See if England were a fortress, it would be a well run efficient fortress. Some industris may fall to the wayside, and there may be an occasional tantrum spiral, but overall the player is a reasonable fellow that genuinely wants as many dwarves as possible to live. Hence when something needs to get killed, the militia is organized and sent out with minimal lollygagging. It is also only sent out if completely necessary, say to deal with that rampaging badger swarm threatening to take over the map.
In 'murca our player is unbalanced. Every dwarf is in a ilitia of some sort, armed to the teeth, ready to tantrum spiral at the earliest sign it will get him that encrusted sock he must have.
The militia kills anything and everything in sight, ordered to or not. Insects? Murder. Badgers? Murder. Turtles? Murder.
The player is a little unhinged, but realizes he needs some dwarves to survive, or he'll have to reclaim. So he spends most of his time telling the outpost to stop killing everything, to little avail.
Then again, I tend to see everything like this anyway.
Hmm... I suppose this is true of some americans. On the other hand, what makes america truly bonkers is the opposite is also true:
Some american players would try to force their dwarves to live fantasy elf-idealist hippie freak lives, and smile while beautiful unicorn menace massacres the berry pickers on the grassy hillside. "We must have angered mother nature!" They proclaim. "We don't understand, we only buy wood from our highly effeminate fashion designing elf friends! We even named our trees like they do! But it isn't the unicorn's fault, we must have disturbed it somehow. We stay away from rivers, ponds, and streams because of our carp friends, I guess we shouldn't pick berries from the hilltops either."
The "schizophrenic, battshit insanity" the world has come to recognize the US as having comes from the unmitigated and unmoderated mixture of both extremes vying for power. What is lacking, is a sensible and moderate mindset, like the one you spelled out.
The "Kill 'em all! Let GOD sort em out! They will take my crossbow when they pry it from my stubby dead fingers!" Types view the moderates as being in bed with the elvish menace, and the "dwarven nature goddess goddess communal living elf wannabe" types view the moderates with the bitter hatred that elves feel for everyone who even so much as looks at something other than a beansprout as a source of nourishment, and who considers sustainable logging practices as an unforgivable sin. (We can't have magma forges! What if little urist fell in!?)
The result? Absolute battshit insanity from both sides of government, which can only agree on one thing: telling the moderate and reasonably minded people to stfu and gtfo.
As a consequence of being effectively shut out of government, the "radical" moderates in the US simply wait for everything to either get blown up by the fundie righties in their phyrric worhip of Armok and all things dealing with the shedding of blood-- or for things to become logistically impossible for people to live due to the insane elf-philosphy spouting pansies' "social reform" (ahem) policies to the point that society collapses. Either way, it is just a waiting game to see which side of the debate can fuxxor things up the most while we wait to pick up the pieces.
Sadly for us, thise two demographics are more persistant than headlice or bedbugs, and always seem to come back as soon as there is either blood to spill or blood to suck.
If the UK has managed to keep those two popular philosophies from silencing the moderates and centrists, the methods employed must be quite formiddable. My understanding of UK politics is that the house of lords is paradoxically often a source of enlightened government input, balancing out the voices of the two equally and maddeningly insane popular camps the US is plauged with when they utter their shrill voices in the house of commons.
While it seemed like a good idea at the time, it becomes more and more apparent that the complete dissolution of heredetary lordship (however limited in power) and total enactment of populist government was not entirely such a good idea, and that it has only served to create a power vacuum into which large multinational companies and their boards of directors have established themselves.
Who knew? Nobles are good for something afterall?
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Topic: It's over. (At least in England) NU MO BADGERS FO YO (Read 4195 times)