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Alternate History General Discussion

Yokai Man said:
Yes I can.
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lerk said:
Yes but instead of a comic book it ought to be written like Reds.
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The point is, "dystopian Communist US" is not a new idea, it's been explored in numerous media formats since the 1940s. Non-dystopian Communist US TLs have been written in reaction to what is rather a bit of a cliché, so it's strange to request to address a perceived imbalance by going back to the ideologically orthodox stuff. I'm sure you'll find plenty of that if you look, say, into the Baen catalog.
 
Coiler said:
I'm reminded of how I believed the "Iceland Scale" and similar thoughts like authors acting like nuclear weapons never existed was applicable to almost all conventional WWIII stories, when in fact (leaving aside their actual scarcity) it was only true of a few internet timelines. Red Storm Rising is actually one of very few where the war stays completely conventional from start to finish, and even there nukes are definitely not ignored.

There are cliches in some niches that are completely ignored and unaware in others, or some that are cliche in one time but then ignored/not used in another.
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To be fair, a story in which the nukes start flying from day one will rapidly shift from a war story - with tactical nuclear weapons marching east and west - to a post-apocalyptic story about surviving in a radioactive hellhole.

That said, the nuclear taboo is a strong one and there were question marks over NATO's willingness to deploy nukes if it threatened to expand to global themonuclear war.

Chris
 
lerk said:
Yes but instead of a comic book it ought to be written like Reds.
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Hendryk said:
The point is, "dystopian Communist US" is not a new idea, it's been explored in numerous media formats since the 1940s. Non-dystopian Communist US TLs have been written in reaction to what is rather a bit of a cliché, so it's strange to request to address a perceived imbalance by going back to the ideologically orthodox stuff. I'm sure you'll find plenty of that if you look, say, into the Baen catalog.
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You know, this really does put the pages of hand-wringing about the nonexistent Pro-Nazi timeline in perspective. After all, if you take a Brave Moral Stand (TM) against glorifying a system of oppression that's actually existed in the last seventy years you might actually upset someone, and that's just not on.
 
I think there could be value in a 'dark/dystopian' Communist America TL* if written well- it could tell you more about America or about actually existing socialism, and it is a great 'world turned upside down' hook.

It probably wouldn't be written well though.

*there was a multi-page comment thread on a different place about how my TL was actually anti-communist propaganda which I still find pretty funny
 
JesterBL said:
I think there could be value in a 'dark/dystopian' Communist America TL* if written well- it could tell you more about America or about actually existing socialism, and it is a great 'world turned upside down' hook.

It probably wouldn't be written well though.

*there was a multi-page comment thread on a different place about how my TL was actually anti-communist propaganda which I still find pretty funny
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I tried my hand at this here, here, and here.

One of them won a vignette competition. Make of that what you will.
 
TheKennedyMachine said:
How screwed was RFK in 1968?

Like, was it even possible he could win the nomination?
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At the very least he had a famous name. Why didn't voters like him?

Also, I wonder now whether he might've become POTUS if both Joe and Jack Kennedy had died in the war or otherwise. Or would "Teddy" make it instead in that case, Chappaquiddick-like scandals notwithstanding?
 
David Flin said:
Wince.

The origin of the phrase Alien Space Bats was precisely there, in a discussion on the likelihood of the CSA winning Gettysburg leading to a successful Confederate secession.

[...]

The brief summary of that discussion: If the CSA are to win, it either wins early or it wins late.
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"Early" I understand - but later, how?

The PoD used in "Bring the Jubilee" (CSA gets the Round Tops at Gettysburg) wouldn't work either?

And wouldn't everything that speaks against Britain supporting the CSA IOTL speak against it in ATLs either? So if Britain doesn't help them - how can they hope to fight off the North?
 
Max Sinister said:
"Early" I understand - but later, how?

The PoD used in "Bring the Jubilee" (CSA gets the Round Tops at Gettysburg) wouldn't work either?

And wouldn't everything that speaks against Britain supporting the CSA IOTL speak against it in ATLs either? So if Britain doesn't help them - how can they hope to fight off the North?
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I think the basic argument is the Confederacy can win before the North is fully mobilised; or they can win because the North gives up, e.g. by Lincoln losing reelection, but in between is unlikely.
 
Max Sinister said:
"Early" I understand - but later, how?
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War weariness, rack up the casualties, hold Atlanta under after the Presidential election, and hope for the North to vote in Little Mac, who always over-estimated Confederate capabilities.

Max Sinister said:
The PoD used in "Bring the Jubilee" (CSA gets the Round Tops at Gettysburg) wouldn't work either?
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Nope. Let's assume the Confederates win at Gettysburg without taking a single casualty or expending a single round. Maybe the Union Army went to Antietam by mistake.

So what?

The Confederates don't have a siege train, nor do they have the capability of besieging the forts around Washington. They don't have supplies, and foraging off the land splits up the force, and making it very vulnerable to anything the Union forces might do between now and then. With a Confederate army, it is stone cold certain that Grant and Western troops would come east. The Union had a remarkable ability to move troops by railroad, and could get such a force into the area in combat readiness within a fortnight.

Which gives Lee 2 weeks to do something. Providing Lincoln doesn't lose his nerve, and there's no indication that was likely to happen, Lee can't take the outer forts. The Washington defences at this stage were fully manned, and Washington was probably the most fortified place on Earth at this particular moment. The next year, when the Washington troops had been distributed into the Army of the Potomac, the Washington defences were still under no threat when Early arrived and failed to win at Fort Stevens.

Lee's got no siege train, no time, no supply lines, no way of staying still and no way of moving forward. There's no hope of Britain recognising the Confederacy at this stage - not with the Emancipation Proclamation out there.

Gettysburg is the single worst PoD to get a Confederate success in the ACW.

Mind you, Bring The Jubilee handwaves the Confederacy ending slavery because of the efforts of Lee. Lee, who couldn't even free his own slaves when he was instructed to do so by his father's will, and who took free blacks into servitude during the Gettysburg campaign, is - so we are led to believe - going to overturn the slavery that was specifically written into the Confederate constitution. John Mosby was certainly in no doubt, stating that in later years, it had become obvious that slavery was a monstrous evil, but that at the time, that is what people were fighting for.

Bring the Jubilee is a classic of the Lost Cause romantic nonsense one sees.
 
David Flin said:
Bring the Jubilee is a classic of the Lost Cause romantic nonsense one sees.
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AFAIR the Confederates (in that book) only liberated their slaves because they can profit even more from exploiting the nominally free, but poor and defenseless ex-slaves. Notwithstanding that they supposedly have a better life than the poor people in the North.
 
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Max Sinister said:
AFAIR the Confederates only liberated their slaves because they can profit even more from exploiting the nominally free, but poor and defenseless ex-slaves. Notwithstanding that they supposedly have a better life than the poor people in the North.
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That may be so.

It's nonsense, of course. The Confederacy had Slavery written into its Constitution. Quite specifically, and they had fought a war on that basis.

To quote from Wiki on the book:

Although Lee tried to establish a benevolent national policy, and was able to free the slaves, his anti-imperialistic desires were thwarted by a Congress with increasingly imperialistic ambitions, which sent forces to invade Mexico and expanded southward in Latin America. The Confederacy thrived as cities like Washington-Baltimore (merged from those two cities plus Alexandria) and Leesburg (formerly Mexico City) became renowned international centers of culture and learning. The Confederacy stood as one of the world's two superpowers following the German Union's decisive victory in the Emperors' War (1914–1916) in Europe (analogous to World War I).

I don't think I need to go into details as to just how bad that is from a plausibility point of view.
 
Max Sinister said:
I have no doubt about this, but hey, it's an AH classic.
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You have to think of it like how Honus Wagner was a monster power hitter for his time despite never hitting more than ten home runs in a season or how some of the best interwar quarterbacks had numbers that would be considered trash even by the 1940s, much less the Super Bowl era. Or George Mikan being an unstoppable juggernaut in the NBA despite being only 6'10" with no agility. (I'm sure the soccer/cricket/whatever people can come up with an equally good analogy-hopefully you get the idea).

A lot of stuff is a product of its time. This is especially true if the sample size is very small, as it is for mainstream AH of the past.
 
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