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Discuss this Interview with @SpanishSpy here
Lovely little read. I was interested in the commentary around DC: as a non-American, I admit that I have always thought of Arlington as a graveyard rather than a place people live. 'The city is a land of the living, not just the dead' is an excellent phrase.
My big problem with AH's focus on elections is that it often doesn't extend to governing. In the past a lot of TLs would simply skip everything that happened in between elections, and while this thankfully has gone away there still doesn't seem to be as much interest in what happens after the election is over. This reinforces the idea that politics is essentially a sports match and ignores the truly interesting and impactful part of the process.
Lovely little read. I was interested in the commentary around DC: as a non-American, I admit that I have always thought of Arlington as a graveyard rather than a place people live. 'The city is a land of the living, not just the dead' is an excellent phrase.
I'll admit I think the fact that I came across Arlington as 'Independent city in Virginia' or noted it on a map before I took even the slight interest in the American Civil War that I do have probably puts me as an outlier here.
This is why possibly my favourite bit of Political AH is @Sideways 'who shall speak to England' because it's about how decisions at the top radicalise people at the bottom.
The story is about four young people who grow up in a world where the overton window is far to the right. And it ends when one of those people gets into power, because that's the point. It's all about policies and how those policies change lives. Ed Costello's 'Darling Buds Express' does similar and I also loved that.
I don't think all political AH has to do that, there's a place for the short biographies of a list of leaders type AH (Sealion Press has published 4 or 5 of those and I own all of them, I think they can be very interesting in making points about political trends if the author has an idea of what they want to say) but it is an effective style in terms of showing the results of policies.
Alex's 'yearning to breathe' does something similar of course. Of looking at the effects of policies from the ground view.
It seems that a certain brand of nationalism--not just in the US--tacitly deplores that their country has actual living people in it. With their pesky aspirations they keep pulling the country ever further away from the idealized past.Lovely little read. I was interested in the commentary around DC: as a non-American, I admit that I have always thought of Arlington as a graveyard rather than a place people live. 'The city is a land of the living, not just the dead' is an excellent phrase.
It seems that a certain brand of nationalism--not just in the US--tacitly deplores that their country has actual living people in it. With their pesky aspirations they keep pulling the country ever further away from the idealized past.
It amazes me that online alternate history has now been around long enough that it's possible to take a historical perspective to it, its growth, evolution, etc. The first iteration of what would become AH.com was founded 20 years ago, before many of its current members were born.
Good interview.My highest thanks to @Gary Oswald for taking the time to interview.
I must admit, it was heartwarming to be called a stalwart.
For Ottawa, you'll need to ask @Bruno . Now this raises an interesting question, what would it have taken for Washington D.C. to become the American Saint Petersburg?I wonder if this in the US has to do with how the capital was never the cultural center in the way that New York or Los Angeles are. Going from that, I'd be interested to see if Ottawa or Canberra or Brasilia have to deal with similar.
For Ottawa, you'll need to ask @Bruno . Now this raises an interesting question, what would it have taken for Washington D.C. to become the American Saint Petersburg?
Good interview.
Ottawa's locally known as "The City that Fun Forgot". As a cultural centre it's long been overshadowed by Toronto and Montreal, and perhaps Vancouver and Calgary as well. Yes, the national museums are here, and there are normally all sorts of festivals, but Toronto's got the sole MLB team, it's got the hockey team that the broadcasters favor, it's where the big film festival is, it's where the national music awards were long handed out, where the CBC's broadcast centre is, the relatively iconic skyline, etc.
Some provincial capitals probably feel the same way - Victoria, Quebec, and Edmonton, at least.
I've always felt that making the country's largest city also the national capital helps keep the government on its toes for that very reason: if popular discontent gets bad enough, the people can just march up and storm the seats of power. That's more difficult to do if the capital is a distant purpose-built city.It also doesn't help that one of the reasons that Ottawa was chosen as the permanent capital was because both Toronto and Montreal had a distressing habit of burning down the Parliament buildings whenever it was located in their cities.