Comments: 8
snakewrangler08 [2014-05-31 23:33:08 +0000 UTC]
Well this seems like a pretty crappy world to live in.
Unfortunately realistic.
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FieldMarshalPatton [2012-10-25 07:19:54 +0000 UTC]
Great map, this is a realistic yet quite dystopian world. Is at least the manufacturing sector in the US somewhat better off?
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FieldMarshalPatton In reply to QuantumBranching [2012-10-25 07:18:14 +0000 UTC]
Well a lot of Evangelicals were originally Democrats (like Billy Graham) if the Democratic Party takes a different course by becoming a populist/socially conservative party in the tradition of William Jennings Bryant most of the Evangelicals will shift to the Dems (Carter won most of the Evangelical vote in 1976 I think due to being seen as one of their own).
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QuantumBranching In reply to FieldMarshalPatton [2012-10-25 18:15:14 +0000 UTC]
But the democrats are also, under these circumstances, going to be the party of segregation. One wonders how they manage to square the circle of social welfare programs with the knee-kerk reaction to the idea of Those People getting any of the voter's tax dollar?
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QuantumBranching [2012-10-25 02:48:36 +0000 UTC]
Interesting, although there are some things I find doubtful: by "massive revolt", are you referring to African-Americans? That seems unlikely to happen with only a few years of continued segregation: the disturbances of OTL late 60s were more of a "revolution of rising expectations" than anything else, with black America being told they were now fully legally equal while the actual experience of their lives seeming unchanged. I can see things slowly coming to a boil, especially if civil rights continue to be suppressed, but I have trouble seeing a society-remaking explosion before the 70s: MLK's peaceful approach needs to be thoroughly invalidated first. It's not like Blacks would have any illusions that they would be anything but crushed flat in a revolt.
What is Smather's role in all this?
"America is currently in a religious phase with fire-breathing evangelicals enjoying unquestioned majorities of public support."
Theocrat dominance? Maybe through an alliance with the newly re-Dixieized Democrats and the screw-the-public wealthy, but they're never going to get majority support on such a set of policies, after the invention of the Pill and votes for women. Second wave feminism was well under way by the mid-60s. The reaction against the mores of the 50s and 60s was also growing well before the Vietnam war really entered public consciousness. Remember the Johnson government was able to pass a very liberal set of policies in the 60s, _before_ the demographic changes. I mean, it makes for a great dystopia, but I have trouble seeing how this _reversal_ of American mores takes place. (And if large-scale public protest, unlike OTL, is able to change policy, I have trouble seeing the anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science, etc. rallies outshouting those with contrary opinions)
US isolationism has never extended to it's own hemisphere. A great deal of US intervention in at least Central America and the Caribbean to prevent the expansion of Communism is almost certain, and the US sure as hell isn't going to stand for Commie USSR-allied Mexico. [1]
"Europe is poorer, less militarized and more left-wing"
_Less_ militarized than our nearly disarmed Europe? With the Soviets bigger and badder than ever? Perhaps you meant more?
"Alot of these nations tend to be "democracies" where one party consistently wins"
Like Japan, you mean?
[1] BTW, it would require a Communist tyranny in Mexico to keep Mexican illegal immigrants out of a US that is going to be hurting by the 90s for labor with little legal immigration...
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OttoVonSuds In reply to QuantumBranching [2012-10-25 03:40:27 +0000 UTC]
Well, this is one of my ones from 2010 so I didn't put in as much of a thought as I do for my more recent ones. That and I was... particularly annoyed at reading people's JFK lives and everything goes perfectly scenarios on AH.com at the time.
Yeah. If I redid this scenario I'd either have something like Smathers making some um un-diplomatic remarks re: race during kennedy's term and things coming to a gradual boil by the 70s. The fact that the US goes inwards-looking in the 70s and 80s could be partially explained by that revolt, but yeah that one needs thought
Smathers' was a dixiecrat, so obviously no great society or civil rights. However, you get vietnam and usage of the FBI against MLK.
Theocrat dominance to an extent greater than OTL is partially explained by the religious right _not_ aligning with the bankers[1]. Remember, socially conservative populism gets majority votes in the US. The US in this world lacks anything like the Johnson era of liberalization, and what support people had for liberal policies went by the wayside due to the terrorism[2].
Look, I admit was unlikely to put in but the red mexico was borrowed from Kahn's own eroded democracy by leftist protest scenario. If I did a remake, I would have a neutralized mexico and fewer communist places in the americas.
Europe is another case of me shifting the blame to Herman Kahn. I did at least have them form a bloc of nonaligned places like India that didn't much care for the communists.
Japan had alot of corruption and gerrymandering, during 1950-90 so it works as an analogy.
The next batch of stuff I reupload will be more likely.
[1] Without either leftist idealism re: immigration or bankers wanting cheap slaves(see: 80s amnesties), mass immigration into the US isn't inevitable. You'd get workers having to actually be paid fair wages and lots of mechanical equipment on farms like Japan does.
[2] No outlet in the form of "free love" for teenage/20something boomers means lots of weathermen wannabes.
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