Least favorite alt-history story?

[JN1]

So is it bad for me to have almost all of the books in the series, i like it, but think only one ore two A-bombs would have been enough to end the war instead of the overkill that is called The Big One.

Perhaps. However the US Target Planners could not assume that. Plus it was not until The Big One was carried out was the true horror of a full strategic strike revealed. A lot of TBO can be read as an anti-war story.

It was like something from Chucklevision.

Kirk Douglas saying 'to me', while Richard Harris replies 'to you'.

 

[Space Oddity]

Well, it seems to be over, all bar a few more posts, unlike NDCR which just kept going and becoming even more of a jerk-off fantasy

In its present form, the 'Queen Nixon in...' series (and aside from the ridicule factor, that name is actually more accurate than the real one) is less a wank fantasy, and more a hideously awkward circlejerk conducted by people wearing neon tuxedos because they it makes them look classy.

My apologies for putting that image in your heads, but then as most of you have read the damn thing, there are doubtless worse things in there.

I do kind of feel bad that the kid who wrote it eventually got chased off the site.

He was not chased off the site. He left in a snit for a while, then came back. He's actually writing new bits for the third damn part.

God, what a pile of burning trash. It almost makes one long for a NDCR post on what’s happening with Nintendo PlayStation during the Bundy Administration.

See, as bad as The Second American Civil War was, that strikes me as actually being written by the sort of clueless young right-winger who doesn't know better that people are always trying to make 'Queen Nixon in...''s creator out to be. Because, no that damn thing isn't just about being right wing, it's about offending left-wingers who read it.

 

[Japhy]

He was not chased off the site. He left in a snit for a while, then came back. He's actually writing new bits for the third damn part.

He hadn't come back yet when I made that post last summer.

That said welcome to the site, I know it was ages ago but your Lenin dies at a convenient moment TL at the other place was one of my all time favorites.

 

[AndrewH]

Huh, didn't know Space Oddity had a Lenin TL - I really enjoyed Born a King, so I'm excited to start reading that!

 

[theev]

https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Greater_Dixie

Low hanging fruit, I know, but it has the Holy Trinity: Confederate Apologia, Ameriwank, and Analogs.

 

[Makemakean]

https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/Greater_Dixie

Low hanging fruit, I know, but it has the Holy Trinity: Confederate Apologia, Ameriwank, and Analogs.

Robert E. Lee proposes to abolish slavery not as a last desparate attempt to save the Confederacy, but the very moment the Confederacy is winning?

Where the hell did this trope of ”Robert E. Lee the Secret Abolitionist” come from? I mean, sure, the man was hardly the dogmatic ideologue for slavery as, say, John C. Calhoun was, and this reasons to fight for the South was motivated more by a love for Virginia than a love for the institution of slavery. But frankly, that does not one an abolitionist make. By the documentary evidence we have available to us, what we can conclude is that, at best, the most generous assessment we can make about Robert E. Lee’s views on slavery was that he was perfectly apathetic to the plight of those it put into chains.

 

[Yokai Man]

Robert E. Lee proposes to abolish slavery not as a last desparate attempt to save the Confederacy, but the very moment the Confederacy is winning?

Where the hell did this trope of ”Robert E. Lee the Secret Abolitionist” come from? I mean, sure, the man was hardly the dogmatic ideologue for slavery as, say, John C. Calhoun was, and this reasons to fight for the South was motivated more by a love for Virginia than a love for the institution of slavery. But frankly, that does not one an abolitionist make. By the documentary evidence we have available to us, what we can conclude is that, at best, the most generous assessment we can make about Robert E. Lee’s views on slavery was that he was perfectly apathetic to the plight of those it put into chains.

I think it’s something the Leeaboos came up with to make him and their admiration of him more acceptable.

 

[Creekmench]

Robert E. Lee proposes to abolish slavery not as a last desparate attempt to save the Confederacy, but the very moment the Confederacy is winning?

Where the hell did this trope of ”Robert E. Lee the Secret Abolitionist” come from? I mean, sure, the man was hardly the dogmatic ideologue for slavery as, say, John C. Calhoun was, and this reasons to fight for the South was motivated more by a love for Virginia than a love for the institution of slavery. But frankly, that does not one an abolitionist make. By the documentary evidence we have available to us, what we can conclude is that, at best, the most generous assessment we can make about Robert E. Lee’s views on slavery was that he was perfectly apathetic to the plight of those it put into chains.

I'd blame Guns of the South but I think it goes farther than that.

 

[theev]

Robert E. Lee proposes to abolish slavery not as a last desparate attempt to save the Confederacy, but the very moment the Confederacy is winning?

Where the hell did this trope of ”Robert E. Lee the Secret Abolitionist” come from? I mean, sure, the man was hardly the dogmatic ideologue for slavery as, say, John C. Calhoun was, and this reasons to fight for the South was motivated more by a love for Virginia than a love for the institution of slavery. But frankly, that does not one an abolitionist make. By the documentary evidence we have available to us, what we can conclude is that, at best, the most generous assessment we can make about Robert E. Lee’s views on slavery was that he was perfectly apathetic to the plight of those it put into chains.

Let us not forget that Lee of all people actively encouraged his army when they enslaved free blacks in Union territories. Or how Lee asked for his slaves back after the war ended.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I think it’s something the Leeaboos came up with to make him and their admiration of him more acceptable.

This is probably it - he became a popular figure, therefore he can't have been that bad, therefore if he wasn't loudly pro-slavery afterwards he must've been okay ending it really.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Robert E. Lee proposes to abolish slavery not as a last desparate attempt to save the Confederacy, but the very moment the Confederacy is winning?

Where the hell did this trope of ”Robert E. Lee the Secret Abolitionist” come from?

Winston Churchill? His 1930 ah essay 'If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg' has a victorious Lee capture Washington and then immediately free all the slaves. I suspect he was the first do so.

 

[Japhy]

Winston Churchill? His 1930 ah essay 'If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg' has a victorious Lee capture Washington and then immediately free all the slaves. I suspect he was the first do so.

In AH probably, but it had been part of the Lost Cause mythos before that.

 

[Gaius Julius Magnus]

Robert E. Lee proposes to abolish slavery not as a last desparate attempt to save the Confederacy, but the very moment the Confederacy is winning?

Where the hell did this trope of ”Robert E. Lee the Secret Abolitionist” come from? I mean, sure, the man was hardly the dogmatic ideologue for slavery as, say, John C. Calhoun was, and this reasons to fight for the South was motivated more by a love for Virginia than a love for the institution of slavery. But frankly, that does not one an abolitionist make. By the documentary evidence we have available to us, what we can conclude is that, at best, the most generous assessment we can make about Robert E. Lee’s views on slavery was that he was perfectly apathetic to the plight of those it put into chains.

It's likely extrapolated from that Lee was a proponent late in the war for slaves to be allowed to enlist in the army given the depleted White male manpower reserves. And that in some of Lee's personal papers he notes that slavery had some cruel elements to it.

Of course, Lee thought slavery was beneficial to Blacks because he thought they were better here than in Africa and overall had a White Man's burden view of slavery. In addition, IIRC, he was noted by some of his neighbors to be rather needlessly harsh when it came to punishing his slaves and he thought abolitionists were way more of a threat to the country than fire-eaters slavery proponents were.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Winston Churchill? His 1930 ah essay 'If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg' has a victorious Lee capture Washington and then immediately free all the slaves. I suspect he was the first do so.

I nominated that earlier as my least favourite ah story and rereading it once I linked it has convinced me I'm right.

It's format (an essay from the point of view of someone in a universe where Lee won at Gettysburg about the possible dystopia of a world where he didn't) means there's no characters, and the narrative is just exposition.

Historically, it's awful. The idea that the CSA would offer to free their slaves as long as they got their independence relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of who the CSA were.

And morally it's appallingly racist (there's a whole paragraph about how appalling it would be if full suffrage had been offered to the ex slaves).

 

[Omund the Wooden-Leg]

David Frum wrote a short piece in Andrew Roberts' What Might Have Been? called The Chads Fall Off in Florida, in which Al Gore is all exposition in Air Force One and they say they'll leave Iraq for Hillary apropos of nothing.

I've read that, and it ends with him offering to give Spain to the Islamists. It may have been al-Qa'ida.

 

[Charles EP M.]

And morally it's appallingly racist

*checks*

Oh.

That was so racist that it's even more racist than a 1970s British comic with a Japanese person in it and that's pretty damn racist!

 

[Markus Meecham]

And morally it's appallingly racist (there's a whole paragraph about how appalling it would be if full suffrage had been offered to the ex slaves

I mean, it is Winston "yeah dude we hate brown people too but that's too much!" Churchill.

 

[OwenM]

I just remembered Rebellion of '61 on the AH Wiki, which has the Union win the Civil War almost immediately (fairly plausible, and certainly a more interesting Civil War POD than usual) and abolish slavery straight away (haha no but I can see why someone would write that and it seemed perfectly logical on first reading). However the South is then the real winner (huh?) because the US allows interstate confederations with the 13th amendment instead of centralising (what), and slowly disintegrates before it's made official in 1949 just after it won alt-WW2 resisting British-Mexican aggression that at one point took New York City (I give up).

 

[Japhy]

I just remembered Rebellion of '61 on the AH Wiki, which has the Union win the Civil War almost immediately (fairly plausible, and certainly a more interesting Civil War POD than usual) and abolish slavery straight away (haha no but I can see why someone would write that and it seemed perfectly logical on first reading). However the South is then the real winner (huh?) because the US allows interstate confederations with the 13th amendment instead of centralising (what), and slowly disintegrates before it's made official in 1949 just after it won alt-WW2 resisting British-Mexican aggression that at one point took New York City (I give up).

I don't remember if I've discussed Lee of the Union here before but it's a similar start, Lee sides with the Union, wins the war in three months and then gets elected President in 1864 after Lincoln emancipated the slaves right after the rebellion is crushed. The difference being that Conservatism is crushed for all time. The Democrats are liberal because besides the Southerners they always were, Grover Cleveland passes Social Reforms, his wife is the first Female President, TR defeats the Kaiser with Carrier Airstikes, neither the Conservatives or the Socialists are ever an issue and President Eleanor Roosevelt announces that secret US Jet fighters have destroyed a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And then the Author himself became a very important Campaign Manager for Barry Obama.

 

[Geordie]

And then the Author himself became a very important Campaign Manager for Barry Obama.

Is it a McNutt? A genuine McNutt?