Quotes of People in Your Nation Mk. VI

[Belkaland]

"Yeah, sure! Lets put every single type of human phenotype on our space probe plaques and dedicate 19 minutes of 'Racial Diversity' in our 20 minute long Directed Deep Space Broadcasts. And while we're at it, lets all go ride our flying pigs which shits rainbows out its ass... Give me a break..."

Director Bartholomäus Michel Huffmann, Belkan Space Exploration Administrator, after hearing reports of experts calling for diversity in attempted contact messages to Aliens.

[Auzkhia]

"Earth is too diverse to summarize, if they really want to learn more, they'd come and visit."
-Colonel Nacht Sterne, k.u.k Space Administration

[Tellus Mater]

"We are never going there..." - Tellurian Field Scribe picking up SETI messages

[Las Palmeras]

"The discourse of the narrative is what's an off-putter on a national level. Superheroes are there to protect the status-quo; and even if in the American Way it's 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' benignly enough; to the ideological vanguard made of descendants of lower-ranking bureaucrat opportunists and risen peasants it's visually insulting to imagine they can't save themselves...even in the 1930s that image was fresh. It was just 32 years away from Rebellion. In the 1930s the 'Golden Age' emerged and by the 1950s the populace was already weary of the moral degradation many perceived was caused by the free market and it's supposed 'purest representative', the Mafia and it's corrupting tentacles...the Republican of old was replaced by the more radical Red Guard and more fire was added into the flame towards the Proletarian hero. This angle is too politicized and Las Palmeras' issues are older and bigger.

By liberalization in the 1980s and the new millennium however, and the catastrophic lack of any serious belief according to cultural critics- there's still this abject feeling of loneliness since colonial times which many are quick to point at for being treated like tools dying in the thousands or even millions; and therefore in reality meaningless and valueless. 'Super-human' in a material world seen as just awesome will and ability, without Gods however the demi-God is just human and there is nothing inherently special in it without 'Super' actions. But if God is measured in essences, then it's frighteningly arbitrary and possibly nonexistent. Faith in humanity would be tons more foolish, 'Super' transcendence being just a cheap emotional attempt of not dying. I guess the new generations are more Americanized and won't be troubled by this."
-Office Lady, on superheroes and their mixed popularity

[Interstellar America]

"My stance is one of pragmatic realism, I am not a xenophobe, I am a realist. When their faces are pushed to the grindstone, they won't rally the cavalry and come charging in to save the people they've been at war with for nearly a century of unending slugging matches. The cease-fire is one of realpolitik, our current enemy is one we face better united, when they are dealt with I have no illusions to the fact that once again Marine and Xenofuckpi---Co-belligerent Turian personnel will be slaughtering one another." - Lt. Cmdr John T. Stennis, U.S.S. Philadelphia, U.S.N., 2208

[Auzkhia]

"There is no status-quo. People change, sometimes it may seem to backwards sometimes, but they have put themselves in a mere replica. Let me tell you this, when you remember something, you recall the last time you thought of a specific memory, rather than reliving the moment in your head, and every memory you have reshapes and slowly fades to the oblivion of the forgotten."
-The Bureaucrat, in the canteen with colleagues

[Wisconsin9]

Any contacts we make as an interstellar species will have superluminal kill vehicles on deck in the next star system.—Jeffrey Krupin, UN Contact Commission.

[Las Palmeras]

"Introspection creates a world semi-independent of the real one in which even the feeblest pauper was a deity. It'd be a shame if that national quality were to be lost in the face of cheap distractions. We are the only nation in the Western hemisphere which thought up Angel Non-Time and God-Scales. It's not useful, but it's pretty. And that means we had time to make 'culture' for it's own."
-José Zorilla

---

"A God-Instant- Instante Divino- is approximately at least 225 million non-years, e-eto...purposely made that way to show that the apparent infinity is paradoxically non-measurable and that God really has trillions...the concept of Googols didn't exist back then in the 1800s...of names for being everywhere and nowhere...all measured in exaggeratedly big- but small- things for human observers who have to scale the apparently immeasurable. Talks of illusion and void. Ehhh...Or Everything in Little. For obvious reasons, many Palmeran 'speculative' texts are non-canon.

Practical ethics, 'Applied Palmeran Philosophy' is nothing out of this world. It's at most complex just quasi-'rational' ramblings preaching harmony through measured aggression and self-control under usefulness. Metaphysics as far as I know was made for the sake of itself because things were...eee...grim, yet still supposedly rigorous in problem planting...even if all those 'hypotheses' involve the immeasurable and...eeeee...intangible. "
-Tsuneko Zorilla

[Star Trek America]

"Libertarians like to rail on and on our policies saying how our taxes will drive out our citizens into their loving arms etc... Yet, of the half a million American expats all over the world, not a single one of them, left because of taxes. How then, do Libertarians explain this? Oh right, they don't. They just insist our taxes are horrendous and we need to cut them and cut them some more like they do. Our taxes? They're a clean 35% across the board, flat tax for everyone, period. No one is fleeing. You can shut up now, bloody anarchists." - First Minister Daniel Martel

[Saurisisia]

"Our response to alien contact will be the same as first contact with other races here on Earth: with a grain of salt, an olive branch in one hand, and a knife in the other as a last resort."
~ Mario Luzzati, director of the Interplanetary Colonial department of the Federal Aeronautics and Extrastellar Administration

[Surawi]

There is one thing I found consoling about life and the universe in general, something that transcends the so called heavens and the faith in an aforementioned deity. This consolation is one where, all things considered, are inherently subject to impermanence. We react to this fact in many ways; from testaments of faith and grandiose religions, to a strict and fanatical egoistic materialism and worship of the 'over man'.

It is however, all mere delusions or distractions that stem from a Cartesian dualism, a dualist approach to how our mind and bodies work. We fabricate an 'other' of which either lives on after death or is supported through testaments of that 'over man' cult ritual. An other because we fear that impermanence, that final moment where your consciousness ends.

A fear that drives one insane with the need to stay on top of the others, or drives one absolutely mad with religious and spiritual fanaticism. This fear is inherently good and inherently bad. It motivates us to do the things that we need to do, for we know our days are numbered if we understand that we are to pass away at some point with that point being today, tomorrow, or whenever. However when we fail to understand this nature of impermanence, it makes us create delusions of a substance other than our bodies. That creates the need for property and arrogance. That denies wrongdoings and fails to take responsibility of the messes that are in part caused by our own actions. 'That wasn't like me today' or 'I'm usually not as good as I appear.' A dualism that is unhealthy when we fail to understand this notion of impermanence, and take it to an extreme, and inevitably so, we do.

We are organisms that are powered by the fear. Fear that all things must end. A fear much more dangerous than nihilism. We must understand that we are to die some point, that the 'other' is an inherent part of us so that we may see our faults and features in a different light, and that life itself is to be lived in the most meaningful and healthy way as possible. By being mindful of our demise, and never taking it to a nihilistic extreme.

―T. Hj. Syeikh Abdulbari b. Abdulbasir Nurtamin (1932-2009), activist and Neo-Kebatinist* and founder of the Darul Ulum Al Batin

*Neo-Kebatinist: currently in the process of making the factbook page for this, but it is related to Indonesian Islam, or Kebatinan/Kejawen/Kepercayaan

[Bereia]

"In truth, there is no such a thing as a good government. Even at its best government can only ever be necessary."

-- Julissa Hickman, Citizen.

[Gyllia]

It's not about what you have, it's about what you do with it.
~Matsumoto Sachiko, Gyllia's only ever female ruler (and one of the only sane ones)

[Confederation of Common Sense]

"In truth, there is no such a thing as a good government. Even at its best government can only ever be necessary."

-- Julissa Hickman, Citizen.

"Dude, that makes no logical sense whatsoever, and have you ever heard of qualitative differences between governments? Its what separates the government of SRCCS from the government of Saudi Arabia or the government of North Korea!"
- Josh Drake

[Halfblakistan]

"The so-called 'socialist' Front government is, for all intents and purposes, a neoliberal one. They have thoroughly committed themselves to free marketism and have sold our great nation down the river. Is this what Halfblakistan fought a Revolution and bloody civil war for? I don't think so. And furthermore, I believe that the only way for this nation to achieve full freedom is full communism."
-Deborah Havisham-Leominster on becoming General Secratery of the (Left) Communist Party

"I think that anyone who says that God is on their side or helped them win a gridiron game is an idiot. If God doesn't care about starving children or VODAIS patients, why would he care about a gridiron game?"
-Marley Industrials quarterback Mercury Morrissey on religion and gridiron football

"Mercury Morrissey is so sexy! I hate his girlfriend. Girlfriends?"
Shauna Rose-McCann, random passerby with her thoughts on Mercury Morrissey

[Gharoukannia]

"Utopia is achieved through the will of the people and the spirit of their state - not through the massacre of 'enemies of the state'." - President Ghouvlan Zhongshan

"Democracy is ideal - but inefficient and often easily corrupted with dirty politics and stupidity. Meritocratically selected benevolent dictators are the future - the ideal Platonic Philosopher Kings that will lead the masses and bring glory to the nation. Hopefully I'm one of them..." - President Ghouvlan Zhongshan

"Failure can be an unseen triumph. To give up is to underestimate your power to lead your future." - Economist Kharlov Xounan

[Greater Mackonia]

"Utopia is achieved through the will of the people and the spirit of their state - not through the massacre of 'enemies of the state'." - President Ghouvlan Zhongshan

"Democracy is ideal - but inefficient and often easily corrupted with dirty politics and stupidity. Meritocratically selected benevolent dictators are the future - the ideal Platonic Philosopher Kings that will lead the masses and bring glory to the nation. Hopefully I'm one of them..." - President Ghouvlan Zhongshan

"Failure can be an unseen triumph. To give up is to underestimate your power to lead your future." - Economist Kharlov Xounan

"Psst, wanna buy some Agonocracy!"

-Political Cartoon in a minor American local newspaper portraying the noble Premier.

---

<sub>"Ah yes, 'Agonocratic Economics'...

Agonocratic Economics were invented by one Thrasjin Zelkyr, something of a layabout, he considered himself an artist first and foremost but is today remembered solely for his economic ideas. A close friend of Z.Maglos, Zelkyr (an economist by training, though he dropped out of university) sought to apply his ideals to economics. Zelkyr took the "Social Credit" ideas of C.H Douglas (labeled by its original creator, irony of ironies, as 'practical Christianity') and injected them with some fashionable futurist ideas about 'post-scarcity' and typical Agonocratic ultra-individualism. Zelkyr is in many ways more popular than Maglos because he was able to fit in every national pet hate of the Mackonian people into one theory: Bankers, Immigrants, Advertising...

Zelkyr explained that Capitalism through its competitive drive would eventually perfect production via technology, causing it to outstrip consumption, post-scarcity. The producer is finally overcome by The Creator, this tied nicely in to Maglos's grand narrative of civilisation getting progressively more individualistic. However the drivers of production, being (as all reasonable people are) selfish bastards, will never willingly destroy the basis of their political-economic power. An infernal consortium of corporate overlords, bankers and the Saudi government (apparently) conspires to forever deprive the noble worker and consumer of their natural creativity and the fruits of their labour through low wages and immigrants (apparently). This takes on the dimensions of Armageddonic proportions in Thrasjin's mind where the historical process itself is stunted by pure avarice, man is chained in the old, outdated, collectivist narrative of production and consumption. Culture degrades as it is swamped by waves of corporate advertising to make up for a dearth in innovation.

The only way to stop this, according to Zelkyr, was for the state to intervene and distribute purchasing power fairly via a "National Dividend" distributed by a National Investment Bank, this would allow for a truly meritocratic capitalism devoid of vulgar advertising where each individual would have the resources to create freely for his own accord and in turn be patronised equally on the merit of his creations alone. Post-Scarcity would be achieved in an economy of creators exchanging across a "nexus of ideas" (i.e: the internet) with all capital flowing back to the National Dividend. The competitive aspect of capitalism is retained alongside the equal opportunity of communism, a genuine third way.

Of course Zelkyr was a good Agonocrat, all this is smelling suspiciously "egalitarian" to him. Hence where he departs most radically from Douglas. Zelkyr declared that "Creative Credit" must work in synchronicity with Agonocracy. The National Dividend would have to be distributed relative to the merit of each citizen, with the most intelligent endowed with the greatest purchasing power; hence re-creating the cultural elite previously filled by the aristocracy to finance cultural advancement, but along fair meritocratic lines. The nation would be bathed in a glow of cultural rebirth while the banal stupidity of pop culture would die of its own accord. Creative Credit without Agonocracy would just lead to the public funding of stupidity and thus lead to even greater degeneracy than under capitalism, Agonocracy without Creative Credit would just be destroyed by the wiles of the market. You can almost hear an economist crying.

Thrasjin Zelkyr saw his theory as the perfect 'de-mystification' of Agonocracy and began to challenge Maglos for control of The Movement, Maglos took less than kindly to this and promptly shot and killed Zelkyr in a duel. His ideas were declared heresy and Maglos shifted to a fervent Neo-Mercantilism when he bothered with economics at all. However Zelkyr's ideas spread and became wildly popular with the Mackonian public, they were briefly adopted by Malseth Malthero. When the Sakystrumaar took power Zelkyr was still treated with suspicion and the Mythurin regime is generally speaking Neo-Liberal when it comes to economics, however Agonocratic Economics is no longer high treason and indeed is increasingly being adopted by the more radical wing of the Sector. Among the Mackonian people it has an almost religious following and the "Committee for Creative Credit" is the largest NGO in the country."</sub>

-Eleanor White, Mackologist.

[The Andromeda Confederation]

"Perhaps I'm grabbing the wrong impression here, but Agnocracy just sounds too similar to agony. I could very well be wrong, but granted the sunshine attitude that goes astray in Greater Mackonia, maybe it's linked."

-Solomon Weber

[Nivko]

"We have lost nothing from the invasion of our capital, for our nation is not one of hills and valleys but one of flesh and blood."
- Lord Nivk

[Singaporean Transhumans]

"Day 30. Removed 562,621 advisors, according to command. Corpses of us and them pile into mountains, it is hard to tell who is on whose side when both sides have the same uniform. Their synths are much more identifiable however. Dismantled 630 Citadels, according to command. Syrian Arab Army¹ sent ten dobrovoljci² divisions to support us. They didn't last long; poor kebab fuckers down to 50 by the third day they arrived. Every time a strider appears, fifty men die, you can not even escape from it. We did not expect the enemy using an entire confiscation field on the invasion forces...234 divisions still have considerable amounts of improperly armed troops, they landed in the area where the field was applied. The Andromedians just keep appearing over and over again, the same drone firing the rockets that brought down the Striders every time. At least Advisor psychics are easy to break, our psi-ops can massacre a city of them. I'm not one though. Though, by now, most of the people with psychics have gone madder than a Mack. Where we had proper equipment, things millions of times worse than Stalingrad happen, zero advancement made in a week. The 55th division fought heroically in Prokhorovka³ and by day 10 they were down to three men, day eleven even them were killed by a Combine Gunship raid. They weren't even given a Guard merit before they were destroyed. Spanish Blue Divisions are now having fun in the Citadels, they say, though they're probably all dead by now. This is by far the bloodiest war for Singapore, all over copyright. Copyright kills."
-soldier's diary. Said soldier was then killed storming Citadel #1617.

¹ Syria in one universe restored glorious Assyria before becoming PTFS satellite state. Technologically they're on par with most other PTFS satellites.
² Term for all volunteer divisions from non-PTFS polities during the War of the Combines.
³ A battle on alternate Earth against Athrugadhi and Tectonian forces.

[Bereia]

"The word Utopia literally means No Place, and is used to describe a society which is outlined in great detail, and which seems to be perfect, but which ultimately does not, and cannot, exist."

-- Julissa Hickman, Citizen.

---

"I remember this one time, Ms. Schaeffer had just finished speaking at a press conference and was heading back to her car, when some asshole decided to toss an egg at her from close up. He got her, but then he got his. This is a woman who came of age working in a butcher's shop, a mechanic's garage, and who boxed for fun and money. She just turned and popped him one. She didn't hit him all that hard compared to what she's capable of, and he still lost teeth. He tried to file assault charges, but the number of witnesses saying he struck first meant he had no hope."

-- Isaiah Morey, formerly Reagan Schaeffer's personal secretary.

[Las Palmeras]

"Let's say it started with quasi-existential Friars and Monks and orthodox Thomistic Clerics who both wanted to stop the surviving populace from offing itself, seeing as how it happened in a lot of villages even after the Mass Famine of 1821-1830. From the Orthodox arose 'Palmeran Practicality' though which occasionally threw in 'self-meaning' through the magical-self newcomers. That's the National Mainstream which was just barely accepted by the Catholic Church which wanted to evade a 'Palmeran Church' or more revolts and more mass suicide, typically by inactivity and starvation.

However from the first derived a local form of nihilism by non-religious thinkers by the second half of the 19th Century though some say the 'Rational' Orthodoxy also had a hand when it made things quantifiable, an 'inevitable' effect of the secular, scientific, and rational world. The derivatives had a derivative later on in the form of angsty Postmodernist spawn after the 1940s though censored until the 1980s.

Those obsessed with the metaphysics are in their own world, just like they always have been...though the 'Existential' opened the barriers for such contemplation to be possible. But it's a national thing : Knowing that today's dream is for today,
I feel I can do anything in a dream."
-Office Lady

[Ashkera]

"Mostly it's robots, robots, and more robots being thrown into that meatgrinder, but there are also deployments of Fighter- and Corvette-class citizens from the Cybernetic Consensus to oversee the robots and Destroyers and Battleships to provide fire and logistical support. The other Ashkeras are mostly refusing to send their own troops, which is fair enough since they're lower technology and they're contributing combat robots from their production lines. It's not like killing things requires full sapience, anyway.
Losses are within acceptable levels.

Unfortunately, the enemy seems to have caught on to the fact that we're immune to mind-altering attacks, and have focused their efforts conventionally, which will make it significantly harder to capture more Advisors for analysis. We're up to about 122,000 captured so far, but we're burning through them fast. Hopefully we crack the nut of psionic physics before we run out of test subjects.

There's also a rumor that A3-90007-A is going to go into mass production as some kind of anti-vehicle weapon, but I'm pretty sure that's a joke."
- report regarding attack on Advisoropolis

[Wisconsin9]

"Who are you, to dare speak to me?"

"I'm a representative, this is my associate. We are here to inform you that your expansion is no longer tolerable to our organization. You are ordered to cease expansion within the next one hundred and fifty thousand years. Further expansion after that point, or any significant increase in the rate of expansion during the grace period, will be met with immediate and absolute retrotemporal annihilation of your civilization."

"You dare presume—"

"Damn right I presume. You have our attention, which is roughly analogous to having a live grenade glued to your face. You will not receive another warning. Good day."

—Forgotten multiversal tinpot dictator and The Blue Guy.

[Greater Mackonia]

"There exist on the borders of thought groups of men and women who defend the universe itself by science and espionage...and there also exists on 89. Max Planck strasse groups of Lizards and Cats who do the same thing via vast amounts of paperwork. Mackonians just regulate multiversal empires to death."

-Tyserthi Masjin Rasmarth-Myrzeroth.