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Serious Version

What It Means To Burn It Down
Written by: Doc

Burn It Down is a rallying cry that I have taken up over the last few years. In and of itself, it's a fairly comedic notion; that we should abandon the institution of representative democracy with sort of a feckless heed for what comes after, and I triple down on this by constantly publicly vacillating between a desire for the direct-democracy-style Open Assembly and the absolute-monarchist position that Wintermoot should just appoint all his officials and make all the decisions himself or through this bureaucracy. Which is insane, because those are basically two exact opposites of each other on the political spectrum, and I'm de facto endorsing both of them at the same time.
But then again, I find that to be sort of the point.
An NS region, and really any online community in general, is sort of a low-stakes environment. Sure, there are decisions of governance that need to be made, whether administrative or moderative in nature. But this is all fairly low-stakes governance; issues of how people interact with each other in an online setting almost inevitably are, particularly absent gamification and/or an economy. In this context, there isn't really the need for the checks and balances we demand/require in our Real World institutions of governance; what's important is, essentially, two things: how representative we want our governance to be - which is to say, who should have a voice in how we self-administer our communities - and how efficient we want our governance to be.
The Underhusen is sort-of representative, in that we elect representatives for us, and it's sort-of efficient, in the sense that we know who's nominally supposed to do things, but in neither case is it really ideal...besides which, it suffers from the problem that anyone who's ever had a manager over them has experienced on a regular basis: it feels like it isn't doing enough and that one day someone is going to realize that it isn't doing enough, and so it needs to justify its continued existence. Which it does with silly makework legislation.
Worse yet, it doesn't even really govern; most functions of governance are either handled by the Cabinet and its various Ministries/Jarldoms, or by the Administrative/Moderator/Operator staff, who handle the day-to-day running of things and smoothing things over necessary to make things sort of work. Sometimes it passes legislation to make a holiday, or give someone a commendation, but these are generally things the community as a whole agrees on anyway, and which could thus be done in an Open Assembly.
And so, frankly, I'm opined that the Underhusen exists because it existed in the past and we're just sort of letting inertia carry us forward. And I think that's a foolish way to try and handle our community governance. And so that's the essence, I think, of what the Burner cause is. Burn It Down isn't supposed to be a rallying cry for one direction or another; it's just supposed to be an observation that our present system doesn't really work particularly well, and we're probably better off just replacing it entirely.

Wacky Version

The Burner Manifesto
Written by: Doc

A spectre is haunting Wintreath —the spectre of the Burner cause. All the powers of old have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Potato Pope and Speaker in one, Chanku the arch-reactionary herself, the Paragons and the Overhusen. And we must ask: where is the party in opposition not derided as radical, even insane, by its opponents in power? But we are indefatigable, for our cause is one of equality and liberty. We disdain to conceal our views and aims. We openly declare that our ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing regional institutions. Let the Underhusen tremble at a Burner revolution.  We have nothing to lose but the chains which already bind us; we have a region to win.

Absolutely Fucking Batshit Version

Doc's Strange Love, or: How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love the Burn
Written by: Doc

Time and again, as the only member of Wintreath's only political party, the Burn It Down party, I am asked what exactly the point of all of this is. What reason have I, a shining political star in the Wintrean firmament, to take such a radical, not to mention both metaphorically and literally incendiary stance on the continued status of the Underhusen?
The reason is obvious. The Underhusen is a communist plot to infiltrate our organizations and institutions, and replace our precious bodily fluids with inferior and foreign substances, to sap our vital essence and drain it of everything we hold near and dear in our hearts. By burning this corrupt edifice, we not only free ourselves of its parasitic influence, but we liberate those fluids already siphoned from us into the world as a whole, sparking the generative force of life in the greater world stage and restoring our vital essence to us as a community. No longer will we have to hide from women - not that I do, I don't avoid women, I merely deny them my essence -but also no longer will we feel the fatigue, the ennui, the sense of emptiness engendered in us by the vile entity which coils about the very heart of this region and saps its lifeblood.
As fire separates the slag from the useful metal in a crucible, as the scorching heat of the forest fire promotes new life in the ashes, and as the cleansing radiative fire of a thousand suns scorches the earth clean of human life to allow novus homo to crawl from the rubble of a ruined world, the grave of billions, so too will the fire we light in the wormridden ruin we call the Underhusen promote new life, new blood, and a restoration of vitality to us as a whole.

Our Elections: How they impacted our region

by Remile O av-Devils "Ogunbiyi6422"


After a long bitter crisis that shook the very foundation Wintreath was built on, the Underhusen & Thane elections to elect the Summer government of Wintreath had arrive. Despite the looming dark cloud over the region, an astounding 15 candidates stood for the Underhusen elections in what was the largest and most competitive election in the 7 years of our great region's existence. One may say this may be because of the 30% growth Wintreath received, new members were encouraged to run. However, most of the candidates were no strangers to our region, and though some participated in their first Wintrean elections, many had long experience in government at other regions. Looking at this, it seemed that past events would no longer overshadow us.

In the Thane elections, there were about 2 candidates per Thaneship, with a few running unopposed. We saw newcomers, incumbents ancient members, and experienced members. However, despite our thoughts, the past events were very much still there. Between the week of nomination & election, 4 candidates dropped from the Underhusen & Thane elections. These were incumbents, who were most likely expected to win a seat in government. In addition, these individuals said their quick goodbyes, or some magically disappeared without a trace left. Behind them left once again, a semi-broken region. The dropping out created 2 thane vacancies in which only 1 was filled. The Underhusen results were delayed after being plagued by this crisis, though 19 ballots were cast, and our Underhusen was virtually unchanged from before. Crushita was elected Speaker of the 40th Underhusen, and Jarls were also appointed. Though we can be sure that the problem of inactivity and obscurity of the UH that slowly fed the fire that it is the "Burn it down, Carefully" Agenda was gone, but at what cost? Maybe now, more than ever, our administration has the task of the further bringing the region together. A hands of approach has seemed not to work, and if our government fails to accomplish this, we risk another event that Wintreath may not be able to survive.