Calvin Coolidge said:
Kaboom said:
Just curious: Calvin has his own paper. Why post this in the ENN and not the Panda's Pen?
Publishing this in my paper paints it as a certain type of article
Doesn't change the fact that it still reads as that certain type of article, though.
HEM said:
I think Aex has proven he can win without the dramatic pity (cc: Lethen).
Cute. As I told you earlier when you texted me asking "why [I love] Aex so much (asking for a friend)," my "dramatic pity" (though you called it "aggressive" vis-a-vis text) was much less that I love Aex - I do think he'll be a good President - and much more "I'm getting tired of the hypocrisy" exhibited by many here. Frustrated by it, even. Irrationally salty, definitely.
Aex plays the political game well, and there's nothing wrong with that in a region as political as Europeia and a game like NationStates that is a political simulator. I have no qualms with that, but where I do take issue is the hypocrisy that drips from some people's posts and commentary, in private or public. Some may say "Lethen, hypocrisy is part of politics too!" But I deal with it enough in the RL (see: Republicans, subsection: coworkers), and if I can have some sort of curbing effect in Europeia, I am going to damn well say something.
In many ways I'm quite a hypocrite; however, if we're operating on the assumption that hypocrisy is okay in Europeia too then we'll run with it. Being out of politics in any official capacity gives me a unique viewpoint when people from various cliques and tracks of Europeian life come to me for idle chatter, political advice, etc. That's also the reason I've picked up the habit of talking behind someone's back and then telling them to their face later - why do I care about who I'll offend if I don't need their vote? :emb: And if they are offended, why? My complaints are rarely about their inherent character traits or personal life; I operate in trash-talking their politics.
Including those that like to paint Aex as this uber-adept and shrewd political operator who is "playing politics" 24/7 while they themselves are, apparently, being political in a more fair and straight-forward kind of way. Somehow. Or maybe its doing the same thing with regularity in one-on-one chats and within somewhat closed circles but arrogantly acting as if they aren't even though everyone is in on the secret? As I said in my other post, maybe Aex's mistake is getting caught and having it made public. None of us are exceptions, however. Calvin included, this article included.
And that's what frustrates me beyond reason, this hypocrisy. In Calvin's
previous article on his Presidential ambitions, he talks about why he decided not to run. It has emotion and I don't doubt his sincerity - to a point. We aren't idiots. Regardless of whether or not you believe the narrative of a "toxic" Europeia has much merit, it was an incredibly adept move by someone with Presidential ambitions. Calvin has not only avoided an election that may expose his faults for a future run, but he has also co-opted the "toxic Europeia" narrative to paint himself as this selfless Presidential hopeful who decided to rise above it and not contribute to the toxicity further. Did it work? I can't tell you. I know some of us, myself included, were disappointed that Calvin decided to bypass the hard work of running a good and clean campaign, the kind that would combat "toxicity" in Europeia as it were, to instead bow out.
So what's next? Well, Calvin posted this article to vent and, more likely, weaken Aex's position. It's no secret that the cabal heavily mentored by Anumia that traditionally included Calvin, Kraken, and WL (though I feel he distanced himself over the last two terms) have often been opposed to Seymour, after all. And as with his first article, I think Calvin's emotions were justified, and I don't fault him for feeling slighted. I'm also not going to brush past Aex's screw-up in this case (he seriously needs to work on communication when it comes to nominations and picking people for a job :emb: ).
BUT the fact still stands that this is blatant hypocrisy. Ignoring the article breakdown above, Calvin failed to mention during this entire article that he was simultaneously planning his own Presidential run in secrecy. So secret, it seems, that HEM, Trinnien, and Mouse (iirc) were sworn to secrecy; the only snippets I heard about before weaseling it out of someone else were that it "was a former past President" and his short-list of VP's included HEM, Trinnien, and Rach. If you've sworn those in-the-know to secrecy and you're actively being coy - lying really - to the other Presidential candidate, that's politicking. That isn't any better than the political machinations that Aexnidaral is often criticized for, and honestly if Calvin isn't
intentionally being this clever with his politics, then he is an idiot savant. :emb:
To be clear, Calvin isn't the only one guilty of playing politics regularly and criticizing Aex in public for those things. And it's not that I really like Aex or that I really hate Calvin. It's that I am both frustrated and disgusted with blatant hypocrisy, and if we want things to be on the up-and-up, then our behavior must reflect that desire.