Reunision eight years on

[GV]

As we aim to help out fellow Talossans re COVID-19 in any way possible, today's date has not escaped my notice.

Every year on this date when I elect to give a few words, I pretty much make the same speech.  This year is no different, but I offer a few new thoughts.

Students of pre-Cybercit Talossa will snicker darkly at today's date.  The fact Reunision took place on that day of a particular year was coincidence, and I cannot remember exactly how that date was agreed upon. 

All of you who have arrived to the shores of East Side Milwaukee since 20 April 2012 will only know the Republic of Talossa and its origin-story as a series of events from the long-ago mists of time.  When I first came to Talossa in 2000, the events of 1997-1998 seemed a lifetime ago to me.  Now, I've been doing Talossa in one way or another almost twenty years.

'A Nation Sundered' is currently the 'definitive' re-telling of the Republic's founding, but as spectacular (in good ways and not-so-good ways) as the Republic's founding was, it pales in significance to Ben Madison's vendetta against Kane Gruber, which was the chief provocation for the Republic's founding.  A more coherent re-telling of that story is forthcoming in hopefully the next few years.

A reading of 'A Nation Sundered' will hopefully give the reader an idea of just how close the Kingdom of Talossa came to folding altogether.  I think had a few extra key people elected to bail in 2004, it might very well have, leaving Ben alone to his own devices.  Those extra key people did not bail, and it has been for the betterment of us all in that when it was clear the Republic was failing, we had a place to go where we could still do Talossa. 

Yes, Ben would have still brought in Fritz and his family, but the Kingdom of Talossa, a more-than-just-Ben Kingdom of Talossa, had instead endured continuously with its own community remaining at least somewhat intact.  Aside from Ben, the loss of our connection to the Old-Growth crowd is more than lamentable.

The Kingdom leadership of 2011-2012 saw an opportunity to bring in 'new blood' and fresh energy, Reunision came about, and Fiôvâ province was born as a result.  For both groups of nation-builders, it has been a very good move: Talossa has continued to survive, its politics are as vibrant as they ever have been, and we've been able to welcome an entirely new generation of Talossans to our midst, each putting in their own gifts to make this thing work.

Certainly I continue to see in certain quarters of Talossa an element of not seeing the log in one's eye while wondering at the twig in another's.  Post-Ben, mistakes on both sides were made: the Republic did not see its reason to exist had vanished post-Ben, and the Kingdom failed to give Those Who Left a bit of slack and grace to realize our founding of the Republic was done under profound duress, even if its execution was not done in a way that was gracious to innocent Kingdom bystanders.

Yet we are all mostly still here, and those who are not have left due to natural attrition.  My genuine fear of a neo-Republic mass-exodus following Reunision has not come to pass, and I at this point have little reason to imagine it ever will: the key players long ago agreed to play nice, and Talossa has been the beneficiary.

Ben's founding of Talossa came on the wings of what surely was the greatest tragedy of his life.  Any student of early Talossan history will know what I mean.  From that sadness, a reason for community came about, and I've learned by reading the Big History early Talossan political history and the extra-Talossan political-debate lives of Ben, Dan, Bob, etc. from that time are inextricably linked.

We've continued to do Talossa in spite of the worst of Ben Madison.  We continue to do Talossa in part because at his best Ben Madison was an imaginative and brilliant visionary, a creative genius, a charismatic community organizer (he would laugh at that term), and a true nation-builder.

We also continue to do Talossa because we somehow have not in the end messed things up.  We are mostly able to attract those people from the internet who are genuinely nice and who are not out to trash the place.  We continue Talossa because in spite of the latest vitriol between Who and What, an election that did or did not go one's way, we still continue to have fun in a Talossa that, to use Ben's term, is 'free, fun, and fair'. 

The Republic of Talossa was only ever about preserving a free, fair, and fun Talossa in contrast to a Kingdom that had lost its way and had no hope of ever finding it again.  The fact the post-Ben Kingdom did come back to its sense was a miracle and was, in part, Dan Lauriér's last and greatest Talossan contribution. 

We live in a new world where the pop-culture is now 'social-distancing', medical masks, restrictions on movement that may or may not eventually go away entirely, safety, security, and what I see as a general erosion of personal liberty.  The YouTube algorithm rules the video-universe, now.

To get a little religous, I see this time of 'quarantine' as a prophetic stepping-stone of some sort.  No, the Four Horsemen have not started to ride.  They haven't even gotten to the stables, and neither the Donald or Msr. Macron are the Antichrist.

The point of this is in the millenial reign of Christ - which I believe must be LBGTQ-affirming, btw - I should think it a mighty neat thing for the Kingdom of Talossa to endure in some way.  [Edited] Harry Madison could rule over UWM and Coop could have the Mitchell Building.

Happy Reunision day, everyone!  (what's left of it, anyway)

GV

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The point of this is in the millenial reign of Christ - which I believe must be LBGTQ-affirming, btw - I should think it a mighty neat thing for the Kingdom of Talossa to endure in some way.

Iesu-C'hríost vient - ¡luschetz ocupats!