Lepazzia

There are so many wonderful places in this world, and I rejoice that this report gives us cause to speak of many of them. In this section we will focus on the nation of Lepazzia, which is as beautiful as it is misunderstood by outsiders.

Most known to foreigners is the Lepazzian custom of being agreeable past the point of sanity. But this is an incomplete simplification. It is true that in Lepazzian culture, disagreement is unconscionable and violence is beyond barbaric. But when we caricature Lepazzians as being wholy unaggressive, we overlook their long and vicious history of passive-aggression. Within a family, for example, children might negotiate their sibling rivalries through indirect means, breaking each other's possessions or manipulating their parents into favoring one or the other child. At the national level, the techniques employed can be truly harrowing. One recalls the tension of the Eight Days' War, in which five nations simultaneously declared war on Lepazzia before withdrawing it eight days later upon finding flowers in the bedrooms of every major government official.

In the Assembly, Lepazzia has an international reputation for always voting in favor, regardless of the bill or motion put to the floor. This, too, is an artifact of Lepazzian culture which is often misunderstood. The Lepazzian Senate votes unanimously in favor of whatever is put to the Senate floor. However, before any motion is put forward, there are days of politicking and maneuvering to determine what should happen. Lepazzian Senators find themselves confronted with aggrieved notes on their seats, unpleasant rumors, and personal attacks in the newspapers. You will find no one so hardened against human pettiness than a Lepazzian politician, and yet a few reliably commit suicide every year. In any case the Sovereign of Lepazzia does little with his votes—and, it must be said, looks vaguely horrified every time someone votes against a measure—but you can be sure that behind the scenes, he has brutally crushed the self esteem of multiple Sovereigns. I myself once heard the Sovereign of Incendia break down in tears after a particularly belittling conference, although to be fair he does that all the time, the poor dear.

With regard to the Disarrangement Act, I heartily encourage the Assembly to consider that Lepazzia's new neighbors will be subject to unimaginable psychological torment, and that we could see the emergence of trauma at a cultural level. This will make selecting suitably hardy countries difficult. It is not accidental, remember, that Ulgrav disposed of all of its land after a mere three hundred years on the Lepazzian border.

Lepazzia keeps something of a low profile in the international community, but it's important to remember their ostensible neutrality doesn't translate to a neutral impact on global politics. For example, if the Lepazzian Sovereign had truly wanted to agree with the other Sovereigns, he would have also abstained on the I'll Legislate It Act instead of voting in favor. And the Massively Parallel Peace Conference illustrates, perhaps a little more clearly, that Lepazzia has it out for all of us. It might be wise to look past the cultural differences between us and realize that they probably consider themselves, in their own way, to be at war with everyone else.

Citations: The I'll Legislate It, I Swear, Don't Think I Won't Act / Massively Parallel Peace Conference

In a way, we have Lepazzia to thank for inspiring the Disarrangement Act. When their cultural passive-aggression had reached new heights in the fourth century, they literally drew a line in the sand and dug a massive trench around their entire country to make a point to their neighbors on the Careless Continent. While most geologists are confused as to how merely digging a trench could result, as it did, in Lepazzia drifting off into the ocean, in my opinion as a sociophysicist, this is no mystery at all. Lepazzian culture is nothing if not one that keeps others at arms' length. The Lepazzian Split was simply the physical manifestation of the social phenomenon in accordance with the principles of sociophysics.

Citations: The Careless Continent