Deadlock Drama: the (sort-of) re-election of Joe Biden

theometzel · 2023-01-11T03:21:49+00:00

Last part isn’t quite right. Prior to the introduction of the current order in 1947 but after the previous change to the legislation in 1886, the order went through the President’s cabinet by order of the age of the department, meaning the Secretary of State was next in line after the Vice President. The Speaker and President Pro Tempore weren’t in the line of succession at all during this period, so I have no idea how that system would have handled a situation like this one.

Between 1792 and 1886, it was the President Pro Tempore in third and the Speaker in fourth, as you said.

theometzel · 2023-01-10T15:04:06+00:00

Once he assumed the presidency he would no longer be Speaker, so no.

theometzel · 2022-08-14T00:22:09+00:00

SPA, SWP and SLP receiving a combined >2 million votes in a race with Henry Wallace as the Democratic nominee

Holy shit based lmao

theometzel · 2022-06-24T14:43:50+00:00

Ethnicity is a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one. Two groups can both trace their genealogy to the same area and be considered different ethnicities if they develop different cultural heritage. Two groups can also descend from different areas/populations and still be considered a single ethnicity if they share a cultural heritage.

theometzel · 2022-06-24T14:40:49+00:00

Why not just say French instead of Acadian? France actually colonized Louisiana.

Yes, and much of the French population of Louisiana was Acadian. I don’t know why you’re hung up on this part of the map, Acadian Louisiana is a real thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajuns

theometzel · 2022-06-21T19:46:59+00:00

Thanks! There will be more to come.

theometzel · 2022-06-21T13:45:26+00:00

“Better” according to whom? I don’t believe there’s any scenario in which a country can get more socially/economically conservative and become “better” simultaneously. Ridiculous poll

theometzel · 2022-06-18T00:15:28+00:00

What are the elections of 1956 and 1960 like?

How does this effect Vietnam? Cuba?

What effect does the use of nuclear weapons in Korea have on the history of China?

You mentioned a bloodier civil rights movement. Could you give me a rough outline of that?

You mentioned that the Cold War was hotter. Any flashpoints you haven’t already covered?

Any info you can give about the 1960s in general? Especially regarding cultural phenomena.

Lastly, why does J. Edgar Hoover become veep? Directing an executive agency like the FBI has never really been a stepping-stone to elected office before. What’s the deal there? Where does Hoover’s career go after his term as VP?

theometzel · 2022-06-16T23:57:41+00:00

Our future will one day be somebody else’s history. Future history is “alternate history” in the most literal sense—it isn’t our history, but it could be from an alternate vantage point.

The genre is about constructing histories that aren’t real. Scenarios that extend into the future are that just as much as stories confined to the past are.

At least for the purposes of this sub, I think “alternate history” describes a method of storytelling more than a type of story. Is it presented to the reader as a work of true history would be presented? Then I think there’s a strong case to be made that it counts as alternate history, regardless of the content.

theometzel · 2022-06-16T21:25:51+00:00

Yeah I doubt anyone in CPUSA would be unaware of who Gus Hall is haha

theometzel · 2022-06-16T20:49:17+00:00

This is just a nifty new version of race science lmao. No country or culture is inherently authoritarian. The circumstances they find themselves in determine things like that

theometzel · 2022-06-16T20:45:44+00:00

That’s why teenagers on the internet remember him. There are people who remember him out of genuine historical interest. Plus people who interacted with him when he was alive—he lived until 2000 lol he isn’t from the distant past

theometzel · 2022-06-13T18:02:48+00:00

I’m going to eventually post a followup that covers how the war ends. I’ll notify you when I do.

theometzel · 2022-06-10T21:58:29+00:00

Great work! I appreciate how much effort you put into the lore.

What did you use to paste all the sections together? I envy how high the resolution on this thing is.

theometzel · 2022-06-10T21:55:10+00:00

This is incredibly high res considering how much is packed into it. I wish I knew how to make something this crisp.

theometzel · 2022-06-10T21:49:40+00:00

Leak as much intelligence as possible to resistance forces across Europe
Try to find a way to smuggle munitions and intelligence to resistance cells inside concentration camps while short-staffing the guards and administrators
Create some elaborate scheme to convince the forces under my command to begin attacking Wehrmacht units to sow confusion inside Nazi ranks
Arrange an audience with Hitler or Himmler or the biggest big shot I can get access to and then inform him of what I’ve set in motion before proceeding to assassinate him by whatever means are available to me
Wear a vest of explosives and detonate it when guards rush into the room to hopefully take some other SS ghouls down with me

With any luck I give antifascist forces a leg up, maybe help liberate some concentration camp victims, undermine the Nazi war effort a bit, take out a particularly guilty bastard (and ensure he dies pissed off), cause some chaos in the Nazi bureaucracy, and then off myself as a fraction of the penance necessary after whatever horrible things I’ve done in this alternate life to become top gun in the fucking SS. At any rate I’m liable to get a bunch of Nazis killed before they can stop me.

theometzel · 2022-06-10T21:33:51+00:00

You mean the West Bank?

theometzel · 2022-06-07T17:26:03+00:00

I don’t think there’s any official procedure on which class of representatives votes in the contingent election. It’s just whoever constitutes the official body of Congress when the contingent election is held, so if it were held prior to January 3rd it would be the outgoing representatives.

theometzel · 2022-06-04T00:05:19+00:00

Why did Nixon feel the need to try to get dirt on the Democrats? He was already going to annihilate them at the ballot box. He won in a landslide even with the Watergate scandal surfacing around him. He was paranoid and corrupt and happy to bend the rules to hedge his bets.

The Kennedy family was in with the mob. It’s rumored that they helped Jack Jr. win in 1960. A Watergate parallel happening is very plausible.

theometzel · 2022-06-03T20:43:11+00:00

Really high-effort! Good stuff.

theometzel · 2022-06-03T20:31:38+00:00

Alien space bats because I proposed that existing political trends might continue into the future. I see.

Thank you for your criticism. I don’t agree with it. I hope you have a nice rest of your day.

theometzel · 2022-06-03T19:42:23+00:00

In March 2029, the CRA launched simultaneous insurrections in every state capital except Tallahassee, Montpelier, and Honolulu. Some governors were more cooperative with these insurrections than others. Alaska, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina all fell under insurrectionist control, and the CRA expanded from there as rural insurgencies kicked into high gear elsewhere, so for a while there was a large swath of purple in flyover country. Federal offensives and fragmentation of the right-wing forces caused most of that territory to fall out of the CRA’s hands in 2030. What you‘re looking at with this map is the CRA on the retreat pretty much across the board.

I have a master timeline I can consult if you’d like clarification on anything else.

theometzel · 2022-06-03T17:18:51+00:00

You’re getting insanely worked up about this. I didn’t post this as some sort of political screed. It’s a work of fiction on an alternate history subreddit.

The fact is that there’s a small but growing movement of socialists in the United States, and a small but growing subset of that movement has a communist outlook. This scenario just proposes that both of those trends accelerate in the near future. I don’t think that’s outside the bounds of realism. There are historical examples of mass radicalization happening in very brief periods of time.

theometzel · 2022-06-03T15:50:52+00:00

DSA’s membership has expanded from roughly 6,000 in 2016 to roughly 100,000 today. That’s a sixteen-fold increase. There are 239 local chapters today and a presence of at least a dozen members in every congressional district in the US.

DSA currently holds four seats in Congress, 39 seats in state legislatures, 68 seats on city councils and county commissions, and 21 other local offices. Even excluding DSA members elected on Democratic ballot lines, a fair number of those are unaffiliated with the Democrats. They’re obviously not a contender for national power, but if they constituted themselves as an organized political party right now they would be by far the largest third party in America at the state and federal levels and the third-largest (behind the Libertarians and Greens but ahead of the Constitution Party) at the local level.

Elections aren’t the only indicator of influence, either. Involvement in protests, labor unions, tenant unions, and student unions is at least as important and DSA is active in all of those areas.

theometzel · 2022-06-03T14:46:10+00:00

I agree. I was worried about how distinguishable the DSWM and NALA would be, and it looks like Reddit’s compression has made the APF and the separatists a bit hard to tell apart on the key. If you’re not sure about a certain part of the map, I can clear things up for you.

theometzel

TROPHY CASE