for Nostalgia, for Education: a previously unreleased interview.

[© tweed]

I gave this interview in late 2010 but it never made it to the Atlasian public sphere.  I post it now:  (in full disclosure, the interviewer went by the name 'Junkie', you may know him better than I)

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1.) How did this all begin? Was the intention just to simulate elections or to create a complete government?


it wasn't well thought through. the February election of course preceded any sort of constitution, for example. my memory is a bit foggy on a lot of these things as it's a damned long time ago; but, we were a cohesive internet community at that point. and I was on a 16 day vacation from school spending the vast majority of my time on Atlas and watching the NFL. it is likely that the original thread I created broadly positing the idea of 'elections' sprung out of discussions that were ongoing that tangentially referred to organized structures within the community; such as, who is the leader of the Forum Democrats? and Republicans? and so on. so in short the whole thing was pretty spontaneous, and while it didn't explicitly not try to create a government concurrent with the elections it just didn't think that far ahead.

2.) You were the first chairman of the Democratic Party, were you elected or did you just appoint yourself that?  Did everyone just make up titles for them at first?

people did make up titles. for example I think Supersoulty called himself 'Governor', and this was not uncommon though with the advent of the constitution it went out of practice as the titles began to mean something. the key difference with my title is that it reflected an actual consolidation of power. I did just declare myself AFDNC chair, but it held weight as people listened.

3.) During the first primaries you came out first for Christoper Michael against Migrendel and Nym 90.  However within a week it appeared that Christopher was no longer running for the nomination and you became the primary challenger to Nym.  How did that occur and why?

I was heavily involved in internal bargaining from the get-go. in the absence of actual coherent party structures, I as self-proclaimed chair served as a sort of kingmaker. three candidates emerged for us: CM, who was center-rightist in tendency, Nym90, who was the traditional liberal type, and Migrendel, who had almost Marxian leanings on certain things and at least carried that reputation. originally I bargained a deal that put CM and Nym90 on opposite ends of the ticket, but eventually after discussions with Nym thought the better of it. it's important to remember that at this point CM and Nym were actually close friends in RL so they were able to smooth things over amongst themselves.  Nym made sense as he was universally respected around the boards at this time.

4.) After the election, there appeared to be some controversy about electing a senate and creating a constitution.  What was your feelings on the issue?

I didn't care, I was more concerned about preserving party power. I did get pissed at Nym but it looks like we'll cover that in ques. 8. the lone policy issue I attempted to get involved with was to steer away from preferential voting because I thought it would open the door to our eventual demise; up through May or so we had a strong hold on power, but the coalition wasn't really built for anything like preferential voting.

5.) Dunn started the Progressive Party, what was the purpose for the split?

it had more to do with them than us. people who wanted to steer the whole thing in more of a social democratic direction. calling it a 'party' is a bit of a misnomer. Dunn and I got along very well and I always felt the Progs were well under AFDNC control. the extent of their power was carefully orchestrated: we 'gave' them 2 or 3 Senate seats to make them feel good about themselves.

6.) Christopher was Chief of Staff, but resigned and accussed Nym of lies, what was that all about?

pretty sure it had to do with RL personal fallout between the two of them that I'm obviously unfit to comment on.

7.) Nym never seemed to be around for awhile, were people unhappy with his presidency?

8.) About one month into the Nym presidency, you were vowing to deny him the renomination, why was that?

these sort of go hand in hand: he had some personal stuff to attend to in RL and had to be largely absent. as I really cared about the game it was bothering me that we had worked so hard to win and were building a power structure that looked like was going to last, only to be undermined by an inactive president. there were even considerations underway to allow Harry to act as president until Nym returned or provided an explanation. any public statements I made were purely intended to act as manipulations to make him active again.

9.) Two weeks after that, you were challenged for party chairmanship.  Even though your own polls had you at 35%, you pulled out a huge victory.  How did you do that?

I always had this authoritarian, dictatorial or even hysteric public persona that served to flaunt the power I'd collected in my hands. this of course led to a bit of a left opposition movement within that party, that wanted AFDNC democracy and pointed out that I had never been elected, and so on. so I agreed to hold a private election among registered Dems. hughento challenged me. any number I gave in public was probably a fabrication. I knew I was going to win and wouldn't have held an election if I thought it would be my demise. I think I won with 75%.

10.) Going into the Senate elections, it appears you engineered a deal with the Progressives over the VP seat and some Senate seats.  How did that occur and who did you deal with?

probably dunn, who was Prog chair iirc. the Progs were a pretty solid bloc at that point, between a quarter and a third of the people we eventually expected to form the base for Nym's re-election in June, so it was clear they had to be thrown a bone. the AFDNC (aka me) officially endorsed I believe 3 progressives for Senate seats and instructed our people to support them.

11.) You eventually stepped down from the Party chair spot and became Senator.  How did that occur?

I think there was a special election quickly after the midterms in my district. I had sort of gotten 'bored' with the old job and wanted to have a hand in policy, which I thought was the new battlefield now that we had a working Constitution, party structures and so on. I won a close race against AndrewBerger, at that time known as YoungRepub, who incidentally was the original AFRNC chair and a sort of natural rival.  by the end of the term the old party system was in tatters, the UAC dominated and I actually joined the AFRNC in an attempt to steer one of the last vestiges of the past back to relevancy. quite the reactionary.

12.) Do you remember the Jesus Christ Party starting?  What were your feelings about it?

I do, it was bgwah's creation along with some friends. I was convinced that it had to be fraud, their names were all like Reverend Matthew, Father Elijah, etc.

13.) Who was this CT guy that everyone seemed so fired up about?

a posted from Connecticut who didn't hold back. really played up the whole Northeast elitist, anti-agrarian, anti-Southern shtick to a vitriolic level. eventually got banned I think.

14.) There was a Civil war in 2004.  Seriously, what was up with that?  How did it occur?

I don't really remember. some people who were bored I guess. I tried to make a rally-around-the-flag thing with Nym about it which proved inconsequential.