake up, we must form a coalition of allied partisans to amend the wrongs of this administration and administrations prior.
In what? To what end? How far?
Trustâs always a risk, Mr. Revtes-- hopefully a calculated one.
I got trust issues and Iâm gonna leave it at that.
Everyoneâs got an agenda and a motive. Everyoneâs using someone for something. I guess I can try and build up that trust in things. Of course, doesnât mean I go trusting everyone.
We can argue these damn semantics but at the end of the day. The systems of trust are falling apart and someoneâs gotta learn when to stop twisting the knife and actually start fixing things.
I donât have all the answers, I just know that there is a problem right now with my home nationâs government and I donât like where its going. I didnât like it when we swooped in and snagged Intaki from their people. I didnât like it when built a gaudy acceleration gate that can fling an entire fleet at a momentâs notice across space for a corrupt war-effort. I donât like it now one bit with the silence and in action. Something has got to change.
Well, you can, in fact, trust Caldari. Because Honor is more important than everything. As it is said, there are two main currencies in our cluster: ISK and trust. And only ISK you can regain if you lose it. Losing trust is simply not acceptable for any successful business or corporation.
Oh, and never⌠never ever trust a Gallentean.
And since the topic is their democracy - their democracy even back in a day was just a sham. And now itâs outright and apparently evident lie.
Iâm probably going to be called a Caldari-apologists but I donât blame yall for feeling and thinking the way yaâll do. I think to look back at all thats happened, yeah I think we Galleteans have blood on ours hands. Not just Caldari, Intaki blood on our hands too.
You can feel justified about what my government has done, yet we both can recognize that something is terribly wrong and do something about it. Youâre welcome to take pot shots at my shield if that gives any catharsis. Just, maybe consider grounding your perspective that there are still good folks in Gallente trying to make amends. Just the wrong people are in power right now.
Ms. Kimâs a war dog, capable but terribly (and proudly) fixed in purpose. Iâm a little impressed youâre able to sympathize with her. I ⌠kind of doubt youâll like her proposed solutions though.
If you identify what someone, or an entity, really wants, you can usually trust it to work towards that thing or to be willing to course-correct in that direction if it goes astray. That does mean getting to know them, though, and with nation states thatâs ⌠basically impossible beyond understanding what their interests are. (Theyâre not individual people after all.) And the âinterestsâ thing is only if their rulers are competent.
If itâs a cause you care about, you might be able to trust an institution or even nation dedicated to it, at least so long as its interests stay aligned that way. If itâs individuals you care about, though, or usually even groups ⌠I donât know that thereâs anything significantly larger than whatever that entity is that you can truly trust.
Ms. Kim cares very intensely for a cause. I ⌠will leave the specifics to her. (We donât completely get along.)
As for myself, even if I like to talk about politics and great empires, I only really care about certain individual people. So thereâs no institution I can, or as far as I can tell really should, really trust.
Iâve been listening to some Intaki mantra audio-instrucitons. Working on that empathy and temperament. Does you wonders with self-control⌠And a few beers⌠After losing a few ventures one after another to a highway pirate. Itâs relaxing to listening to something while spending a cycleâs worth of mining out in the edges of empire space.
As for myself, even if I like to talk about politics and great empires, I only really care about certain individual people. So thereâs no institution I can, or as far as I can tell really should, really trust.
I think one thing you said really stuck out to me. Itâs the people you care about that make the difference⌠Right now Iâm lacking any people to care about. A home means nothing if you donât got people you care about or trust. I wonder if thats how others feel right now after the drifter crisis.
I ⌠guess I believe itâs precisely what we care about, whether itâs people, places, or maybe even things, that makes a home. Mineâs the Daphiti household at Gottinâs Lamp, LUMENâs HQ, and the common room/bar there. Been mostly gone from there a couple months now, but at least Iâm with the people I need to be near (which makes âhomeâ portable to some degree).
You donât seem like a hostile kind of person and weâre kind of a cosmopolitan bunch as Amarr loyalist entities go, so if you find yourself truly at loose ends and, especially, interested in travelling and learning, Iâd think youâd be welcome to visit.
So there is.. And while some throw rocks at the Federation.. In the end The Federation will survive. I hope that the Intaki get more say at the table. They deserve that.. More autonomy on their home planet. The Federation has been through rough times before. President Auguarde if nothing else is a reminder that the people need to be vigilant. That the Federation is not a perfect place. But it is one where a lot of refugees do seem to head when things become intolerable in their part of the cluster.
While history has shown that the federation can be just as heavy handed as any amarrian emperor. It is also true that the federation can do better. Though success does seem at time just out of reach. At times the federation just gets it flat wrong. The caldari civil war is getting it flat wrong. Instead of war there could have been a better approach. But by the time anyone wanted to listen to a better approach. Caldari homeworld was occupied and there was no real going back from there.
Though where the Federation did get right. Was aiding the Minmatar in their efforts at throwing off the Amarrian slavers and being free from Amarrian control. Helping them to set up their government and not trying to make it into another Federation was the best thing the Federation could do.
a President Augard is something that pops up in a system of government. Someone that wants more power and is never satisfied with the guardrails or check and balances that are in place. We the Gallente, Jim Mei. Intaki, and other people that have made the Federation home, will deal with this president in due time. At the end I suspect there will be arrests and trials. As we dispose of this Augard and her supporters.
Ah. You. Er. Do get that this doesnât give them a lot of incentive to ever, ever give up power, Mr. Gicquet?
As I am not part of the government. There could be a deal in the offing to allow her step down. But time will tell just what will happen. She could, and letâs be honest it is not likely to happen, suddenly gets rational and declare the elections are going to happen on a set date or resigns. What is likely to happen is that things are going to get rather messy. She could have declared and set a definite date for elections a good month or two ago. We are passed, in my opinion, incentive at this point.
I will add at this point even should she set a date. There are still questions that she will have to answer. One of the least is why did it take so long set a date. The anther question is why deny the Intaki more voice in the Federation. It would take a lot of wind out of the sails of the rebels. Were the Intaki given what they should have had all along. We shall see how it plays out.
For quite a long time before all this drama the Federation was positioning itself as âdemocraticâ, which means they willingly were accepting the responsibility of their government.
I am not really sure how I should treat gallenteans after this. It has been going for some time already. What was started by Duvalier was continued by Foiritan, Roden, and now Aguard. Gallente did judge Duvalier, but they are just keep doing what they were doing.
I donât trust gallente, and thatâs it, but it doesnât mean I am not willing to give anyone a chance.
Maybe itâs turn for Gallenteans to simply abandon their regime and join the State - at least just to see if they can actually become model citizens, or will remain useless and unprofitable hedonists and power hungry individualists.
With respect, Mr. Gicquet, that isnât quite what I was getting at.
I was more saying that sentiments like the one you expressed, particularly if widespread, are a powerful reason for an autocratic regime not to give an inch, no matter how brutal and bloodsoaked they must become.
People, especially at least somewhat-guilty people, will do a lot to avoid being exposed to the judgment of their peers, targets of âarrests and trials.â And the more they have already done, the more theyâre likely to be willing to do.
Thatâs particularly true if they think their lives are on the line. The phrase âdispose ofâ carries certain implications. After a certain point, they may believe themselves so hated that there is no deal they can take that they can possibly expect to be honored; unless invited into exile by another nation at some key moment, they may well fight to the death.
I wasnât really assuming you were a negotiator-- just somewhat representative of your peopleâs feelings.
It has probably been judged to be politically inconvenient to do so.
Rather than give a member state such as Intaki more voice, the historic norm has been for the Federation to take.
Once a powerful state in its own right, Federal reform and reinvention has seen Intaki reduced so that the Assemblyâs power, such that it is, is limited to the home system itself. That said, it does still enjoy some cultural and political influence across the Viriette District, and with its former colonies and settlements across Placid and beyond.
But within the Federal structures of government, the Intaki Assembly can only do so much.
Even before the people of Intaki elected a government that advocated for greater autonomy, the Federation had shown that it was willing to simply ignore or actively block the wishes of the Assembly. There is little suggestion that this policy of denial would be any different now.
The Assembly may be able to affect some local change, but on a wider Federal scale the power sits with the Senate, and despite recent anger and frustration at President Aguardâs policies, Intakiâs Senators have historically been largely pro-Federation.
But that growing frustration, from the citizen protesting on the street, to the voter at the ballot, from the councillor at the Assembly to the representative at the Senate, is not something that Aguard wantâs to hear, especially ahead of a very delayed presidential election.
I canât agree, Diana. Itâs much more profitable to simply let them stew in their political morass and exploit their markets. That very hedonism is exactly what the State should be banking on; theyâll buy anything so long as they think it makes them better than their peers. Anything to impress their vacuous friends, anything to make them a part of whatever short-sighted trend is going on around the Galnet that week.
Trust me, the Fed joining the State in any way is a loosing proposition. Just the criminal underworld alone would eat up so many resources and so much time from State overseers that it would be like throwing isk into a black hole. With how big the Federation is, it would only destabilize the State. Like pouring mercury on a block of aluminum, it just starts eating away and weakening the bonds that hold it together.