tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670931628454233312024-02-07T02:11:44.940-06:00(Alt)History Inc.Alternate History, Real History, Fake News, and other ramblingsTyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-53041114647058310372019-07-13T15:33:00.003-05:002019-07-13T15:33:52.240-05:00History Essay: Why Fascists and Racists Never Win Their WarsHello ladies and gentlemen, I'm back after a very, very long break.<br />
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I'm not going to get into everything I've done since I last posted since... December 2017. Ohh...<br />
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Anyway, today I'm going to write a short essay on, as you can tell from the title, on why Fascists and Racists never win in real life, or at least in the long wars and in the long term in general. And I mean capital F and R Fascists and Racists, those that are so blinded by their hatred and perceived superiority that they couldn't comprehend giving others a chance, or even to use them to their greatest effectiveness. I classify lowercase r racists as more the "Well, they are different, and I don't like them, but they can fire a gun or make stuff, so I'll use them." Still not good by any stretch of the imagination, and who still exist today, but much, much better than the Nazis.<br />
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This thought as come from a book I've been re-reading recently, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/831378.Why_the_Allies_Won" target="_blank"><i>Why The Allies Won</i> by Richard Overy</a>. It's a very well written book that dispels a lot of the myths of the war, such as the sheer amount of resources and production that the Allies had on their side allowed them to win. It was more that the Allies managed to reform their economies, tactics and worked together as well as they could, and did so very quickly, while the Axis, especially German, mismanagement of their resources, failure to adapt as their foes did, and the almost constant backstabbing and squabbling of the upper leadership that Hitler couldn't, or wouldn't control.<br />
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But there is another aspect that comes up time and again in the book, and can be further extrapolated to other historical entities and time periods, to show why the Fascists and Racists never win their big wars... usually.<br />
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And that is, well, their racism.<br />
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When Hitler <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa" target="_blank">invaded the USSR</a>, his soldiers were greeted as liberators, especially in the Ukraine. They believed they had been freed from the cruelty of the Soviet Union and Stalin's paranoia and megalomania, the death and destruction of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor" target="_blank">Holodomor</a> still in memory. But this lasted all of five seconds before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen" target="_blank">SS death squads</a> turned up and began to execute the Jews, Communist party officials, and treated the population as inferior beings, <i>Untermenschen</i>, in the Nazi's twisted view of race. Overnight, Ukrainian and Baltic peasants that were once cheering the arrival of the Wehrmacht were now taking up arms to sabotage it with brutal partisan warfare. Red Army soldiers were driven, not simply by the fear of the <span id="goog_1277893203"></span>NKVD<span id="goog_1277893204"></span> to make defeatists disappear into the Gulags, but by the hatred of the Germans, their brutality, the mass death and destruction they left in their wake. Civilians that raced east to avoid the Germans, to work in the hastily re-assembled factories set up in the Ural Mountains, put up with the starvation rations and deadly working conditions of the factories in sub-zero temperatures to turn out the crude by effective tanks, airplanes and guns that would slow down, halt, and eventually drive back the Nazis because of the righteous fury of the German's and the barbarity they unleashed.<br />
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Now, imagine, for a moment, that Hitler let his racism take a back seat to pragmatism, to treat the Slavs as possible allies? How many divisions of anti-Communist, anti-Stalinist Ukrainians as allies? Enough to reach the Caucasus as the oil there? To capture Stalingrad? To reach the fabled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-A_line" target="_blank">Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan Line</a>? Repeal the Allies on D-Day? Or even just to work in the factories of Germany, not as slaves who were starved, beaten and tortured to death, but as willing workers, freeing more manpower to expand the Reich? Instead, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of German soldiers would fight cat and mouse battles with partisans, who would destroy the railways, kill the horses, slaughter their enemy in barbaric ways to drive them out of the country.<br />
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This doesn't mean that the moment that the Soviet's surrendered, and the US and UK agreed to peace, that Hitler couldn't then turn around, backstab his Slavic allies, and enslave them all, drive them from their land and give the rich fields and pastures of the vaunted Lebensraum to pure Germans. But because Hitler and the Nazi's sought to fight the war against both armies of the Great Powers and their perceived racial inferiors in the land they conquered at the same time, they lost both fights.<br />
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This goes even further back, to the first target of Hitler's hatred, the Jewish people. Starting as soon as he took the office of Chancellor in 1933 by driving out tens of thousands of the smartest and best educated citizens of Germany, the scientists and engineers like Albert Einstein, from their professions, their homes and businesses to make room for his Aryan master race. Then, as he strengthened his power, he proceeding step by step, with the yellow stars, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht" target="_blank">Kristallnacht</a>, the Ghettos, to finally the horrors of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp" target="_blank">Auschwitz</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust" target="_blank">Holocaust</a>, the Nazi's killed six million Jews, trying to erase them from history. But even in this, the Nazi's sabatoged themselves, tying up precious transportation services like railways to send hundreds of thousands to their death. By sending Jews to the death camps was given a higher priority than even food and ammunition to the soldiers on the Eastern front. This shouldn't, and isn't, to say that the Holocaust had a silver lining. It was a horrible, inhumane, and criminal endeavour, but in their blind racist rage and hatred to kill as many Jews as possible, they put in place the downfall of the Third Reich.<br />
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But even more than that, because it was Jews like Einstein that explored atomic power, Hitler classified it as "Jewish" science, and refused to give it the funding and resources that would have allowed them build an atomic bomb, a true wonder weapon that maybe could have turned the tide of war. And the Jewish scientists and engineers that escaped would be instrumental in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project" target="_blank">Manhattan Project</a> to develop the bomb that would be used on Japan.<br />
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It's difficult to say that, had Hitler just not been racist and given the German atomic programme the resources it needed to develop the bomb. It took the US, the richest country in the world in 1945, nearly $2 billion, along with the work of 150,000 highly skilled men and women, to build the first one. Germany, while on the verge of being an economic superpower, wasted much of their resources on jet engines, super tanks, ballistic missiles, and many, many <i>Wunderwaffen</i> projects that were years ahead of it's time. It's incredibly unlikely that the Nazi's would have gotten the A-bomb first, but they would have had a much better shot had racism not blinded them.<br />
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The same thing happened the Japanese, who considered the many people they conquered as inferior to themselves, especially the Chinese, and suffered the brutal struggle in China that lead to their war against the US, Britain, the Dutch and others. And this was just <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes" target="_blank">some of the brutal atrocities that they inflicted on the people they conquered</a>. And even further back in history, with the Confederate States in the US Civil War, they kept <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America#Population" target="_blank">a third of the total population of the Southern States in bondage</a>, when they were already had a smaller population and resource base compared to the North. And on and on throughout history, it always seems that the empire that enslaves and brutalizes a large portion of their subjects that, in the long run, die out. The Spanish Empire set up in the Americas crumbled once the locals, and those that were Spanish descendant but had lived in the colonies and were considered inferior to those born in Europe, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Empire#End_of_the_global_empire_(1808%E2%80%931899)" target="_blank">saw that the Spanish were not invulnerable after Napoleon invaded</a>. Napoleon himself <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution" target="_blank">failed to retake Haiti in 1804,</a> most due to disease, but also to the army of former slave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture" target="_blank">Toussaint Louverture.</a><br />
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But then, of course, there are the times when those that believed themselves to be racially superior <i>did</i> win: the British built a massive empire where the sun never set, and tried to turn their new subjects into Christian and British and erase their old cultures. The Russian Empire<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification" target="_blank"> tried to make the many, many people they conquered in Eastern Europe and Central Asia into Russians</a>, a policy continued by the Soviets with very mixed results. Same with the US as they spread westward and drove the Native Americans into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation" target="_blank">reservations</a>. Even Canada tried to turn the Aboriginals in their lands into "proper" citizens (i.e.: Christian) through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system" target="_blank">Residential Schools</a>.<br />
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But all these empires and nations, however, didn't simply try to systematically kill and brutalize those they conquered like the Nazis, and now the long, difficult process to try to make up for the brutality and racism of the past is ongoing around the world. Even during the age of "scientific racism," the British used troops from their colonies, like India, to fight their wars. Native Americans served in the armies of the US and Canada in the World Wars: the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker#Navajo" target="_blank">Navajo Code Talkers</a> and <a href="https://militarybruce.com/tommy-prince-canadas-most-decorated-aboriginal-soldier-of-wwii/" target="_blank">Tommy Prince</a>, the most decorated Canadian soldier of the Second World War. And in Jim Crow America, African Americans served in the US military, such as in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)" target="_blank">Harlem Hellfighters</a>, and in the factories that turned out the guns and tanks and planes of the Arsenal of Democracy.<br />
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So, yes. Fascists and Racists (almost) never win their wars. That doesn't mean that racists societies don't win, but they will at least let their second class citizens to serve in their armies and fight. And oftentimes, it leads to the destruction of said society after the war as civil rights or decolonization rears it's head to try to make humanity just a little bit better.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-78803926179062034272017-12-31T15:27:00.000-06:002017-12-31T15:30:07.247-06:00Editorial: Last Post of 2017Hello everyone! Here we are, at last, on the final day of this God forsaken year. It's been stressful, chaotic, and at times mortifyingly painful to experience, but, here we are.<br />
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Normally I don't talk alot about myself, but, suffice to say, 2017 has not turned out to be one of the years I'll remember fondly. I lost my first post-university job in March because of computer stuff, and it has been nine months of worrying about how to pay student loans, high expectations of what kind of time I had at my disposal, and in turn outlandish goals that I just really never had any hope of completing, including multiple writing projects and helping out on the family farm at the same time. I had hoped to get a couple fairly large alternate history writing projects done, but neither are close.<br />
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On the bright side, I do have a new job at a local furniture store. It's been pretty good so far, and will help with the student loans. But with a full 9-6 day Monday to Saturday, that basically means that writing is now very much a secondary concern of mine, for weekends and a few hours in the evening after supper and before bed.<br />
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So, with that, I'm going to have to drastically change how I do things.<br />
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First, this blog will be pretty much on indefinite hiatus (which, to be frank, is where it was already). I had been working on several scenarios to post on here, but I just haven't got them done thanks to the holiday season, NaNoWriMo and other things. Hopefully in a couple months, once work has settled down and I've managed to take some major steps in writing (see the point below!), I can come back and provide some new scenarios for you all to enjoy.<br />
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Second, I'm going to be focusing on one of my larger projects, a series of short stories in alternate histories that involve transportation. My goal, my New Years Resolution, is to complete that story, edit it, and get it published (most likely as an e-book) by the end of 2018. If I manage to get another story somewhat close to publishing after, that will be a big bonus, but not my ultimate goal.<br />
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Third, when this blog does come back, it will change a lot. The Fake News/Onion-esque thing, while it was fun to write, isn't really what most of you came here to read. And while fun to write when I have the idea, It's been nearly impossible to actually make more of them, if for no other reason than the total information and news overload of the past years. Somedays looking at the headlines on CBC News and the New York Times is like browsing the Onion, and it's just so... exhausting to rehash it all again. And the scenario's I've written, while interesting and fun, are really, really long. So, I'm going to be working on trying to make them shorter, sweeter, and to the point, similar to <a href="http://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">This Day in Alternate History blog</a>.<br />
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So, TL;DR version: I'm putting the blog on hold to write stuff, and when I come back, it will be AltHistory all the time, and hopefully shorter and better.<br />
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So off to 2018, and see you all next year!Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-22707133630636099742017-11-27T12:00:00.000-06:002017-11-26T13:46:50.243-06:00Map Monday: The Gomberg MapI've been meaning to do more of these Map Monday's and Flag Friday's, so let's start with one of the more famous, and mysterious, of Alternate History Maps for this Monday (and one that I have currently on the wall above my desk): the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_the_Post-War_New_World_Map" target="_blank">Gomberg Map</a>, and previously covered by my friend Matt Mittrovich on his YouTube channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rnUAtEyl9M" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Gomberg_map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="800" height="456" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Gomberg_map.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Tada!</i></td></tr>
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Also known as <i>Outline of Post-War New World Map</i>, this map, self-published by Maurice Gomberg in 1942, shows how he believed the world after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan would turn out. It's really interesting, the more you look at it, but the version I have doesn't explain much about how this would come about. But, there are a few things I want to bring up, and determine their plausibility.<br />
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First: the United States of America, which has more than doubled in size to include Canada and Mexico and almost the entire Caribbean, an old Manifest Destiny ideal, as well as a lot of "USA Peace - Security Outposts" in the Atlantic and Pacific. These include most of the Azores (which was held by Portugal), Bermuda (which was a British Colony), Greenland and Iceland (both held by Denmark before the war) and many Islands that were held by France, Britain and Japan before the war in the Pacific. While many of these islands would be turned over to the US (Guam, Micronesia and the Marshal Islands), most are now independent or still under the control of their old Colonial masters for no better reason than they couldn't survive in the modern world without that help. Also included in the dark blue are Formosa (Taiwan), Mainan, and several island chains of Indonesia, presumably as part of the Philippines.<br />
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The other big country on the map is, of course, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, here stretching from the Rhine to Manchuria. Almost half of Europe, including a "Quarantined Germany" is part of the USSR, as well as all of Iran. If we looked at just Europe on this map, we could see the OTL border divisions that occurred, except with all of Germany, including Austria, being in the Soviet sphere of influence, and all being a direct part of the USSR. There are also a lot of other divisions of Russia within the USSR, either as Oblasts or "independent" Socialist Republics. I'm not sure what he meant here, if they are to be further administrative divisions or independent SSR's.<br />
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But the one thing that Gomberg loves (and is very much a failing of many a first time alternate history or futurist map maker) is continent spanning nations: the United States of Scandinavia, the United States of Europe (including Quarantined Italy), the United States of South America, the Union of African Republics, the Federated Republics of India (which includes Afghanistan), the Arabian Federated Republics, and the United Republics of China, which includes Indochina, Thailand and Malaya. Australia, New Zealand, the UK (minus Northern Ireland, surprisingly), Madagascar, Ceylon, most of Indonesia not taken over by the US, and New Guinea are part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, as well as small outposts in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.<br />
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The Gomberg Map is, very much, an idealized view of what the world would look like, but also somewhat sinister: the fact that many countries that fought brutal wars to overthrow colonialists and unpopular, superpower backed leaders like Indochina/Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan and Cuba are all just grouped in with the closest "big power" is very much a continuation of colonialist mindset, and very much a sign that Gomberg thinks that, only with massive, continent spanning nations like in South America and Africa can smaller nations experience peace. But, at the same time, Gomberg is very much a democrat: there are no true "Kingdoms" mentioned anywhere on the map: everything is a "Republic" or a "Commonwealth," or "United States of ___". Even today, when some of the most stable countries in the world are Constitutional Monarchies, and there are many dictatorships that claim they are Republics, this is a very noticeable distinction.<br />
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So, in the end, I personally think that the Gomberg Map, as a map for a true ideal of a post war world, is incredibly idealistic, but incredibly naive. I could already see the Union of African Republics tearing itself apart soon after the War when you have South Africa, which was on the verge of institutionalizing Apartheid, with many black African dominated colonies being thrust together into one nation with little experience and backwards economies and infrastructure. And having so many non Russians directly in the USSR would seriously upset the balance of power, which was a reason that Stalin prefered to set up puppet dictatorships in Eastern Europe instead of bringing them all into the Soviet Union. And I can't see the US willingly take all of South America and the Caribbean into the US: the old "banana republic" system of government served US interests much better than allowing dozens of islands and much, much weaker economies into the US, not to mention that Canada had spent decades (and still continues) to try to differentiate themselves from America to allow themselves to become part of the USA.<br />
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But what do you think? Is the Gomberg Map little more than idealism on paper, or could it have actually worked in real life? If you have a comment or a suggestion, leave a comment below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com or look for me on Twitter, @tbguy1992.<br />
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Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-65947903998393067892017-11-12T20:29:00.001-06:002019-07-14T00:48:21.770-05:00Fictional AltHistory #9: Command & Conquer Red Alert Timeline Headcanon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So lately I've been on a Command & Conquer kick, partly thanks to the excellent work done by the <a href="http://www.openra.net/" target="_blank">OpenRA Team</a>, who have taken the freeware files of the original Command & Conquer (1995), Red Alert (1996) and Dune 2000 (1998) and turned them into a fully functional, modern RTS for modern computers. If you want to relive an RTS classic, then go check them out!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.openra.net/images/screenshots/cnc-defend.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://www.openra.net/images/screenshots/cnc-defend.png" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="500" height="176" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Since I'm absolutely positive that EA will never make a good C&C again.</i></td></tr>
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That said, I once did a fictional AltHistory scenario on the first C&C <a href="http://althistoryinc.blogspot.ca/2016/03/fictional-althistory-c-what-if-tiberium.html" target="_blank">here, well over a year and a half ago</a>, and I think it's time to revisit the grandfather of all RTS games, this time with it's slightly loopy and campy B-movie quality of it's brother, Red Alert 1.<br />
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So, Point of Divergence. Hmmm... This is actually harder than I thought, mostly because RA1 <i>is</i> an alternate history already, asking "what if Albert Einstein built a time machine and erased Hitler from history?" And, considering all the talk about Nazi's today, I'd rather not get into that right now...<br />
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Well, the games themselves feature the heroic Allies fighting the brutal Soviets for control of Europe, introducing new technologies and desperate tactics to try to change the tide of battle: attack dogs, flamethrowers, Tesla coils, double barreled Mammoth Tanks, nuclear weapons, invulnerability and teleportation devices... the list goes on. Oh, and Tanya.<br />
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But, there is one thing about Red Alert 1 that popped up, but then never came up again...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio8GSuaJFZFKdM1B7rfIUsNv9Z08myAiPacuj82tSzjFu3wDTPNBInAeqwXZGT1cJZ6kkZOGdytYMduSCR3sUN-ZyHIcZLFp_-1kjTJfsSd6Pf3on5qZiixwfWKg7jdgAlj-OoTN2oRDC5/s1600/Kane_with_Stalin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio8GSuaJFZFKdM1B7rfIUsNv9Z08myAiPacuj82tSzjFu3wDTPNBInAeqwXZGT1cJZ6kkZOGdytYMduSCR3sUN-ZyHIcZLFp_-1kjTJfsSd6Pf3on5qZiixwfWKg7jdgAlj-OoTN2oRDC5/s320/Kane_with_Stalin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Who is that handsome guy in the back there? Zoom in!</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFMQZesjZi7B-9TXJR5WHej3QjjEbjyXSgeUQGtD2NtoPVfD0EVWvL0pyMHSPQo-k9HFKHKYKRn4qsLWKOOBqZXQuTNQkwV_idcvd85-EmEOl5M2bRWKN83LZN9ixgYrf6W6nEogALgA9Z/s1600/Kane_with_Stalin+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFMQZesjZi7B-9TXJR5WHej3QjjEbjyXSgeUQGtD2NtoPVfD0EVWvL0pyMHSPQo-k9HFKHKYKRn4qsLWKOOBqZXQuTNQkwV_idcvd85-EmEOl5M2bRWKN83LZN9ixgYrf6W6nEogALgA9Z/s1600/Kane_with_Stalin+2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>... damn low resolutions. Find a better picture for this joke!</i></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhul-SEh5rJsSY-vfiiNS3te95Smn7AYMSeGmRrsLPZYbL2GtQgKZH3RNUb44dV-liukInzXVRXggVJNUyxK1SWhta0uagYi7oXV20v3tcA_HcaKf2UTVRuDf86oyJ8BR_puuM38l6jiamu/s1600/Kane-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="500" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhul-SEh5rJsSY-vfiiNS3te95Smn7AYMSeGmRrsLPZYbL2GtQgKZH3RNUb44dV-liukInzXVRXggVJNUyxK1SWhta0uagYi7oXV20v3tcA_HcaKf2UTVRuDf86oyJ8BR_puuM38l6jiamu/s320/Kane-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ahah! You magnificent bald, goateed bastard Kane, you!</i></td></tr>
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An aborted attempt to tie the Red Alert series to the original Command & Conquer, the Tiberium series.<br />
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Now, over the years, a myth, persay, has developed on how this tie together would work. But this scenario never struck me as likely, because it was that a Soviet Victory in the "Second World War" of this timeline was what would lead to the establishment of the Global Defense Initiative and the emergence of the Brotherhood of Nod. But it just doesn't feel right to me, that, the Soviet Union manages to conquer all of Europe but then allows a United Nations organization (which should never have been established in this alternate timeline) to then build a global military force. It just always struck me as wrong that the Soviet's would allow something like that to happen, or that the United Nations would be formed, and then in turn form GDI, after a collapse of the USSR.<br />
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No, my headcanon for tying RA1 and C&C1 together involves an Allied Victory.<br />
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"But wait!" the C&C fans would begin to bellow. "The Allied Victory is what leads to Red Alert 2, and then to Red Alert 3! So it can't be used for C&C1. How can that work?"<br />
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Ah, well here is where it gets weird: I say that Red Alert 1 and 2 are both in the timeline.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/confusion-portrait-picture-id165175281" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="800" height="212" src="https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/confusion-portrait-picture-id165175281" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Not sure what he's confused about. Most likely why watermarks are hovering all over him.</i></td></tr>
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Okay, let me explain.<br />
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So, we start with Einstein going back in time in the late 1940s, killing Hitler, and returning to his time, just to see the Soviets rise up, and try to take over Europe. With the United States still isolationist, it's all up to Europe (including a non-Nazi Germany) to unite and hold back the Soviets, forming the Allies, or, rather, the United Nations. It was only after the USSR tried to develop atomic bombs that the US joined the United Nations, sending men, weapons and supplies to help the beleaguered Allies, and invade Russia itself, and topple Stalin, and the USSR.<br />
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After this, the US and her European Allies begin to rebuild, and Michael Romanov is placed in charge of the much smaller Soviet Union. But in the 1970s, with the USSR rebuilt and gearing up for revenge, they launch a multi-pronged attack on the United States, which wasn't the great military power it was in OTL because it only helped at the very end of the previous World War, and then went back to a semi-isolationist stance, content that the damn Commies are contained. But now with the US the prime target of the USSR (with their mind control agents, attack squids, missile launching battleships and flying airships of death), and the Allies (which have dolphins, tanks that turn into trees, weather control superweapons and, of course, Tanya), perhaps because the US didn't come to their immediate aid or because they were afraid of the Soviet Union, wouldn't join until later, at which point the Allies manage to overcome the destruction, and bring down the USSR.<br />
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Up until now, this is based on the lore of the first two Red Alert games. Now is where the Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey stuff comes into play.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.amcnetworks.com/bbcamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/tardis2-1600x720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://images.amcnetworks.com/bbcamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/tardis2-1600x720.jpg" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="800" height="144" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>That noise you hear is Daleks allying with the Brotherhood of Nod and the Soviets.</i></td></tr>
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The expansion for Red Alert 2 featured a campaign by the psychic Yuri trying to take over the world. Now, in the Allied Campaign, at the last mission, there is a... thing that happens, where the screen gets all wobbly, and the "timelines merge" with the ending of Red Alert 2. And with the world now at peace, and the United Nations dominate, all the major powers agree to dismantle, or at least decommission their most advanced weapons, with many of the blueprints being destroyed or locked away. And, with all of Europe, North America and Russia now a war torn ruin, and with no "superpower" to easily fill in the slot, the United Nations forms several unified military commands. One of which, after some name changes (including the catchy Operations Group Echo: Black Ops Nine) becomes the Global Defense Initiative.<br />
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"But wait! What about Red Alert 3?"<br />
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Simple: it's a branching timeline from the end of Red Alert 2, but it's not the "main" timeline of our history, perhaps branching after Cherdenko (SPACE!) activates his time machine before Yuri's mind control starts? It's an alternate scenario of the events of Red Alert 2, and therefore not associated with the Tiberium Timeline.<br />
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"And Kane? And the Brotherhood of Nod?"<br />
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Ahh, well here is where they finally come in: they have always been an enigmatic, mysterious organization, and mentioned all the way back in the 1950s. If I remember correctly, there is even something at the end of the RA1 campaign where someone mentions they didn't find all of Stalin's advisors. It's quite simple to assume that Kane and the Brotherhood went into hiding for the events of RA2, and only emerged afterwards when Tiberium finally arrived on Earth.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/cnc/images/3/30/Tiber.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070329124832" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/cnc/images/3/30/Tiber.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070329124832" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>This was really the Scrin's way of welcoming Humanity to the spacefaring community. A planet warming gift.</i></td></tr>
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"Then why didn't the Allies/GDI just take the weapons from the previous war and use them?"<br />
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Well, what says they didn't? Well, some of the technology, at least. For example, Nod's Stealth tank? What if it's a refinement on the Mirage Tanks of Red Alert 2, just they don't turn into trees now. And the Apocalypse tank could have been used to build the first Mammoth Tanks for GDI. But other technology, like the Iron Curtain, Chronosphere, Weather Control Device, Prism Tanks and others would have degraded, or purposefully/accidently destroyed over the forty some years between the war in Red Alert 2, and the late 1990s/early 2000s that Tiberium Dawn takes place. Even if they had the blueprints, it would take time to rebuild it all, if it wasn't seen as not useful: after all, GDI isn't exactly running on a big budget, and even has its budget cut halfway through the campaign after Nod media manipulation. So I don't see GDI investing in trying to rebuild old technology, most of which may only have limited use on the modern battlefield, after years of rusting in bunkers and warehouses around the world.<br />
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So, this does take some leaps of faith and assumptions, but this is how I would tie the two branches of Command & Conquer together. Is it perfect? No: after all, why would the allies give up on, say, Prism tanks after showing their usefulness? Though, there have been efforts to restrict and eliminate certain types of weapon over time, so I could see that happening here as well. But, I think it provides a somewhat satisfactory explanation for the two timelines intersecting.<br />
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But what do you think? How do you think the timelines of Command and Conquer being tied together, or if they should at all? If you have a comment or a suggestion, leave a comment below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com or look for me on Twitter, @tbguy1992.<br />
<br />Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-67950036164902329262017-10-31T00:33:00.001-05:002017-10-31T00:33:30.652-05:00Alternate History Scenario #30: No "Iron or Blood" German UnificationIt's 1848, the Springtime of Nations. Revolution has swept Europe, sending monarchs and autocrats fleeing in the face of popular upheaval. Prince Metternich of Austria, the founder of the post-Napoleonic world order, has been forced from office. A Second Republic has been declared in France. Even the bastion of reactionary conservatism, the Kingdom of Prussia, bows to the demands for a constitution and liberty.<br />
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When King Friedrich Wilhelm IV announced a parliament to meet, he summoned many Junkers and nobles to come. However, several refused the call, one being a young, eccentric junker named Otto von Bismarck, considering this a capitulation and illegitimate, and therefore a waste of time. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/BismarckLandtag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="631" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/BismarckLandtag.jpg" width="252" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Bismarck, here in 1847. Or a younger General Lee. Frankly, everyone in mid-19th century had that kind of beard and mustache.</i></td></tr>
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The national assembly that had been gathered debated what was needed to make Prussia a constitutional monarchy, but King Friedrich Wilhelm had his own plans, and by December, had reoccupied Berlin, dissolved the assembly, and promulgated a conservative constitution that tipped the scales in the favor of the rich, nobles and military. </div>
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Elsewhere in Europe, 1849 turned into a resurgence of the reactionary movement. This was topped off when the liberal nationalist Frankfurt Assembly offered the crown of a new Emperor of Germany to Friedrich Wilhelm, who promptly declined it, considering the Frankfurt Assembly illegitimate (and not wanting to get on Austria's bad side).</div>
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As the memory of 1848 drifted off, Europe returned to its conservative, Congress of Vienna roots from a generation before. Nationalism, while not gone, had been suppressed with bayonets and broken promises. France and Britain were more concerned with imperialism in Asia and Africa, while Austria, Russia, Prussia and dozens of smaller states continued to uphold the status quo, but the remnants of of Springtime of Nations was still there: the Prussian constitution, most notably.</div>
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King Friedrich Wilhelm suffered a stroke in 1857, and his brother, Prince Wilhelm, acted as Regent for the mentally incapacitated King until Friedrich Wilhelm's death in 1861, at which point Wilhelm ascended the throne as Wilhelm I. The Prussian legislature by this time had become increasingly liberal, and, with their powers over budgets and taxation, began to make demands, including on how the money should actually be spent. When the army asked to raise more soldiers, and increase the terms of conscription from two to three years, the Landtag refused to pass the budget to grant this money. This was a terrifying prospect to the Junkers and the Army: the famed saying of Voltaire that Prussia was not a state with an army, but an army with a state, was just as true a hundred years later. The fact that the people (mostly middle class professionals that chafed under the conservatism entrenched by the Army and King) wanted a say in running the army and how their tax money should be spent set conservative and liberal at each other's throats. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/LCimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="800" height="284" src="https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/LCimage.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Because there is nothing in history more vicious than a left and right battle royale.</i></td></tr>
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The problem that King Wilhelm faced was that it was becoming increasingly hard to solve this constitutional crisis: giving into the Liberals would upset the army, but getting rid of the Constitution might lead to another 1848. Wilhelm was also not the most confident of men, prone to self doubt. He considered abdicating, but was convinced to stay on the throne. But the political deadlock continued: Minister Presidents, who served at the King's pleasure, was unable to get the proposals through parliament. New elections were held in 1863, but that only lead to more liberal members being elected. Emboldened, the Liberal majority demanded that the constitution be reformed, and a true constitutional monarchy on the basis of the British be declared. This was even more horrifying to the elites of Prussia, because the monarch of Britain was little more than a figurehead: while Queen Victoria was popular, and nominally in charge of the military and the nation, the Prime Minister was the one that exercised full political control.</div>
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King Wilhelm, his nerves straining, finally acquiesced to the Liberal demands, and began discussions on reforming the constitution. The Army was furious, and soon the more reactionary members were plotting to capture the King, dispose of parliament, and reform an autocratic regime. But the coup attempt was badly bungled: the King was shot, and died several days later. The people in Berlin rose up, threw out the army, and declared a republic. The entire nation was in chaos, with many soldiers refusing to follow their officers orders. The Crown Prince Frederick, himself a Liberal, was ignored by all sides. Austria and Russia, fearing the worse, began to mobilize their armies. France, having become the Second Empire under Napoleon III in 1852, sensing an opportunity, marched into the Rhineland while preaching that Prussia should become liberal. War was only averted when the British proposed a conference in Brussels, and began working on a new settlement.</div>
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The German states, considered unstable and unruly (and threatening the peace of Europe), where forcibly federated into a new German Confederation. Prussia was to be made part of it, but was carved up into smaller pieces (part of the Rhineland given to France, part of East Prussia to Russia, and a big chunk of Silesia back to Austria) and made an equal of states like Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony and Wurttemberg, as each Kingdom was given a veto on unified action: all decisions on a federal level had to be unanimous. Austria was also technically made part of it, but mostly to give the Emperor in Vienna a veto over anything the other states might attempt. The smaller kingdoms could keep their armies, and only in war were they to be unified. And the German Confederation was not allowed to make alliances without approval from the other Great Powers, which effectively neutered the nation.</div>
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It was hoped that by forcibly unifying them, and keeping them squabbling amongst themselves, they would prevent Europe from going to war. But this was short lived. The Federal Parliament, seen as originally as little more than a debating club, soon gained a liberal, nationalist majority. The smaller Kingdoms of the Confederation began to see themselves as Germans first and foremost, began to chip away at the restrictions: central power was centralized in the mid 1870s, Austria relinquished it's veto in favor of massive loans in the face of Hungarian unrest and economic crisis, and the prohibition of alliances was rescinded in 1879. However, the new German confederation vowed to remain at peace, only maintaining an army for defense, and developed friendly ties with other nations in Europe. Militaries were not excessively large, mostly for defense or, in the case of France and Britain, for the defense of Empire. Italy remained a patchwork of independent states under the boot of Austria despite support in France and Germany for Italian unification, though that is still far in the future.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://denvercatholic.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/12/Colosseum-10-3_Web-924x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="800" height="207" src="https://denvercatholic.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/12/Colosseum-10-3_Web-924x600.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The only time that a unified Italy hasn't disappointed everyone was 1800 years ago...</i></td></tr>
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<br />The German economy began to grow rapidly as railways and a merchant marine was built up, while many immigrants headed for America. By 1900, Germany was rich, had a decent army, and the goodwill of all nations. The problems the nation faced was more between socialists and laissez-faire capitalists as industrialization swept Europe. While some nationalists were furious that Germanic lands like Alsace-Lorraine, Prussia and even Austria were not part of the larger Germany, there was little in the way of military threats in Europe.</div>
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At least until Austria and Russian nationalists began to rise up in the early 1900s. But that's another story.</div>
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As for Otto von Bismarck: the well known and popular farmer of East Prussia, having built a fortune from land and mining, died peacefully in his sleep in 1898, leaving his vast wealth to his extended family. While a true Junker conservative, refusing to fly the German Confederation flag until his dying day in place of the Prussian standard, he never did participate in politics, refusing to even vote in elections.</div>
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But what do you think? What would have had Bismarck never came to power or unified Germany through "Iron or Blood?" If you have a comment or a suggestion, leave a comment below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com or look for me on Twitter, @tbguy1992.</div>
Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-92076435640224083412017-09-30T15:49:00.003-05:002017-09-30T15:50:13.682-05:00Alternate History Scenario #29: What if Gaius Caesar Succeeded Augustus?September 9, 2 AD: Gaius Caesar, the designated successor to Augustus, had been invited to meet with rebellious Armenians, but, sensing a trap, he declined, and laid siege to the fortress. A couple months later, the rebellious Armenians surrendered, and Roman control of the Armenian Kingdom was assured. While the death of Gaius' brother Lucius had been a blow to the plans of Augustus, the bright and charismatic Gaius easily filled into the roles that Lucius' death had opened for him.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Gaius_Caesar_(20_v._Chr._%E2%80%93_4_n._Chr..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="553" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Gaius_Caesar_(20_v._Chr._%E2%80%93_4_n._Chr..jpg" width="220" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Gaius "Babyface" Caesar... either an Emperor<br />or a 1930s gangster, I dunno.</i></td></tr>
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For the next twenty years, Gaius continued serving as consul, proconsul and other positions within the Principate, gaining experience, recognition and popularity, especially in the expansion into Germania. The birth of two young boys to his wife Livilla in 4 and 6 AD guaranteed the Julio-Claudian Dynasty as his adopted father began to resign more and more from political life. By 24 AD, Augustus was the Princeps in name only, as Gaius had been named to all the positions and titles that Augustus held, and the power they represented. So when Augustus died in 25 AD, the succession was clear, and welcomed by all.<br />
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Almost from the start of his reign as the Princeps, Gaius groomed his sons to succeed him: the eldest served on the border of Germania, while the youngest served in his father's old position in the East facing the Parthians. In Rome, Gaius continued Augustus' work, centralizing the state under his control. The Senate, while it's old prestige and power had waned, began to be revitalized as an advisory council and was allowed, within reason, to propose laws and vote on them. However, Gaius' approval was still needed, and if he dismissed or publically disagreed with the law, it would fail.<br />
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However, there was one problem Gaius was unable to tackle, and that was how to continue the growth and prosperity of the Empire. For decades, the conquests of foreign lands had brought in the wealth and resources needed to make Rome the Capital of the World. But even with the capture of Germania, which was mostly wild and untamed, with few settlements, no mines or farms, the question of how much further the empire could continue was left in the air at Gaius' death in 53 AD.</div>
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The succession of Gaius' son's was peaceful, but there was an undercurrent of concern. The speed of building had slowed, and military victories were few except against dissatisfied rebels or the ever present Armenian question. The lustre of the Principate was beginning to wear thin as the son's began to exert more overt authority that their grandfather and father never did, and senators, who had been sidelined for decades, longed to return to influence and power. Some began to plot, while others sought to rise to the Principate, and some few even thought that the legal fiction of the Principate should be totally replaced with monarchy. Soon cracks began to grow, as the son's began to be surrounded by opposing camps, and their influence began to tear them apart. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2015/08/GettyImages-168966911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="800" height="187" src="https://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2015/08/GettyImages-168966911.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>When in Rome, do as the Romans due: stab possible tyrants on the floor of the Senate</i></td></tr>
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By 59 AD, the split had become irreversible, and Civil War soon broke out again. But this time, there was no strong ruler to unify the widespread lands, and soon the Roman Empire began to fracture: Gaul and Hispania became the home of one of Gaius' sons; Africa, Syria and Egypt the other, while Italy, Illyria, and Greece became home to a new Roman Republic. The fighting between these three nations and their ill-defined borders would continue for decades, but never again would the whole old Roman Empire of Augustus be reformed. The empire he established, with it's complex legal and political machinations to maintain the illusion of the Republic that Augustus had created, collapsed when the ambitions and follies of men became too much. By 100 AD, the Roman Empire was gone, replaced by many smaller, bickering states that once were unified but had drifted apart.</div>
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But what do you think? What would have had happened had Augustus' chosen successor succeeded him? If you have a comment or a suggestion, leave a comment below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com or look for me on Twitter, @tbguy1992.</div>
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Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-19981894151865192372017-06-01T12:03:00.000-05:002019-07-14T00:54:59.999-05:00Alternate History Scenario #28: What if Hitler Doesn't Declare War on America?I'm really sorry for the long delay since I last posted. Life issues have gotten in the way and I really haven't been in the best mindset to work on these things. But, I'm here now, so let's get back to it!<br />
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Today's idea comes from someone on Twitter, who asked what if Hitler hadn't declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor, and how the war would go: would the US focus only on Japan? And would the Soviet's still win in the East?<br />
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The answer to both questions is, undoubtedly, yes. This is a fairly popular topic on Alternate history websites, and discussed to death before, but here's my two cents anyway.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://cdn3.volusion.com/aujxd.ayqsr/v/vspfiles/photos/18402500-4.jpg?1417450529" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="798" height="320" src="https://cdn3.volusion.com/aujxd.ayqsr/v/vspfiles/photos/18402500-4.jpg?1417450529" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And because I'm Canadian and we don't use penny's anymore, it's really zero cents since we would round down.</i></td></tr>
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Franklin Roosevelt basically only had the political capital to go to war with Japan in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had attacked America, and to many people, the fighting in Europe was still not their concern. When Hitler brashly declared war on the US a few days after Pearl Harbor, only then was America and Britain really able to coordinate to go on the offensive against both Nazism and Japanese imperialism.<br />
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So, if Hitler doesn't attack, and despite Roosevelt's concerns that Hitler may be the bigger long term threat to America, he will have to content himself with supplying Lend-Lease to the British and Soviet's until either he can find a way to bring America with him to take on Hitler, or Germany does something stupid, like, say, sink an American ship and kill American citizens. But in this scenario, that never happens, so the US basically has to just sit by and hope the British and Soviet's can fight Nazi Germany itself (and which I will get to in a moment)<br />
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However, unlike many suggestions that with the full might of America focused on Japan, that Japan would be defeated sooner, say in 1944, I disagree. I think the Pacific Campaign as we know it might be the basis for this alternate timeline as well. You have to remember that the majority of the fighting was with naval and air forces, and only a few major landing operations. It still takes time to build ships, train air crews, and eventually go on the offensive. While the American's won't be sending B-17 Flying Fortress's to Europe, it's not like they would be perfectly suited for the fighting in the Pacific, as they don't have the long range that the B-29 Superfortress had (and which only started to be built in 1942). Even then, it took until the Battle of Saipan in 1944 before even the B-29s were in range of the majority of Japanese cities. Just because the US would have more manpower, and wouldn't be focusing on Europe or North Africa, you can only send so many more Marine's and battleships to the Pacific: You still need a fleet in the Atlantic, just in case the Germans did do something. And maybe there are a few more landing craft, a few more divisions landing on beaches or squadrons of Mustangs and bombers over the skies, but it wouldn't be enough to shorten the war by a year or more. Maybe there would be a difference of a few months here and there, but in general, it wouldn't majorly change the war as we know it from OTL. By August 1945, the Japanese would be pretty much only defending their home islands and the little bits of Empire that the American's haven't yet liberated.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2011/09/world-war-ii-the-pacific-islands/w40_50223071/main_900.jpg?1420519287" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="800" height="243" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2011/09/world-war-ii-the-pacific-islands/w40_50223071/main_900.jpg?1420519287" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Liberated with excessive firepower and a belief that America is always right.</i></td></tr>
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That leads me to another point: the Manhattan Project. What would it look like in this TL? My guess: more or less the same. Just because the US is not involved in fighting the Nazi's, which the British and Americans were sure where racing for an atomic bomb, doesn't meant that the US would just ignore this potentially powerful weapon. My guess is that the Americans take over the project (with help from British, Canadian and other scientists), and would complete a weapon in time to drop on Japan as in OTL.<br />
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Why Japan? Because the Americans are in charge, and Operation Downfall, the proposed invasion of Japan, would still be a horrifying proposition to undertake. And in this TL, only the Americans would be in Operation Downfall, as the British are still dealing with the Nazi's. So, in order to prevent the upwards estimates of a million American casualties, President Truman (I'm sure that Roosevelt would still pass away in early 1945) would authorize using nuclear weapons. Plus, it would serve multiple purposes: make the Soviet's think twice about going to war with the west, and if the Nazi's are still around, convince them to give up before American joined and dropped an Atomic bomb on Germany. And, like in OTL, it would convince the Emperor of Japan to surrender and end the Pacific War.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--k24qq0xq--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/1813aqov5wc2jjpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="320" src="https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--k24qq0xq--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/1813aqov5wc2jjpg.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Just a few mushroom clouds to get a point across.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Now, for what happened in Europe? From 1942 onward, it would be a story of the Nazi's wearing themselves out fighting the Soviet's (Stalingrad and Kursk are still in the future here). During this time, Strategic bombing and fighting in North Africa is basically all the British can do. They do not have the manpower to even begin contemplating an invasion of Europe, so the war in Europe is stretched out a bit longer. But by 1943, the Nazi's will be in brutal, ignominious retreat in the East, fighting for every foot of ground as the Soviet industrial and manpower advantage comes to bear. By 1943, the British and Commonwealth powers will have driven the Axis out of Africa, and then proceeded to the invasion of Sicily and then Italy itself (which was Churchill's brainchild, being the Mediterranean strategist he was). When the Germans finally prevent the British from reaching Rome, in 1944, the British would then land in Greece or Yugoslavia, part of Churchill's plan to attack the "soft underbelly of Europe," and without the US to basically demand a Normandy landing, the attack would go on. Maybe in 1945, the British would finally land in northern Europe: maybe Normandy, but I'd be more confident in Norway. Strategic bombing, which never lived up to the promises of it's biggest supporters, really wouldn't have changed much in my opinion: morale never broke, industrial production never really slowed down. Just civilians killed, cities leveled, and hardening hatred of the enemies of the Third Reich for causing all this damage (though some unspoken questions of why the Nazi's couldn't stop it).<br />
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But by this point it wouldn't matter, because the Soviet Juggernaut would be steamrolling west, smashing all the Nazi armies in the way. Berlin would be captured by mid 1945 as in OTL, and Hitler and the leadership would retreat to the west of Germany, then maybe into France (as there would be no second front). Stalin would stop at nothing to end Hitler and the Nazi's once and for all, and "liberate" all of Europe. The dropping of the Atomic bomb doesn't convince the Nazi's to give up, so the Russians begin pushing east over the Rhine and into France itself.<br />
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At this point, the American's may finally enter the war, but with most of their troops still in the Pacific, it's an empty gesture more than anything. By the time that the first B-17s or B-29s could get to Europe in late 1945, Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris would all have the Hammer and Sickle flying over them. By the beginning of 1946, Russian troops would have reached the Pyrenees, and here is where things may get complicated: would Franco allow the Nazi's to flee to Spain, or would he prevent them from dragging him into war with the Russians? My guess is that Hitler would try to flee to South America, but be apprehended before he could. The war would be over, Hitler and the Nazi leaders executed after a trial in Moscow, and all of Europe (minus Spain, Sweden, Greece, half of Italy and Norway) would all be Communist puppet states.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kVdv30PqF9Q/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kVdv30PqF9Q/hqdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVdv30PqF9Q" target="_blank">Die Waffen Legt An!</a></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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What happens after this? Well, America would be the strongest nation in the world, but with few friends. China, in this TL, would have kicked out Mao with help from the US, and the majority of the Pacific would be capitalist. But Britain would be basically under siege with the Soviet's just a few miles away across the Channel, and resentful that the US never really helped fight the Nazi's except for some boats of equipment. The Soviet's would use the diversionary tactics of Churchill, and the lack of support from America, to make Communism look better to the people of Europe, Asia and Africa, undermining the belief that democracy and capitalism was the way to go.<br />
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The Cold War of this Timeline would be between the wounded Soviet Union, the Nuclear Armed and relatively unscathed and somewhat isolationist America, and a Britain that, unlike OTL, would have to cling to the Royal Navy and a strong military to protect itself instead of letting the US protect them, turning it, basically, into Oceania from 1984.<br />
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But what do you think? What if Hitler had never declared war on the US? If you have a comment or a suggestion, either email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com or look for me on Twitter, @tbguy1992.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-5029246973272001792017-03-24T15:51:00.002-05:002017-03-24T15:53:36.870-05:00Multiversal News: Paul Ryan Retreats to Supervillain Hideout, Vows “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me!”WASHINGTON: In the face of the withdrawal of the signature Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare," House Speaker Paul Ryan, growling as he climbed into the spherical pod that emerged from the wall behind the Speaker’s podium, turned back to the Democrats, moderate Republicans, and others that refused to vote in favor of the American Health Care Act celebrating on the house floor.<br />
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“I’ll be back! You will see! And with a better, more conservative bill!” he shouted to the assembled crowd, before locking himself into the capsule, pushing the ignition button, and launching himself out of the House Chamber and through the roof of the Capitol Building.<br />
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NORAD confirms that a small object is currently in orbit, and seems to be making a course to a secret GOP space station outside of Earth’s atmosphere. It’s guessed that this is where the Speaker will recover from the humiliating defeat and plot his next move. <br />
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“Tax reform, yes,” Ryan was reported to have said moments after arriving. “I will make the best, most extensive effort on overhauling the tax code in history!” The Speaker was then reported to have spent ten minutes practicing his evil laugh as the GOP slave robots compiled a new bill to reduce taxes on the rich to -9% of their income.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-19910544864148134182017-03-21T09:47:00.000-05:002017-03-21T09:47:43.686-05:00Multiversal News: Trump Reveals Wiretap Source: Strange Otherworld Mirror Into Another Universe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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MAR-A-LAGO - President Donald J. Trump today revealed the basis for his otherwise unsubstantiated tweets and comments that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the US election: a large, strange-looking golden mirror that lets the viewer see into another timeline. It was a mysterious object that Trump had purchased at a flea market in Morocco in 1984, and kept secret until now.<br /><br />“The Obama of that alternate universe was a terrifying, brutal, repressive dictator,” Trump explained, waving his hand at the mirror. “It’s creepy, really creepy to look at. I get nightmares whenever I look at it. It’s all scary!”<br /><br />Trump further went on to explain that in the timeline, Obama had overthrown cyborg President Ronald Reagan in 2004, and despite his promises of increasing rations and ending the Forever War with the Zombie Kingdom of Europe, instead turned into a merciless tyrant, implanting listening devices into every room of every home in the American Empire, which he used to oversee all the thoughts of every citizen.<br /><br />“Then these people, bad people, from the Environmental Protection Agency, the most feared secret police of this terrifying America, would come and take those that so much muttered a bad thing about President for Life Obama,” Trump went on. “It was horrifying to see the brutal prison camps set up in Occupied Wyoming.<br /><br />“It’s terrifying, really, to look at. It’s a warning to us today, and I will listen to it!”<br /><br />While Trump has been told time and again by wizards and occultists that investigated the mirror that it’s not representative of the real world, and, if anything, Trump’s three decade long fascination with the object may have started to warp his mind into blending the real world and the terrifying totalitarian state that the mirror glimpses into. But despite attempts by exorcists and priests with holy water to help the President, the images remain implanted on his mind.<br /><br />“He’s totally a Kenyan that subverted the great American Nation and is trying to destroy us all!” Trump garbled as he stared into the mirror. “Gotta go and save America!”<br /><br />At press time, Trump has been talking with advisor Steve Bannon on how to liberate the millions of people living in the areas of Texas that had been occupied by the insidious Mexican-Aztec Death State.<br />Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-51743318318063477632017-03-20T16:37:00.001-05:002017-03-20T16:37:27.154-05:00Multiversal News: Republican strategist admits: GOP is an apocalypse cult<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmSkyEJh9MHjfSeXUeS4ee0a32PNAg78SjtbYp-3SOcS5RsbCmr5LFO8MxHdczZbmCgxZvktxCwetXWuvBP6C1UrHZhdYHFpGijdv207kXyRoA4fox2vQugF2angU-GuE4sMekRhI277m1/s1600/Republicanlogo.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmSkyEJh9MHjfSeXUeS4ee0a32PNAg78SjtbYp-3SOcS5RsbCmr5LFO8MxHdczZbmCgxZvktxCwetXWuvBP6C1UrHZhdYHFpGijdv207kXyRoA4fox2vQugF2angU-GuE4sMekRhI277m1/s320/Republicanlogo.svg.png" width="320" /></a><br />
WASHINGTON - Today, senior Republican strategist and former Congressman Bill Harkins of West Virginia admitted that, for decades, his party has been a cult hell-bent on seeing the end of the world, in an exclusive interview with reporters.<br /><br />“Every action that my party has done since the Cold War has, in fact, been to see the end-times,” Harkins said, while lighting many candles around his desk. “I’m personally surprised that no one had figured this out before I told you.”<br /><br />Since the 1950s, Harkins went on to explain, the GOP believed the end of the world was around the corner, and everyone on Earth should embrace the final days.<br /><br />“But unlike those crackpots that just assumed it would end on a given day, many Republicans thought, ‘Why don’t we make sure it happens?’” Harkins said as he took off his tie and replaced it with a black hood.<br /><br />When asked why, Harkins replied: “We all seek the eternal nothingness of death and blackness. And not having to listen to Bernie Sanders anymore.”<br /><br />Every law, Executive Order and proposal by a Republican President and Congress since this revelation has been focused on enacting this wide ranging goal.<br /><br />“When Eisenhower first received the message and told the GOP in a secret meeting in the hollowed out room behind Lincoln’s head at Mount Rushmore in 1957, we were all certain that it would be a nuclear war with the USSR that would end us all,” Harkins said. “But the fact that JFK was in office when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened meant that the world wouldn’t end in 1962, unfortunately.” <br /><br />Republican plans to end the world in 1983 with a Soviet over-reaction to “Able Archer 83”, a NATO simulation of a first strike on Russia once again failed, though came close due to a fluke in the Russian satellite system, but it was recognized as a glitch in time.<br /><br />While Reagan, who Harkins said preferred to be called “The Chosen Warrior,” by other members of the Cult, would sign the first agreements with the USSR to reduce nuclear weapons, Republicans knew the cuts wouldn’t be enough to still allow them to destroy the world ten times over.<br /><br />But in the 1970s, following the divine wisdom of an evil god that the Republicans call “The Free Hand,” they began to branch out.<br /><br />“If it wasn’t going to be a nuclear war, then it was going to be a social, environmental or economic collapse of the world,” Harkins said, as he prepared to sacrifice a virgin. “Nixon got close, with the whole Watergate thing, but he chickened out at the last moment. He was soon after banished, and consigned to living in hell: California.” <br /><br />Many GOP actions since then, such as deregulating the economy, allowing guns to be sold without background checks, invading Iraq in 1991 and 2003, ignoring all the evidence on climate change and science to keep drilling oil, disenfranchising minority voters, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the 2008 Great Recession, and the time that George W. Bush nearly choked on a pretzel was all designed to bring about the world.<br /><br />“Unfortunately the big red button wasn’t close enough for President Bush to hit while he was flailing around choking,” said Harkins, who is also known as“The Dark One” in the cult. “And Plan B was foiled when the Secret Service saved him. We were all certain Dick Cheney would have accomplished the goal of world wide Armageddon with efficiency and all speed.”<br /><br />After the election of Obama, Harkins admits, the cult was at its lowest ebb. “All the ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’, we were certain, as well as his push for renewable energy, restricting gun ownership, and this thing called ‘compromise’ would destroy the Republican Party, and end our goals to end the world.” <br /><br />But when Obamacare was announced, the GOP felt rejuvenated.<br /><br />“We had a goal: prevent healthcare for all Americans, so that when the genetically altered plague does hit, we would all die anyway.”<br /><br />The election of Donald Trump as President, and all the fabrications of Russia hacking the election, Trump’s outlandish statements, selecting people unqualified for cabinet posts, and the rigging of the election to prevent Hillary from winning, was all part of the Cult’s plan to bring upon the end of world as mentioned in their unholy, cursed book that will drive normal men mad.<br /><br />“Very soon, the world will end in fire and brimstone,” Harkins said, while other cult members began to chant a mysterious, dark ritual in a language that no human was ever meant to speak. “And there will be no more taxes, no more socialist’s, no more anything!”<br /><br />Harkins ended the interview to prepare the Kool-Aid for the cult members as they prepared to summon a planet devouring beast from the deepest reaches of space.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-56178304462030932572017-03-17T21:28:00.000-05:002017-03-17T21:28:10.514-05:00Flag Friday: The Many Unofficial and Proposed Flags of CanadaI'm not always about Alternate History, as many should know by know. Real historical things, places and events can be just as interesting as timelines we make up, and often is a great leaping off point for AltHistorians. Often, proposals and "unofficial" things can be made official, and tell a brand new story.<br />
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Case in point: Canadian flags. Before the Maple Leaf flag was declared official, Canada used a series of unofficial flags, some more unofficial than others, and almost all of them were modified Red Ensigns, to proudly proclaim that Canada was still a loyal member of the British Empire.</div>
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That said, here are a few of the unofficial designs for flags that were flown (or almost suggested) at one time or another.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9wuHkFaeuKku5myl8k-1m-ec3q3U9oayKjv2TFdpgq2O1DwaU0sFDf-SpSBBydNoMjBoHLCrm4Oza6-t96KpjVbcZtdKcdUSz8gLFtDuFeaC_RJQKKguD8r-ZkDWCsNgO2efR04JB-bN2/s1600/Canadian_Red_Ensign_1868-1921.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9wuHkFaeuKku5myl8k-1m-ec3q3U9oayKjv2TFdpgq2O1DwaU0sFDf-SpSBBydNoMjBoHLCrm4Oza6-t96KpjVbcZtdKcdUSz8gLFtDuFeaC_RJQKKguD8r-ZkDWCsNgO2efR04JB-bN2/s320/Canadian_Red_Ensign_1868-1921.svg.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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This was the first official unofficial flag was simply the British Red Ensign (used by the British Merchant Marine) "defaced" with a shield composed of the Coat of Arms of the four original provinces. From top left clockwise: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.<br />
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But as the years went on and more provinces joined Confederation, the number of spots on the shield went up, starting with Manitoba in 1870, complete with the uber-Canadian maple leaf wreath and very British crown on top...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJfqv_ltID1kN9m-3tnK4InwHUdlnitMrombKyXJht8v3MyT28mhVQv16801Y-5AajN9x0zG5byx1kEu2lmJahm-Tijy37V8cRsQgAfsUlgBVKZpfLu-N2zYSsYchuyr1F0swoBPAxK_GA/s1600/Canadian_Red_Ensign_1870.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJfqv_ltID1kN9m-3tnK4InwHUdlnitMrombKyXJht8v3MyT28mhVQv16801Y-5AajN9x0zG5byx1kEu2lmJahm-Tijy37V8cRsQgAfsUlgBVKZpfLu-N2zYSsYchuyr1F0swoBPAxK_GA/s320/Canadian_Red_Ensign_1870.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span id="goog_79339261"></span><span id="goog_79339262"></span><br />
...to the addition of a white circle background that nearly took up the entire flag in the 1880s after BC and PEI joined... (this design was dated to 1891 when BC adopted its current coat of arms)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih5PyGLhOCoozA0sZd2mKHMr_wiTpHUcDJ4L89PPcqNstkVC39sTuTPJCN-Uk0cBi_FeWXytEA_CISXwOuqbHYNAK20dvWq3SV4O519jZDoJ6KyfEWJE2zUmb6gElUBa8rqVKZKrIaZnYH/s1600/800px-Canadian_Red_Ensign_1896.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih5PyGLhOCoozA0sZd2mKHMr_wiTpHUcDJ4L89PPcqNstkVC39sTuTPJCN-Uk0cBi_FeWXytEA_CISXwOuqbHYNAK20dvWq3SV4O519jZDoJ6KyfEWJE2zUmb6gElUBa8rqVKZKrIaZnYH/s320/800px-Canadian_Red_Ensign_1896.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />...until 1905, when Alberta and Saskatchewan entered, and got rid of the white disk, the maple leaf wreath and the crown. And, frankly, it's a mess. Imagine getting school aged kids to draw <i>this </i>in a bought of patriotic furvor!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwUW05t_YJlZZ4T7ZLAx6h0yxo7iJwf8Qj-ZEidExXjUm_U70jIiXrDMepTL65cfXhB6N3DquDhi4-LhxcGLLjIOU6ITKqhCldMIisWYFapKG0j4v7JLLuakv6otdnq8VxyGgREP5DNBsh/s1600/800px-Canadian_Red_Ensign_1907.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwUW05t_YJlZZ4T7ZLAx6h0yxo7iJwf8Qj-ZEidExXjUm_U70jIiXrDMepTL65cfXhB6N3DquDhi4-LhxcGLLjIOU6ITKqhCldMIisWYFapKG0j4v7JLLuakv6otdnq8VxyGgREP5DNBsh/s320/800px-Canadian_Red_Ensign_1907.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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But finally, in 1921, the Canadian government, unofficially, adopted this version. This version pays homage to the four "founding" nations of Canada: England, Scotland, France and Ireland. And, being the time frame, it also left out the First Nations people. That would never fly today, but this is the version that flew the longest, from 1921 to 1965, with a slight change in the 50s to make the maple leafs at the bottom red instead of green.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKBnvSt5A0CCT8k1LukBFr1kXIhFy64-_xploesdLQlTvwaeYLB5VdiCe5pVfgSWyBigY8IoDGcMix0rMTWXUV-3KkgLAymI_0TsrV-yW4g-kRvb6-xcSsmz-xAt2Kjz-oictiP82hzU2W/s1600/Canadian_Red_Ensign_1921-1957.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKBnvSt5A0CCT8k1LukBFr1kXIhFy64-_xploesdLQlTvwaeYLB5VdiCe5pVfgSWyBigY8IoDGcMix0rMTWXUV-3KkgLAymI_0TsrV-yW4g-kRvb6-xcSsmz-xAt2Kjz-oictiP82hzU2W/s320/Canadian_Red_Ensign_1921-1957.svg.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Personally, I have a soft spot for the Red Ensign, and not just because maybe secretly I wish to see the British Empire rise and rule the world again. But, rather, I see it from a historical point of view: this flag, variations notwithstanding, the one that Canadian soldiers fought World War One and Two under. There are issues with it, namely in that it prioritizes four European nations (and, in fact, with the Union Jack it represents England, Scotland and Ireland twice) as the "founders" of Canada. A modern version would have to find something else. My personal vote would have been a Red Ensign with a maple leaf of some kind, like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHEixNqJx5l4R90wZ9mBnSfvd4hwv0uRbXswH4DUMwxzOrjQfD6dNx-WNL7GBFxIByfEKP5JCFNSPogY98968Y4omR8ARfiEOQ38fIkP5q0HqfN9qaHbjRmXHXIz5xZvV6mlXpBaIIkIq8/s1600/1946_Canadian_flag_proposal.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHEixNqJx5l4R90wZ9mBnSfvd4hwv0uRbXswH4DUMwxzOrjQfD6dNx-WNL7GBFxIByfEKP5JCFNSPogY98968Y4omR8ARfiEOQ38fIkP5q0HqfN9qaHbjRmXHXIz5xZvV6mlXpBaIIkIq8/s320/1946_Canadian_flag_proposal.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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And finally, two other proposals:<br />
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The "Pearson Pennant" proposed by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1964 to encapsulate the motto "From Sea to Sea" (and worthy of any alternate Canadian flag, I say)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_LuPW-9GUdbqSccP_q5shxw-ATXezYsHlVwXlafLcI9YP2V8kCvnHOl1QFETvuaMDQkYVexS7uYZGFKDKprkU3IiRf0T71YlKADiRCjIIfWpYayZIUbJ-Y0_A7tDN33h1hgLd21xmxN1g/s1600/Canada_Pearson_Pennant_1964.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_LuPW-9GUdbqSccP_q5shxw-ATXezYsHlVwXlafLcI9YP2V8kCvnHOl1QFETvuaMDQkYVexS7uYZGFKDKprkU3IiRf0T71YlKADiRCjIIfWpYayZIUbJ-Y0_A7tDN33h1hgLd21xmxN1g/s320/Canada_Pearson_Pennant_1964.svg.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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And the "Unity Flag" first made in 1995 during the second Quebec Referendum, with the Blue representing the proportion of Quebecers in Canada. Though, I honestly would feel a bit insulted if all I got was a couple narrow blue bars but, hey, Quebec remained in Canada then (by a squeaker), so maybe it worked.<br />
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I plan to do Flag Friday's more often, and maybe with some flags designed for Alternate History scenarios. So if you have a flag you want to suggest, message me on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992</a>) or email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com.</div>
Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-54124045835773991942017-03-16T13:17:00.000-05:002017-03-16T13:20:31.904-05:00Multiversal News: Liberal Backbenchers Vote Against PM, Cabinet to Turn Canada into a Hivemind<b>Liberal Backbenchers vote against PM, Cabinet to turn Canada into a Hivemind</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><i>Members of the Liberal Party moments before they voted in<br />favor to make all Canadians part of a collective Hivemind.</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">OTTAWA - In a surprising show of independence, Liberal backbench MPs voted in favor of a private member’s bill to turn all Canadians into a gigantic hivemind, despite the opposition from Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet. Bill S-190, proposed by New Democrat NDP Joshua Halford, MP for BC’s North Okanagan—East Kootenay riding, would mandate that all Canadian citizens would receive microchips implanted into their brains to allow all Canadians instant communication with each other, computational knowledge to solve the nation’s issues, as well as access to everyone else’s memories, knowledge, and figuring out where the hell we left the keys for the van.<br /><br />“Since this was an open vote, many Liberal backbenchers believed that S-190 would benefit all Canadians,” Mary Lemonut, Liberal MP for Toronto-Yorkdale, said. “While the PM made some convincing arguments, I think it would be really cool if all Canadians would think and speak as one.” As she spoke, other members of the Liberal Party also said the exact same words in a creepy monotone and with unblinking eyes to other reporters.<br /><br />When the votes came down, 101 Liberal MPs voted in favor of the bill, as well as all 44 NDP members. Conservatives were split, with most of those that voted in favor of the bill running for the leadership of the party. Analysts believed this was in order for some of the 14 candidates to be able to put their vision of the future of the Conservative Party to as many people as possible. As of press time, however, all Canadians have agreed to erase any existence Kellie Leitch from the hivemind after they found out that she was basically trying to be a Canadian Donald Trump.<br /><br />“This bill will solve all known problems currently facing all 36 million Canadians,” Swanson said, moments before being the first to step into the doctor’s office to receive an implant into the glorious new cyber-future of Canada. “Racism, misogyny, poverty, lack of education, bilingualism, and deciding if Kevin O’Leary really should be the leader of the Conservative Party are just some of the issues we can solve by being all unified in thought, mind, and spirit.”<br /><br />“I do believe that this bill is unconstitutional,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said outside the House of Commons after the vote. “It interferes with the provincial right to determine what dystopian future our nation should take, as well as grave concerns over privacy and electronic security. But I remain committed to holding open votes in the Liberal caucus, and will abide by the results.” He was then lead away to prepare for the procedure, which, the PM was assured, would maintain his impeccable hairdo.<br /><br />“This is all a trick! This will destroy all human autonomy, and turn all Canadians into mindless drones to an unknown overlord! And add billions more to the deficit! We are all doomed!” Conservative MP Tony Clement for Parry Sound–Muskoka screamed at reporters as he was being dragged away by impossibly strong, nearly robotic, glassy-eyed RCMP officer’s already implanted into the hivemind. Compliance agents are currently tracking down former Prime Minister Stephen Harper with the aid of of all 1,392,609 people in Calgary, who is currently on the run but will be assimilated in 5.4 hours.<br /><br />Quebec has already said they will implement their own, French only hivemind program separate from the federal program. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is resisting the inevitable and refuses to submit until a healthcare deal with his province has been reached with the Federal Government. </span>Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-47837023140838528322017-03-14T09:33:00.000-05:002017-03-14T09:36:17.505-05:00Multiversal News: America left reeling after Trump doesn’t tweet for twenty hours<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>America left reeling after Trump doesn’t tweet for twenty hours</b><br />
WASHINGTON: Politicians, stock markets, and people around the nation were in a directionless quandary after President Donald J. Trump didn’t tweet for up to twenty hours. The usually punctual early morning tirade against something that was revealed on Breitbart or by FOX News, as well as tweets during high level meetings and briefings, have been a daily ritual followed by everyone since Trump announced his candidacy. But today’s lack of a tweet has thrown the US into chaos.<br />
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The last Tweet posted by Trump was yet another attack on Obamacare at about 1 PM yesterday, but then his account went mysteriously silent.<br />
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“I don’t know what to do,” Trump supporter Nate Berdin, 54, from Montgomery, Alabama said, fumbling with his phone. “Without the President’s daily Twitter barrage, I don’t know what group I should be angry at: immigrants, Muslims, Muslim immigrants.” He went on to say that because of that, he ended up being polite and nice to everyone he met.<br />
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“It’s very surreal,” Nate said, after smiling and giving a polite nod at an African-American man and his Latino wife. <br />
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On the other end of the political spectrum, Democratic and liberal activists were also left in utter disarray when the President’s Twitter account didn’t add anything new in half a day.<br />
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“No executive order to try to get shot down, no unsubstantiated claims to disprove. Not even a famous celebrity to rally around as they face the wrath of a Twitter tweet storm,” said San Francisco resident Amanda O’Toole, 26, a self-declared liberal activist wearing a “Not My President” t-shirt. “While Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and every Republican member of Congress can, and still, make stupid, insulting, racist, discriminatory, and untruthful statements, it’s just not the same when it’s not Trump saying it."<br />
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Stock Markets around the world have been in wild swings today. When Trump’s twitter account revealed that he liked a picture of a kitten in the late morning, the NYSE went up, the NASDAQ plummeted, and the price of gold swung back and forth for fifteen minutes until it was discovered that the like had been removed.<br />
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But at 9:25 AM, after a long day without a tweet, activity on Trump’s account returned when he revealed he lost his phone.<br />
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Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-62881007611541046372017-03-14T00:01:00.000-05:002017-03-14T00:01:01.466-05:00Editorial: Some Onion-like Changes in Store, As you may have noticed, I've started to slow down in posting Alternate History scenarios, or, really, much of anything. Part of it is that I've already covered quite a few scenarios, mostly those that I already had some prior knowledge on without trying to do certain areas to death (World War 2, anyone?) So, while I'm still fascinated with Alternate History, those posts will be a lot slower in coming.<br />
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However, that doesn't mean I want to stop writing. In fact, on top of my job with a small town newspaper, and editing and publishing my big Fallout fanfic on <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12316099/1/Fallout-Assiniboia" target="_blank">Fanfiction.net</a>, I've been starting to do something new for a lark: fake news, in the style of <a href="http://www.theonion.com/" target="_blank">The Onion</a> and <a href="https://www.thebeaverton.com/" target="_blank">The Beaverton</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I'd like to see Trump dispute this.</i></td></tr>
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So you may be asking yourself: Why? And my answer: Why not?<br />
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Frankly, reading the news is almost a strange combination of confusion, incredulity, depression and the deepest, blackest humour that you can't figure out if you want to laugh or cry. Sometimes, even the most dystopic and downbeat Alternate History or fictional scenario feels better than what is going on in the world.<br />
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So, I asked myself, why not take the news, and make it even more absurd?<br />
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And that is what I'm going to do with a new thing called "Multiversal News." It may not be totally original, or even that funny, but I'm going to run with it for no other reason than I want to. I will be delving into politics here, but I'm not doing it for a political purpose. I'm just trying to find the silly, the crazy, and the stupid in real news, and make them even crazier here.<br />
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So I hope you enjoy this new little change. The first post will be up in a couple of days! And if you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas, please message me on twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992</a>) or through email, tbguy1992@gmail.com<br />
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<br />Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-66392628440072144152017-03-06T14:09:00.003-06:002017-03-06T14:10:59.070-06:00Map Monday: Acts of UnionSo, let's try something new.<br />
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<a href="http://alternatehistoryweeklyupdate.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">Alternate History Weekly Update</a>, a former blog run by Matt "Mitro" Mitrovich, used to run a couple weekly segments called "Map Monday" and "Flag Friday," as does other Alternate History groups and blogs online. That said, I feel like joining in, and promoting timelines from the Alternate History world.</div>
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So my first one is from the <a href="http://althistory.wikia.com/" target="_blank">Alternate History Wikia</a>, "<a href="http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Acts_of_Union" target="_blank">Acts of Union</a>" by user "<a href="http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/User:Feudy_McPlagueface">Feudy McPlagueface</a>."</div>
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After a crisis in Venezuela turns into a shooting match between the British and American fleets in 1902, with the US Navy emerging victorious, the British Empire begins to reform, turning into a more de-centralized, federal state. By the current day, the world is divided into major factions: The Western Defense Pact (the US, Brazil, and Mexico); the European Commonwealth, composed of the the United Commonwealth (the British Empire) and the French Union; the Moscow Pact with the USSR, Great Bulgaria, People's Republic of China and Siam; the Great East Asian Union with the Japanese Empire, Indonesia and Vietnam.<br />
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The map is very interesting, though I would need to go over the timeline a few times more myself before I can determine if it's plausible or not. Having so many "space filling empires" slightly different shades of colours does make it seem rather suspect, but it's interesting and worth a look!<br />
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If you have a map, flag or timeline would you would like me to showcase, leave a comment, send a message to my Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992)</a> or to my email (tbguy1992@gmail.com) and I'll take a look!</div>
Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-36510567086943162872017-02-17T11:18:00.001-06:002017-02-17T11:18:46.612-06:00Editorial: Social Changes in Alternate HistorySorry for the delay in posting new topics. Been busy with life, work and other projects.<br />
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But this has been a question that I've been thinking a lot about lately, especially in regards to what is going on around the world right now: How do our beliefs and ideals change over time? And how much can a small group of people change an entire nation's ideology?<br />
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I'm not much of a social historian. I like my wars and battles and big momentous events, and I do believe, somewhat, in the "Great Man" theory of history, though not for every single event. However, I do recognize that underlaying social currents support the above, but I don't believe that changes in society and culture always directly lead to historical developments as some social historians like to claim.<br />
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In fact, I think major social changes can happen very quickly, and often with just a minor push in a certain direction, and often more willing to fall back to traditional forms, if modified, than to embrace new, foreign concepts.<br />
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The example I keep thinking about is Nazi Germany. The Germany of 1933 was in chaos, despite having one of the most democratic constitutions in the world. For decades, the belief was that more democracy is better, right? That's what the framers of the Weimar Republic must have been thinking when they wrote their constitution. With enough time to retrain the Monarchists, the Militarists, the Communists and the Nationalists to the benefits of a peaceful, inclusive government, then Germany would become a beacon of democracy. The problem, of course, was that it was running against hundreds of years of German history. But with time, of course...<br />
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But then Hitler and the Nazi's came, pushing very early on for a government lead by a strong leader (Hitler, of course, was sure it was going to be him) and to do away with the silly democracy. And enough Germans, using that silly democratic system, believed the Nazi's to vote them into power in 1933. Soon after, Hitler rendered the constitution moot, ruling as an absolute dictator, using a secret police, military expansion, propaganda and racism to strengthen his rule.<br />
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And millions of Germans went along with it, even though just a few years before they were willing to let the democratic experiment run it's course.<br />
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So what happened? To a degree, it was a retrenchment of old German and Prussian ideals: a strong military to defend the nation and bring glory, a strong, paternalistic leader to guide the people, suspicion of ideas of "liberty" and "democracy", and a belief that fate was with them. But it also had the more sinister anti-Semitism, violence, fear and blatant propaganda to go with it, and turned National Socialism into the sinister ideology that we hate today, the one that has devolved to the point where you would call someone you fundamentally hate and disagree with a "Nazi," wether they support that ideology or not.<br />
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But the thing is: had the Nazi's won World War Two, had Hitler conquered the world, he would have been right. Not because we are totally and completely wrong to the "true" nature of humanity, but because we would believe and accept it. It would have drilled into our heads in school, blared from our TV, radio, movies, and repeated, time and again, that Fascism, National Socialism, is the best thing in the world, the true ideology of humanity, and that Communism and Democracy were failed experiments at best, or worse: detrimental, vile and destructive ideologies out to destroy the world.<br />
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This is something to remember when looking at alternate history, and a pratfall that many (myself included) have fallen in: the winners write the history. They also can shift the social ideals through education and propaganda, they can make defeats into victories, or they can make victories in defeats. We today believe that democracy and capitalism is the best because it "won." We think it's natural because it's what the majority of the world believes. But at one point half the world thought that totalitarian dictatorships was the way to go, and centuries ago kings and emperors ruled the world. While racism is something that we still struggle with today, we recognize it as something we have to get rid of. In an alternate history, or even in the not-so-distant past, we actively encouraged it.<br />
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So when reading or writing an alternate history, remember that just because democracy, capitalism, free speech, free religion and others "won," that's not always the case. And in a few short years, it could be the other way entirely.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-91739086744097973962017-01-23T12:09:00.000-06:002017-01-23T12:09:38.322-06:00Fictional AltHistory #8: Kaiserreich, Part 2A <a href="http://althistoryinc.blogspot.ca/2016/07/fictional-althistory-7-kasierreich-part.html" target="_blank">few months ago</a> I talked about the <i>Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg </i>mod for <i>Darkest Hour</i>, the improved version of Paradox Interactive's <i>Hearts of Iron 2.</i> But soon after I wrote that, other things came up, new games to play, and a dozen other things that prevented me from revisiting this alternate history scenario.<br />
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But now that I finally figured out how to get the game to work on my computer again, let's take a look at a few other events in the <i>Kaiserreich </i>backstory that has a major Alternate History twist to it!<br />
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<b>POD: Yet Another French Revolution</b><br />
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When you start a game of Kaiserreich, you are presented with a surprise: two France's! No, there wasn't some weird multiverse crisis that somehow resulted in two nations that call themselves the same but are totally different and hate each other. Nope: a left wing revolution resulted in two nations that call themselves the same but are totally different and hate each other. It's always the commies.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Maybe McCarthy was onto something...</i></td></tr>
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In 1920, after a brief civil war between the establishment and a socialist-syndicalist alliance, the Commune of France was declared in Paris. The leaders of the old Third Republic that didn't join the Commune retreated to Algeria, claiming the French colonies as the true nation of France, and that they were a government in exile. That's something you are going to hear a lot of in this mod...<br />
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<b>Plausibility: 8/10. </b>In a very simple overgeneralization: since 1789, the French have a habit of overthrowing ineffectual, corrupt or defeated governments and setting up a new one. Since King Louis XVI lost his head in OTL, there has been five republics, two empires, two monarchies, and a communist commune, not to mention the puppet state set up by the Nazis.<br />
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So I can see the French tossing out the Third Republic and starting the Second Commune, or whatever it's called. And at the same time, I can see those that wouldn't agree with the new order hightailing out, even if that means sitting in Algiers fuming at all that you lost and vowing to someday comeback and restore the nation.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And maybe turn the Eiffel Tower into a huge middle finger pointed at Germany.</i></td></tr>
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But, this is the big question: can this syndicalist nation survive as long as it did? That is the bigger, iffier question to me. I'm personally surprised that Germany would allow a proto-communist, left leaning extremists to set up shop that soon become really resentful and angry at losing to Germany, again. But at the same time, the Germany of the post-Weltkreig is just sick and tired of fighting, and desires peace. So maybe the leadership of the new Commune, seeing what happened when the Germans intervened in the Russian Revolution, decided to play nice, at first, and Germany was willing to let them. The lore doesn't go into detail about early Commune-Germany relationships, but I'm sure it's not all sunshine and roses.<br />
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<b>POD: And... Britain Too?</b><br />
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In 1925, a coal strike in Britain quickly spiralled into violence, and when the army was sent in to restore order, the army instead revolted. A general strike shut down the nation, and in six weeks, the Royal Family, most of the Royal Navy, some of the Royal Air Force, loyalist military units and whoever did not like the idea of "equality for all" rabble-rousers redistributing their wealth all hightailed it to Canada and the other colonies, waiting for the moment to return. The Trades Union Congress then declared the Union of Britain, another socialist-syndicalists inspired by the French across the channel. The nation isolated itself from the world, content to build socialism in Britain with no one to interfere.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>So... alternate history Brexit then?</i></td></tr>
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<b>Plausibility: 5/10. </b>This is, to a degree, odd. The way the lore goes, the Dominions and Colonies of the Empire were mostly okay with the Peace of Honour (what ended the long, drawn out war between Germany and Britain after France fell), but the Home Isles took it really badly, and all it needed was a spark, similar to the miners strike of OTL that Winston Churchill proposed solving with machine guns.<br />
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The way the game made it sound, the Peace with Honour wasn't that bad. If anything, it basically restored the status quo, with a few minor changes, like some islands being transferred around. I could see maybe there being some issues with a populace that just fought and starved and struggled for seven years, with millions of casualties and nothing to show for it: not even Ireland was given it's independence in the treaty, so it would seem that Britain at least lost, and would have something to strive to regain in the future (basically like how the Nazi's rose to influence and power in Germany OTL). But without the anger and hate, I don't see it coming to pass.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Or whatever passes as anger over in the UK. Something something football.</i></td></tr>
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The Britain from 1921-25 would be directionless: all the sacrifice, all the fighting, and everything just went back to what it was, just with a lot of men dead. So a minor crisis that a somewhat indifferent government and upper class tried to crush away boiling over, but I don't know if it would be a socialist revolution, or even if it couldn't be suppressed or with some reforms to molify the masses. Maybe a socialism with some nationalism thrown in, but I don't see much of that in the lore of the game. So I'm on the fence of this one.<br />
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<b>POD: The Sun Never Sets on the German Empire</b><br />
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Germany managed to win a few colonies in the aftermath of the Weltkrieg. But they gained a lot more with the British Empire collapsed and went socialist. It wouldn't do to have these prime areas of real estate to just become independent, or, worse, becomes part of <i>another</i> empire. Nope: They had to be taken. The colony of Mittelafrika, composed of the old Belgian Congo and former German territories, along with British possessions like Kenya, Tanzania and others, is just one of these new colonies: southern China is the personal fiefdom of the Allgemeine Ostasiatische Gesellschaft, the German East Asian Company, while many other territories like the Suez Canal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and many other islands and cities are now all part of the great and glorious Kaiserreich.<br />
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<b>Plausibility: 1/10. </b>This is perhaps the least plausible part of the entire mod. According to the backstory, even after 1921 Germany was still fighting, sending troops to make sure that Russia's Civil War didn't turn into a Bolshevik victory. But then in 1925, four years later, suddenly Germany is able to basically occupy and bring areas from Africa to South East Asia to a third of China into puppet states and colonies and corporate fiefdoms with, as far as I can tell, little issue and bloodshed?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And a hint of domineering paternalism and subjugation for good effect</i></td></tr>
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The Germany they described in 1921 has just won a Pyrrhic Victory, and was on the verge of economic and social collapse after seven years of the British blockade, total war, and failed harvests. Apparently Admiral von Tripitz, as the new Chancellor, was able to turn it all around starting in 1924, occupy most of Africa and Britain's Asian possessions by 1925, and set up a Chinese empire with the permission of the teetering Qing Dynasty in 1926.<br />
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Yes, there would be a vacuum of power if the British Empire collapses, but my guess is that Germany wouldn't be able to simply march in, place their flag where the Union Jack was, and all would be good. I'd see revolutions, strikes, bloody uprisings, syndicalist/socialist/nationalist upheaval that, should the German Empire get involved in, would cause the already war weary people to rise up in their own revolt at sending even more soldiers to die in places far away from home.<br />
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Most of the map of Kaiserreich should be a lot of small states in Africa and Asia, former colonies suddenly cast adrift with no one but the strong local warlords to replace it. Maybe Germany, the Ottomans, even the Austrians and Japanese, would get a few possessions. But not as much as we see in game.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"And zis piece is mine, and zis one, and zis one..."</i></td></tr>
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<b>POD: Crouching Russia, Hidden Bolsheviks</b><br />
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Russia in Kaiserreich is, quite simply, a mess. The White's won the civil war with help from Germany, and Alexander Kerensky became President of an unstable, weak, divided, and much smaller Russian Republic, but he's the only person capable of holding everything together. Finland, Ukraine, the United Baltic Duchy, White Ruthenia, a union of Cossack territories, several central Asian countries and a couple Japanese puppet states had all been created from it's territory after the Weltkrieg. Political divisions, communists, and reactionaries besiege the nation from all sides, and it's a question of when, not if, it will all come to a head.<br />
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(Spoiler alert!) Within minutes of starting the game, Kerensky will be dead, allowing a Russian player to guide Russia to it's destiny: wether communist, national populist or something in between.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And time to bring back the armoured trains!</i></td></tr>
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<b>Plausibility: 4/10. </b>There are a few issues with this scenario, namely in the Civil War. According to the backstory, the White's of the Russian Civil War got together in 1919 and agreed to name Kerensky as their unified leader. But the White's of the Civil War are a diverse group, ranging from monarchists wanting to put the Czar back in power to democrats that want to forge a new destiny for Russia (and they, in turn, divided between democratic socialists and lassiez-faire liberals). Agreeing with Kerensky, who had already failed to hold the country together after the February Revolution before Lenin and his Bolsheviks overthrew him in the October Revolution does seem to be a a bit of a stretch. But the idea of a unified White movement isn't totally outlandish, I feel.<br />
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Then there is the German intervention. I think the problem with some of the backstory of the mod is that it's acknowledged that Germany had nearly fallen apart after the Weltkrieg, but then the game has Germany intervening around the world within a couple of years. It's seems highly unlikely that Germany would be in shape, or have the political or popular support to go east again. Supplies? Maybe. Volunteers? Alright. But a full fledged army sent in to the quagmire of Russia to prop up a "democratic" Russian regime? That feels like a bit too much, and should have resulted in riots and revolution back in Germany.<br />
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But what do you think? Do some good ol' French and English revolutions make sense? If you have a comment or a suggestion, either email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com or look for me on Twitter, @tbguy1992.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-30513889079272879622017-01-14T20:50:00.002-06:002017-01-14T20:50:50.322-06:00Alternate History Scenario #27: A Different Kind of American Slavery?The Alternate History Wiki is a great place to find alternate history ideas, and this one was because of an idea someone threw out in the chat: What if slavery was still used in the US, but not in the version that we know, but something more like the old Roman style of "debt" slavery.<br />
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And that got me thinking. And when that happens, I start making up an entire alternate history scenario.<br />
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This won't be a full fledged scenario, but something more theoretical than anything, how an alternate US may look if it didn't use chattel slavery as in OTL. I remember reading somewhere of the point when the race driven, life long slavery was made official, a court case in the 1600s in Virginia. However, I can't find the actual source, but I think I will use that as the main point of divergence. Say the Founding Fathers, in their pursuit of building a Roman style republic, decide to go all out?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Here Bessarius gives his master, George Washington, a glass of wine</i></td></tr>
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Slavery in this new America would be much different: theoretically, anyone could be a slave, but there would be a very particular system set into place. Certain crimes, say theft, fraud and the like, could result in the accused being sentenced to slavery for a certain period of time, say five years as an average based on the amount of money the accused took.<br />
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The larger percentage of slaves in this alternate world would be those in deep debt, with little prospect of being able to pay it off. The way I would see it, a wealthy person would agree to pay off said persons debt, with some interest, but in turn the debtor would become an "indentured servant" or slave to the wealthy party. However, there would be a lot of laws and protections in place over the years, preventing children from being enslaved, ensuring some basic rights to life, while temporarily removing other rights, like voting and such. I'd think that anyone that had been a slave in their life would be barred from serving in political office and other constraints, but that would never apply to their children unless they also had to apply for it. It would also be possible for these slaves to get out of their contract early, working at a side job if they wanted to (though it may depend on locality there). In general, this form of slavery would simply be working to pay off debt, and being given food and shelter to do so.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And at the same time collapse the market in shackles and chains.</i></td></tr>
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This would be a slavery based on contracts and laws instead of racism and "tradition." In fact, with this kind of slavery, almost all of American history could be rewritten. With a source of cheap labour without needing to import millions of men, women and children from Africa, plantations in the South would be as likely to form, just with contracted free labor more than permanent black slaves. This source of labour would be better motivated, with terms of service, and the chance of getting freedom sooner. As for the South itself, there wouldn't be millions of black slaves to be worried about, and with a rotating door of indentured servants, the plantations could keep going a lot longer than in OTL.<br />
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It would be when Industrialization happens that issues could come up: some factories could use only indentured servants, while others would have to rely on paid workers. This could cause tensions: either indentured servants are resentful of having to work for no money, or that paid workers would not get the wage they deserve due to the indentured workers. I could see more strife between workers, rather than the formation of unions to demand better wages, but eventually groups trying to bridge the gap between the two, the poor workers and the near serfs that compete with them.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Oh darn, did I just make socialism in the US again?</i></td></tr>
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Immigration would also be different. For some potential migrants, the thought of coming to the US, but then being put into slavery, would dissuade some, but for others, hired as indentured servants for a period of time by wealthy land and factory owners would be an opportunity to never pass up. Internally, the movement of people could be different. Those who become indentured servants could be moved away from their families and communities to work in mines or factories or farms in another state. When more people move west to open up the frontier, it would challenge the indentured slavery system with a lack of wealthy patrons to help those that fall behind on debt. If anything, the west could become more "wild" than it actually was, or a lot more empty for longer, or more likely, just larger plantations like in the south, growing wheat and raising cows instead of cotton.<br />
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But with possibly tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people serving as little more than free labor, the the US economy would not grow as large or as robust as it did in our timeline. Wages would be lower due to the competition, while the standard of living would be a lot smaller in return. The only people that would benefit from this would be the rich, those that own the factories and land to be farmed. Since they have nearly free labor for periods of time, and the ability, through pricing products and making loans with high interest, to make more debt slaves, the process would be a vicious cycle that would be hard to break.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I... uh... that is not what I meant...</i></td></tr>
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If the system works well, and those that have to use indentured servitude to pay off their debt to be able to re-enter society later with nothing to hold them back and even some cash on the side to restart their lives, then it would serve it's function well: providing temporary cheap labor, while also helping those that can't pay it. But if it breaks down, and becomes a way to oppress the lower classes, then it's less likely to be tolerated into the future, and could be the cause for civil unrest and possible revolution in the future.<br />
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But that's where I will leave it. But what do you think? What would an America with indentured servitude like I describe look like? If you have an idea, or a comment, feel free to follow or message me on Twitter (@tbguy1992) or my email tbguy1992@gmail.com.<br />
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Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-91044322426573490982017-01-09T21:35:00.001-06:002017-01-09T21:35:18.040-06:00Editorial: Parallelism and Alternate HistorySo I hope you all had a good holiday season. I've been pretty busy with family and work, and getting into playing Overwatch, which, like everything that I get into, is long after everyone else already gets into it.<br />
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But I digress. It has been fun! Even if I can't hit anything when I shoot.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>So, you know... pew pew dead. That's how I roll!</i></td></tr>
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Anyway, back to Alternate History and talking about it.</div>
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One thing that has come up a lot in my discussions with fellow Alternate Historians is the use of parallels to our history in AH, and to what degree we should use it. Some say that parallelism is sloppy writing and should be avoided, while other's say that it helps connect events in the minds of readers so should be used liberally. I've had people especially drag Harry Turtledove through the mud for his parallelism in his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Victory" target="_blank">Timeline 191</a> series, which I'll get to in a bit.</div>
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I'm somewhere in the middle, as some of the writing I've done on the Alternate History Wiki and on this blog are anything to consider. I think it's most important when doing AH that I write a good story that is understandable to people who have, at most, a small grasp on the history of the era. This is why the most popular topics of AH in English: World War Two and the American Civil War, because almost everyone in Canada, the US and the UK know about those two events. And, as we all know, the US is the centre of the world...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1100/1258322496_248822a92d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1100/1258322496_248822a92d.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And it's reasons like that that this map exists.</i></td></tr>
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<div>
Most people know some of the details, like D-Day happening on June 6, 1944, and the Americans joined the war when Japan surprise attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But in most cases, they don't understand why the war happened, the underlying causes, the more subtile events, or even the other nations involved (I blame the Cold War and rather nationalistic historical educational systems we still have for downgrading the role of other nations, especially the USSR).</div>
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<div>
So this is where the value of parallelism can come in handy. For those people that enjoy a good story, but don't have the full depth of knoweldge of a historical setting, using familiar dates can help to anchor the story into the time period, even if the causes and results of the Alternate History are vastly different.</div>
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It's also a reason why I'm not totally opposed to see big names in stories and timelines that started decades, if not centuries before they would have been born OTL. In fact, in my big <a href="http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/French_Trafalgar,_British_Waterloo_(Portal_Page)" target="_blank">French Trafalgar, British Waterloo</a> TL, I'm very guilty for doing this. Partially because I was still in high school and only just starting my AH career, and also because I simply suck with making up new names, as many readers of mine could point out. Though, to be honest, the biggest reason was because I always wanted a picture beside the name in articles like the "Presidents of the US" and "Prime Ministers of France." Kind of hard to do that when you just make up people. But, I made it fairly clear, namely through changing dates of birth and death, that there are still some butterflies: most have been hanged by up to ten years in either direction of their OTL birthdays.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://plusquotes.com/images/quotes-img/Happy_birthday-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://plusquotes.com/images/quotes-img/Happy_birthday-13.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Birthdays can get weird in parallel timelines.</i></td></tr>
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But there are the pratfalls of sticking to parallelism too closely. Timeline 191 is one of the more blatant examples: World War One starting the same day that it did OTL, with the same reason for the war (the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but by bomb instead of gunshot), and then the USA and CSA duking it out over three years of trench warfare. I've had people go on about how the South shouldn't have been able to withstand against the full might of the US, but I have my theories as to why the CSA could have lasted as long as they did (and something I will go into further detail later). It's even more blatant when a fascist CSA attacks the US on June 22, 1941 in Operation Blackbeard, which is basically a copy-replace of Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa that took place on the same day, and with major battles occurring on the same day ATL as major battles occurred OTL. Some of these do seem a bit forced and ridiculous, but I can understand why Turtledove did it, if just to ensure that for new readers to alternate history that they aren't thrown out of the loop. That said, he could have handled it better in my opinion, and better paralleled the ideas and emotions of the time (which he did some extent), and broke free from the tyranny of dates and timing.<br />
<br />
But he's the New York Time's Best Selling Author, and I'm a procrastinating 24 year old on the internet. So what do I know?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.locusmag.com/2003/Issue02/turtledove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://www.locusmag.com/2003/Issue02/turtledove.jpg" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Not as much as he does about growing a beard, that's for certain</i></td></tr>
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Anyway, sorry for the month long silence. Hopefully I'll get back to a more regular posting schedule in the near future. But if you have any suggestions or comments, find me on Twitter @tbguy1992, or email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com</div>
Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-73549954797762084892016-12-10T22:01:00.000-06:002016-12-11T14:56:57.490-06:00A Sneak Peak at my NaNoWriMo ProjectI'm very pleased to announce that a) this blog is now (mostly) back, after my NaNoWriMo break, then a trip to Chicago, then a bunch of other things; and b) I won NaNoWriMo with a couple days to spare! My t-shirt is in the mail already.<br />
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This year's 50,000 word story that I've been working on (and is no where near complete, sad to say) was one of the most ambitious writing projects I've undertaken, which I've come to call Project Patrician.<br />
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In this story, I've been telling the story of a small town, in the ruins of an America ruined by nuclear war in the 1980s, that, from it's founding onwards, parallels the growth and rise of the ancient Roman Republic, from Romulus to Julius Caesar.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0l0k_mM-pSpuTTM7USrcX8TTBH1JtN0_lrPHR4Dfac0qXhIGkOB2xHvoIWdGTjHez0-vWa1mM5-8QWYVzst7SpUiBSB8Lglr6uTRln73hqBokDIGSH8qT8XuqTWQvQMC6Bl_c4puzuDwq/s1600/death_of_julius_caesar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0l0k_mM-pSpuTTM7USrcX8TTBH1JtN0_lrPHR4Dfac0qXhIGkOB2xHvoIWdGTjHez0-vWa1mM5-8QWYVzst7SpUiBSB8Lglr6uTRln73hqBokDIGSH8qT8XuqTWQvQMC6Bl_c4puzuDwq/s320/death_of_julius_caesar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And, most likely, doesn't end much better. Or with a salad.</i></td></tr>
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Now, I haven't completed the story, but since I don't have much else to post, here is the prologue of my story to share. Enjoy!<br />
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<> <> <><br />
<br />PROLOGUE<br />
The history of our great town and it’s old Republic goes far back, right to the War, the one that ended the Old World. While few stories of the War have survived to the present for many reasons, such as lack of written works and stories being lost as older generations died away. While we know much of the history before the War thanks to books that survived the great global firestorm in small libraries and homes of those far from the targets, and then then years of neglect, weather and destruction after, it must also be acknowledged that what we have is just a tiny sliver of what there was before the War. While we have history books, school textbooks of science and math, copies of famous works of art, and in some cases the original documents of these great achievements in literature, sciences and art, we can only guess that, at most, maybe only 10% of human knowledge gathered before the end of the Old World has survived. This is, perhaps, a greater destruction than the fabled legend of the burning of the Great Library in long ago Ancient Egypt. This is a sad, but frequent occurrence in the line of work of a historian, that many great stories and facts of heroism and valour have been lost with time.<br />
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But what we do know, thanks to a few eye-witness accounts kept and documented, as well as the information gathered from sources from all corners of the Republic, was that the time period right before the War was a Golden Age. Technology was greatly advanced, with devices that allowed people to call someone else hundreds of miles away through cables or through the air, though I’m unsure how other people would not be able to hear them. Everyone with a cable connected to a “grid” had electricity, something that now is only for the richest of people. As we have seen in the ruins of the city called New York, they were able to construct massive, tall buildings that could house thousands of people. There self-driving wagons that could transport families or entire villages worth of people, though almost all examples have long since been scrapped and recycled. There were enormous factories that turned out all sorts of products that anybody could afford, and food and water that was safe, clean, and easy. They even had things called “computers” to store information and create new and wondrous things. Today, only a few of those computers still exist, and all of them, that I know of, have never worked.<br />
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At the time, the area that we live in now was known as the United States of America, one of the greatest nations that ever existed. They used a form of government not unlike our own, with elected leaders and representatives that met in Washington, D.C. If you go there today, some archeologists and historians have determined where many ancient monuments and symbols of the old nation existed in that city, though due to the destruction caused in the war, there is little that can be seen there. It was all lead by a man called the President of the United States, where we currently get the title for the leader of our Republic. <br />
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There were other nations all around the world that were mentioned in the books and newspapers that have survived from the Old World: England, Canada, France, China, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, India. While we know where they were thanks to Old World globes and maps, we do not know for sure exactly what they were like besides some pictures of monuments and buildings, some people dead for centuries, and some statistics and numbers that we are not one hundred percent sure what they mean. But there was another major superpower that was talked about constantly in old American books, called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. From what we gathered, they were a despicable, hated nation that enslaved its people, promising them equality but instead giving them nothing but hard work, miserable living conditions and lies and falsehoods dressed up as facts. Their leaders were paranoid, corrupt and power hungry, and the old United States was terrified of them, but also confident that they were superior to them. This paradox of how a powerful nation could be both afraid and superior to another nation still confuses this writer.<br />
<br />
But this book does not mean to tell the history of the Old World, or even of the years after the War. There have been many writers and historians before me that have gone into as much detail as they could about it, and it does not seem necessary to cover all those facts once again.<br />
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However, that does not mean we can ignore it totally. Had there never been the War, it’s fair to say that the Republic we know now would never have been born. The fact that the world ended 92 years before the founding of the center of the Republic, in the year that in the old times was given as 1985 lead to the destruction of the great cities of the old United States, the Nuclear Winter that lasted until 2035, the deaths of millions of people around the world from disease, radiation, famine and violence, and eventually the birth of new towns. <br />
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Now, it’s impossible for us today to understand and appreciate how much everything has changed, how the world was rebuilt by the men of the earliest times after the War and in the early years of the Republic. In fact, almost all of the ruins of the towns and cities of the Old World have been cleared away and rebuilt in the Republic, but in some areas, like in the far south and west, past the boundaries of modern civilization, there are still the ruins of once great cities. If you someday wish to get the full experience of what it was like back in the earliest years before the founding of the Republic and the return of civilization, those are the places to go. <br />
<br />
But there are those that were brave or foolish enough to go and take pictures of some of those towns, and some people have even sketched or used cameras to capture what the ruins of cities like old Chicago, New York, Washington, Boston, Lexington, Cincinnati, and many others looked like.<br />
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In order to understand where our city, our Republic came from, it’s important to go back to the time before our town was even founded by our great founders, Alex and George.Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-27059700479968176212016-10-31T22:29:00.002-05:002016-10-31T22:29:51.646-05:00NaNoWriMo Break!Hey everyone, just letting you know that I will be taking another break from the blog while I participate in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge, to write a 50,000 word story in the month of November. Starting November 1 and through to 30, I'll be busy working on an idea I've had in mind for a long time now. Best of all: it has an Alternate History aspect to it!<br />
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I'm not going to tell anymore than that, but I hope by the end of the month I'll have a good story worth sharing with folks, and perhaps the foundation (or completed story, who knows?) for a full length novel.<br />
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But first things first, I need to write it.<br />
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If you do have any alternate history ideas in the meantime, feel free to share them in the comments or through Twitter (@tbguy1992) or send me an email at tbguy1992@gmail.com.<br />
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See you all in December!Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-7290799241467029942016-10-24T11:21:00.002-05:002016-10-24T11:21:52.742-05:00AltHistory Scenario #26: What if Matthew Perry Failed to "Open" Japan?Civilization VI just came out on Friday, and I've spent all my free time of the past weekend (in between watching my brother try Portal 2 for the first time) playing it, and loving every moment. Despite everyone's fears that it's cartoony art style would mean it was taking a simpler, free-to-play Mobile game approach, Civ VI has proven to be a huge step forward, much better than it's predecessor was when it was in Vanilla. Although there are a few issues I have, like religion never seeming to restore itself in it's own holy city and not being able to negotiate a peace treaty at certain times (and not explaining <i>why</i> I can't get a peace treaty), over all, it's a good game.<br />
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Okay, review time over. Back to Alternate history! But since it's a bit late, and I've been procrastinating all weekend, instead I'm going to try something different, and instead write a short timeline instead of the long, drawn out explanations. So tell me what you think at the end!.<br />
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<b>Timeline:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
July 1853: The arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's American fleet to Edo, Japan, results in a firefight when Japanese sailors tried to board the USS <i>Mississippi. </i>The American ships proceed to bombard the ancient capital of Japan, destroying the small wooden ships in the harbour, and land a force of Marines to capture Edo Castle. The sickly Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, died of a heart attack before he could be captured. The Council of Elders assembled to rule Japan in place of Tokugawa's son, seeing the death and destruction caused by the American weapons, surrendered. Matthew Perry, realizing how backward the Japanese were, drew up a treaty that would place all of Japan under an American Protectorate, which the Emperor Kōmei was forced to sign.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/23/14/matthewperry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/23/14/matthewperry.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Matthew Perry, seen here, on his way to meet the Emperor of Japan to discuss Phoebe's new cat and Joey's lost keys... </i></td></tr>
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September 1853: The news of what happened in Edo reaches America, and in Washington, D.C., President Millard Fillmore, Congress and the nation at large is suddenly faced with the fact that the US had just basically taken over Japan as a colony. In a huge debate in the Senate over wether the treaty should be accepted or not dragged on for weeks, until in a narrow vote, it was approved, with Northern industrialists and southern Landowners working out a deal to make Japan an "associate state" that would never be given statehood (and not upsetting the delicate balance of slave and free state) while it would be made a free economic territory for the whole US. Perry was appointed American Military Governor of the Japanese Empire, and a small force of 4,000 soldiers, including Colonel Robert E. Lee, the commandant of West Point, to establish a garrison there.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Robert_Edward_Lee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Robert_Edward_Lee.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I'm going to avoid a Civil War joke here, because I General Lee don't find them that funny.</i></td></tr>
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1854-1860: American businessmen began to invest in the backward nation, selling new factory equipment and tools to the populace, while pushing through major American reforms, including dismantling the Shogunate, getting rid of the Samurai class, heavy promotion of Christianity (Methodist and Baptist missionaries traveled to Japan to convert the Buddhist and Shinto populace, compulsory education and many other "western" motives and mores. This lead to resistance, especially amongst the deposed Samurai, the associates of the former Shogun, and conservative Buddhist and Shinto priests and practitioners. But many Japanese, especially in the lower class, traders, scholars and the Crown Prince Mutsuhito support the reforms, and the 4,000 strong garrison soon had 40,000 Japanese auxiliaries that helped to suppress those that want to hold Japan back to it's isolationist path. The Japanese economy begins to boom with it's close ties to the US, and the final armed uprising, in northern Honshu, is suppressed in 1860. Tensions would continue to remain, but under first Perry, and then later Lee as Governor, Americans came to respect the quickly modernizing Japanese.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisCu1QpmY2A8lPxNd3hc5Al7b66VU87piBSXnOz-I01hRua7Hr23w198cVLbeHs6O_PqIClaO7xnQvxDjtAviCAmyYUQ81QwKob2HrITP8LVgf6FXlvpJlJaWmNYkOAgXLpGMiqbxFzc_l/s1600/taiko_hat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisCu1QpmY2A8lPxNd3hc5Al7b66VU87piBSXnOz-I01hRua7Hr23w198cVLbeHs6O_PqIClaO7xnQvxDjtAviCAmyYUQ81QwKob2HrITP8LVgf6FXlvpJlJaWmNYkOAgXLpGMiqbxFzc_l/s320/taiko_hat.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Though the Americans had serious questions about Japan's taste in headwear.</i></td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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1860-1870: The American colonial experiment soon begins to blossom. Places as diverse as Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Western Africa (where Liberia, the home for freed slaves in the Mother Continent, had been set up in the 1820s) , and the Philippines all are soon seen as possible areas to further push "Manifest Destiny." Trading companies, with a larger US Navy to back them, begin to set up trading posts in Africa and in the Pacific. Hawaii is annexed in 1863, followed with the purchase of Alaska in 1865. A brief war between the US and Spain in 1869-70 results in Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico being taken over as further Protectorates. Liberia begins to expand, as the generous provisions of the Bill of Emancipation, pushed by Representative Abraham Lincoln of Illinois in 1863, resulted in the US government basically purchasing slaves and freeing them, many electing to go back to Africa, ending slavery as painlessly as possible. This money was then often invested back into the US, with northern manufacturers selling automated machinery to the South to take up the slack. The entire US boomed, with Industry roaring ahead in the north, food, cotton and tobacco from the south being sold all over the world, and the colonies growing quickly as Immigration filled the "Homeland."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.2016auditions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/homeland-14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.2016auditions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/homeland-14.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And, uh... okay, I've never actually seen the show. MOVING ALONG...</i></td></tr>
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1870-1873: The American Empire hit it's first major stumbling block in the summer of 1870, when tensions between the US and the British Empire finally reached a head when an American ship owned by the Vanderbilt family was impounded in India, with a member of the crew (an immigrant from Scotland) being arrested for desertion from the army. President Schuyler Colfax, taking the affront as an insult directed from an "old and tired kingdom on a new, vigorous Republic," got Congress to declare war. In months, the first American troops began to march on the recently formed Dominion of Canada. However, the Canadian militia managed to stymie the Americans into the long and cold winter of 1870-71, and allowed British troops and the Royal Navy to sail to the Canadian's rescue. The war would last for three years, but despite efforts by the Royal Navy to interdict American trade between American and it's colonies in the Atlantic and Pacific, American troops took over all of Canada. The Treaty of New York ceded all British holdings in British North America, who then turned east, to India, Egypt and for allies in Europe.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://uk.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/uk_guards-450x225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://uk.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/uk_guards-450x225.jpg" height="160" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Though, tbh... it's not exactly hard to find redcoats in white snow...</i></td></tr>
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1873-1900: The next quarter century was America's Golden Age: with colonies around the world and one of the quickest growing populations and economies in the world, and with an entire continent to itself (Mexico was made a protectorate in 1881 after yet another civil war and military coup made the nation too unstable). However, the quick expansion and the military to protect it, funded mostly through tariffs, was proving too much. Income tax was introduced in 1881 to prevent the nation from going into default, but it was hugely unpopular measure. Questions also began to rise about the nature of American imperialism: was America going to eventually liberate the countries they took over, and make them independent? Or were they to remain in a permanent limbo between full statehood and full independence? And what was the boundary to make it clear? In some cases, like Canada, it was easy: once enough white men lived in an area, it could be entered as a state. This lead the America adopting the 60 star flag by 1900 with the introduction of Saskatchewan as a state. But in areas like Japan, Liberia and Cuba, the question was more fraught: racism and economic interests formed a powerful bulwark to preventing those nations from going their own way. It was only a matter of time before something gave.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://memeimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/impossibru-reaction-face-ayumu-kato-japanese-guy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://memeimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/impossibru-reaction-face-ayumu-kato-japanese-guy.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And then the whole world will be flooded with all the weird Japanese memes</i></td></tr>
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1905-1910: That something was the Great War of 1905-1910. Europe found itself at war as tensions between France and Germany finally resulted in war. Britain, coming to the aid of it's ally Germany, put up a blockade against France. France, reeling from the double blow of German invasion and British blockade, was only helped by Russia, who's ineffectual army was soon destroyed by the German and Austro-Hungarian forces it opposed. But the Royal Navy sank several American ships that continued to trade with France, and soon President Theodore Roosevelt was pushing his nation to fight the British once again. The US and Royal Navies soon began a running battle across the ocean, while British troops invaded American colonies in Africa and Asia, and vice-versa. However, the steady supply of troops and resources prevented France from loosing the war, while Russia descended into a brutal three war civil war by 1908, with Republicans, Communists and the Czar's Loyalists all fighting for the nation, and the outside world unsure of who to help or hinder. But the war in France ended in a stalemate: British and German forces were not enough to overcome French and American troops, but the US and France were not in any shape to fight back. So the Treaty of Brussels ended the war with all four major powers (and Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey and Italy as minor players) dividing the world between them.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.outline-world-map.com/map-images-original/blank-transparent-thick-world-map-b1c.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.outline-world-map.com/map-images-original/blank-transparent-thick-world-map-b1c.png" height="148" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Just draw the lines where you want them. That's basically what the Europeans did.</i></td></tr>
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<br />
1910-1929: But the world of Empires, however, soon began to strain. The colonies of the Europeans were underdeveloped and slowly bleeding the homelands white from the cost in money, men and morals, while the Americans were struggling to deal with the high costs of the war with their increasingly resistant populations. American Exceptionalism that drove the empire was now tearing it apart: The belief that because America had built their nations up not just for the betterment of the homeland but for the people that lived there blinded them to the fact that they were just like the American colonies in the mid 1700s, seeking to break free from a disinterested homeland that only saw them as a source of income and burdens of defence. And in 1929, three years after the New York and London Stock Exchanges crashed, destroying the global economy, the American colonies in Japan, Liberia, Mexico, the Philippines and Cuba all rose up, and began to fight the American oppressors.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/26/d3/1a26d36c864892df3d6f5b144dc4365a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/26/d3/1a26d36c864892df3d6f5b144dc4365a.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I've picked on Japan enough. Time to go to another Asian country and make a silly reference about them!</i></td></tr>
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1929-1935: The American Colonial Wars, also known as the Independence Wars and the Second American Revolution rocked the nation and it's Empire. Japan, the oldest and most developed of the territories held by the US, was the first to rise up, under the leadership of Japanese Nationalists like<br />
Isoroku Yamamoto and Hideki Tojo, followed a few months later by the Philippines. Cuba, which was poor and even still held slavery in several places, had a violent insurrection of the black populace that was brutally put down by the Cuban National Guard, only for it to constantly flare up again and again, leading to a long running guerrilla war. Mexico, after a few precious decades of peace, demanded freedom again (and a long running fight between Liberals and Conservatives there would cause even more damage). Canada and Liberia also had their moments of resistance, but except in a few isolated instances in Quebec and in the deplorable Indian Reservations, it was mostly peaceful, with constant demonstrations and demands for rights. President Herbert Hoover, elected in 1928 to try to solve the Great Depression, was now faced with a multi-front Colonial War which he was increasingly incapable of handling. More and more soldiers were sent to Japan, Cuba, the Philippines and elsewhere, and the casualty lists grew longer and longer. Taxes at home went up to pay for it all, which only pushed the US even deeper into debt.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2011/7/27/1311752870036/The-National-Debt-Clock-2-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2011/7/27/1311752870036/The-National-Debt-Clock-2-007.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Because there is no American political crisis like one over spending money, not raising taxes to cover it, then borrowing it, and then engineering a crisis because of an arbitrary borrowing limit!</i></td></tr>
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<div>
1932: Bombings, assassinations, blackmail and gang wars at home by blacks, Japanese-Americans, Mexicans, the Mafia and other groups soon ended with the Assassination of Herbert Hoover in early 1932, the first American president so killed in history. Vice-President Charles Curtis, now the President, declared Martial Law, suspending the US Constitution for a year (and later continuously extended as the crisis continued), imposing censorship which ended up shutting down many newspapers and strangling the radio and motion pictures in it's infancy, and ordering the army, the FBI, the Secret Service and other police forces to round up all suspected revolutionaries, deporting many to hastily constructed prison camps in the wilds and unpopulated areas of Ontario, Dakota, Manitoba, Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada and Alberta. This only inflamed Americans at home, and soon Communists, Fascists, Canadian and Quebecois Nationalists, and "Minutemen" democratic patriots were fighting at home. The American Civil War had begun.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://thomaslegion.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/americancivilwarhomepage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://thomaslegion.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/americancivilwarhomepage.jpg" height="290" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">F<i>rom this picture, you'd think the civil war was over if the flag looks better in stripes or in a cross...</i></td></tr>
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<div>
1932-1937: Five years of bloody war left the US a wreck. It's Colonies one by one had gained their freedom (Japan in 1933, Liberia in 1934, Mexico in 1935), and the Canadian states, along with Dakota, Montana, Michigan, New England, Oregon and Washington had all seceded and formed the Union of North American States. Communists in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey and Wisconsin had joined together and formed the People's Republic of America, lynching corrupt bankers and industrialists and attempted to build a true communist society compared to the totalitarian hellhole that was Stalin's Soviet Union. In the South, lead by Southern plantation owners, many of whom had land and prestige, but little money, and white-power supremacists that still resented the Emancipation Bill sixty some years before, established a Fascist Confederation of Southern States that attempted to undo decades of as of yet unfinished civil rights and virtually re-enslave African Americans. Texas went their own way, along with Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The US Government had fled from Washington, D.C. and set up a temporary capital in San Francisco, with California and other western states now under brutal military rule by the remnant of the old United States. By this time, Liberia had established itself as a mostly democratic state that would, in the future, provide a blueprint for the colonies of Africa when they managed to leave their European masters.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.relatably.com/m/img/africa-memes/6261335a8fcb3c6ab27df51e6b5e9baa0b84dd5f28abf37fa794d3c1d424e33b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.relatably.com/m/img/africa-memes/6261335a8fcb3c6ab27df51e6b5e9baa0b84dd5f28abf37fa794d3c1d424e33b.jpg" height="203" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Nature, however, is still there. And terrifying. </i></td></tr>
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But what do you think? What would have happened had the US decided to go on a colonizing spree? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992</a>.</div>
Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-75278068817560328282016-10-17T00:10:00.001-05:002016-10-17T00:10:35.808-05:00Editorial: An American Westminster Democracy?With all the hoopla of the current election in the United States, and all the talk of primaries, conventions, the Electoral College, polls, scandals, etc. etc., it can all seem just a little bit overwhelming.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFkiXm6ciuBma6CYBzpPPrbIzoozfvN80lLGbfwTr7-pIYKI0Fh1zIEKWv6dS53bVAirLOnH_KBEIJ5TViP3w6qt3I-xxhEJa9Y2NmQ45g3XPVd7Q-R9sDtcTEmY_n4t6bHR8VqJtHg6m/s1600/nbc-fires-donald-trump-after-he-calls-mexicans-rapists-and-drug-runners.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFkiXm6ciuBma6CYBzpPPrbIzoozfvN80lLGbfwTr7-pIYKI0Fh1zIEKWv6dS53bVAirLOnH_KBEIJ5TViP3w6qt3I-xxhEJa9Y2NmQ45g3XPVd7Q-R9sDtcTEmY_n4t6bHR8VqJtHg6m/s320/nbc-fires-donald-trump-after-he-calls-mexicans-rapists-and-drug-runners.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Mostly because of him...</i></td></tr>
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American democracy has a lot going for it, but it's a hopelessly outdated system, with only minor tweaks since it was put together by the Founding Fathers in 1787. Take the Electoral College: it was designed to make sure the "mob" didn't dominate the country, with men above the political fray making the deciding vote on who would be President. The Senate was to be elected by the different states, and only the House of Representatives was elected by the citizens at large (and back then, only white men with some property). But over the years, eventually almost every office in the US, from President to Judges to State Governors to Dog Catchers were elected, though I think jobs like judges should be kept above the partisan fray. The checks and balances of the system are also something to be proud of, until of course it bogs down when two ideological opposites are in charge of the Executive and Legislative branch.<br />
<br />
But the problems with the US system is still immense. The Electoral College is unfair for everyone: Smaller states have a larger vote than bigger states, but at the same time only a few states, like Florida and Ohio, can determine who will win the Presidency. Federal electoral districts are drawn up by the states, and in many states they are gerrymandered to give the party a better chance in Washington. It's more or less the way for successful candidates being able to choose their voters, and not the other way around.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbOp-Z6iogvI13RL0Fy5OLM6BGUi3ByVS2u-TNGD49b711ONM2xEpICj14oadge9U6ySZZzaICsun4GT65_2UDAD-8_F93SI2HcY4SDmq1Ib2A9AWay7x4WJYH-tbGrGOG1oKfaOlX1unt/s1600/3446898712_b03504e7f1-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbOp-Z6iogvI13RL0Fy5OLM6BGUi3ByVS2u-TNGD49b711ONM2xEpICj14oadge9U6ySZZzaICsun4GT65_2UDAD-8_F93SI2HcY4SDmq1Ib2A9AWay7x4WJYH-tbGrGOG1oKfaOlX1unt/s320/3446898712_b03504e7f1-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I present to you... the Illinois Fourth District. Do I need to explain why this is stupid?</i></td></tr>
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So why don't we just scrap it? Why not try a government system like in the United Kingdom and Canada? Of course, history wise we know it wasn't going to be even considered by the new US, considering what Parliament in far-off London did to piss off the colonialists, and I'll be the first to admit there are some issues with this form of government. But let's do a thought experiment, and see how the US would look if it had a system of government similar to the Westminster parliamentary system?<br />
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Well first of all, everything you know about US elections will have to be thrown out the window. Their will be a Prime Minister who is the leader of the government, and is usually the leader of the largest party (or coalition of parties) in a representative body, which can still be the House of Representatives in this version. The President can still be head of state, and he can be powerful (like in France) or weak (in Germany) as see fit. My guess, in order to maintain some checks and balances, the President would have a lot of power in this alternate American system. I'd give him the power to call elections for the House of Representatives (either with or without the "advice" of the PM), veto laws, and appoint judges and other executive positions, barring confirmation from the Senate. How the President is selected can be left up to debate. Maybe this is where the Electoral College would come in, but I'd be more willing to just have him either elected directly by the people, or selected by a joint session of Parliament/Congress. The Senate, if it would be similar to the UK or Canada, would have appointed members: say they are chosen by the State Legislators to sit until they retire, are removed, or died. In Canada, the mandatory retirement age is 75, so something similar could be seen here.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF4r717nmEDe4gncs9zAy2VtdGlG8VoZJELh6RjAIUzoBcr3AO1qFO2GsbTpnN77kKf9WegdE3v-E3PtZIyUnsP78wuvXLAg9RB-joCU0oH87dUVuE93tFyOrmJE-FUv66uY2NHUOR84mS/s1600/Canadian-Senate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF4r717nmEDe4gncs9zAy2VtdGlG8VoZJELh6RjAIUzoBcr3AO1qFO2GsbTpnN77kKf9WegdE3v-E3PtZIyUnsP78wuvXLAg9RB-joCU0oH87dUVuE93tFyOrmJE-FUv66uY2NHUOR84mS/s320/Canadian-Senate.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>As soon as you reach sixty, you not only get the Seniors Bonus discounts at the Senate Restaurant, you also can apply for a lift chair in the chamber!</i></td></tr>
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The Prime Minister, however, will have a huge amount of power, being the leader of the largest party in the House of Representatives. Now, the way the House would be divided up will be similar to OTL, but with one huge change: the electoral districts will be set by an independent, non-partisan committee. The UK's districts had been before determined by the monarch when Parliament and the House of Commons was being set up, but in many cases they didn't change. It got to the point in the early 1800s that many of the largest growing industrial towns like Manchester and Birmingham had no representation, while agricultural areas that had only a tiny population, or sometimes no population at all (Old Sarum, for instance, had only seven voters), would still elect two (TWO!) Members to Parliament. These "Rotten boroughs" were eventually done away with in 1832, though it wouldn't be until 1944 that non-partisan electoral boundary committees were set up to determine the boundaries. The US, in this Alternate History, might be sooner than that.<br />
<br />
Elections will also be interesting. In the case of the federal government, they could serve a term as long as 4 or 5 years before mandatory elections, as long as the Prime Minister, and by extension his party, maintains control. Now, elections can be called sooner: In the event that the largest party doesn't have an overwhelming majority, a vote of non-confidence, say the opposition uniting to defeat the PM's budget or a major platform policy, can be enough to force the PM to ask the President to dissolve the House and call elections. For example, in Canada, between 2000 and 2015, we had six elections (2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2015), of which only three resulted in a "majority" government, or one where one party had more than half the seats (2000, 2011, 2015).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_fgyapgZjQQ5nAPVSfoPWFP_rymqj6qlh8_PDL4y0INCLcDQv4UdMk5NUf4h2itB1e9vCMh7fDIU15uUsXOaInocVMYxUqPah7dKoAOmIkX8aW5sZ5Gts5hQ4NHqDFgaua4i9vaFJDrE/s1600/trudeau_transparency_20140611.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_fgyapgZjQQ5nAPVSfoPWFP_rymqj6qlh8_PDL4y0INCLcDQv4UdMk5NUf4h2itB1e9vCMh7fDIU15uUsXOaInocVMYxUqPah7dKoAOmIkX8aW5sZ5Gts5hQ4NHqDFgaua4i9vaFJDrE/s320/trudeau_transparency_20140611.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Justin Trudeau's hair also won a seat in a Montreal area riding, further bolstering the Liberal majority.</i></td></tr>
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So, how would this version of the House of Representatives be made up? First, we'll say there are 435 seats, like OTL, and that they are evenly distributed by a non-partisan body like in Canada and the UK. If we use the numbers from the 2012 election (as it would be more representative of the US population, as turnouts are lower in "midterm" election IRL, and would more accurately determine the US's political view point at the time), the Democrats would have more seats, but only 212 seats. The Republicans, with 207 seats, would be the opposition. The other 16 would be held by third parties...<br />
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BUT WAIT! Unless the US decided to also change to something other than a first past the post system for elections, then it's not a guarantee that the Democrats would actually have that many seats, or that third parties would even gain a seat (which, unfortunately, is a problem still with the US's two party system). Possibly they might have more than that. After all, say there are three districts, each with 100,000 voters. In one district, 80% of the voters chose the Democrat, so that seat went to the Democrat. In District Two, 80% of the Vote went to the Democrat. But say in District three, the Democrat got 45% of the vote, the Republican 40%, and a Libertarian candidate the other 15%. Even though the Democrat didn't get a full 50%+1, he still won the election. This is just as true in the current system as it would be in the Westminster Democracy.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPPyKEuPAk8tQ8cA4x0zV4av_C6UvRg5AZOWSQsgPGahfRL7l7dr5iZNwnybdD4j28lx-v6eplYLvhoLw7Fuf9kbNiHzMIhaTe01ymHRx0M3oXCXYRa0GNWuYjNklC_k2yjeE-jO4CG4Jq/s1600/6a0133f3a4072c970b017c33381d36970b-550wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPPyKEuPAk8tQ8cA4x0zV4av_C6UvRg5AZOWSQsgPGahfRL7l7dr5iZNwnybdD4j28lx-v6eplYLvhoLw7Fuf9kbNiHzMIhaTe01ymHRx0M3oXCXYRa0GNWuYjNklC_k2yjeE-jO4CG4Jq/s320/6a0133f3a4072c970b017c33381d36970b-550wi.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>As with any election, you need three things... </i><i style="font-size: 12.8px;">A map, different coloured pens, and numbers to decide everything!</i></td></tr>
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However, one thing about the Westminster Democracy: third parties do have a much easier time in getting seats, especially regional parties. In the UK, the Scottish National Party holds 54 Seats, and with the other third parties and independents, there are 89 seats that are not held by the Conservatives of Labour party in a 650 member House of Commons. Similar in Canada: The Liberal Party holds 184 seats, the Conservatives 99, the New Democratic Party 44, the Bloc Quebecois at 2, and the Green Party at 1. But the Liberal Party, despite winning so many seats, only actually received 39.5% of the vote. So in the alternate US system, third parties, especially regional parties, would have a much easier time getting seats. For all we know, a "New Confederacy" Party could have swept the Southern States, or split the vote with another party to let a different party win.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1VsLSFsNhx1DnjVjdtPEElo46hXBfSBDdwk03SCUj6ibPZU7zS3Ox5xJhLOVEf3VCKdszHMirzUcalsFk9g2vZoSM7UX2MTXbV7nQV95_qm5TPyxDVYuridgAX3LT0h-Q1Hwdfgrx_W4s/s1600/Map-showing-the-election-results-in-the-2015-General-election.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1VsLSFsNhx1DnjVjdtPEElo46hXBfSBDdwk03SCUj6ibPZU7zS3Ox5xJhLOVEf3VCKdszHMirzUcalsFk9g2vZoSM7UX2MTXbV7nQV95_qm5TPyxDVYuridgAX3LT0h-Q1Hwdfgrx_W4s/s320/Map-showing-the-election-results-in-the-2015-General-election.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"See, if only we didn't vote for the 'Haven't Got a Chance in Hell' Party, we could have prevented the Conservatives from winning!"</i></td></tr>
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So would this system be better? In some ways, such as allowing third parties a chance to get more seats, yes. It would also make the House of Representatives more powerful in the Federal Government, as it's the body most directly in turn with the average citizen, with a President that has more limited powers and a senate composed mostly of appointees. In breaking deadlocks, perhaps. After all, if the party in power doesn't have a commanding majority, or a formal coalition, then it could be taken down at any moment, and a new election being held. But in more accurately representing the vote, that would be a no. In some cases, with more third parties, it could be worse than it currently is with the gerrymandering in the US system.<br />
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Now I'm not saying the US should use this system. But I think the US system needs a complete overhaul. It was established when a man on a horse was the fasting transportation possible, and concerns about full-fledged democracy was a major concern to the framers of the Constitution. But now with cars, cell phones, the Internet and cable news networks, the old fashioned system is showing it's strains, and will eventually completely fall apart.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsGhH4c54OxIBjsUtq-LMQkS57monRRgMj4KspPKWs7hFW-zVEAjXaWGHzX8ljjpqAIz_W1aFl8mX8IalDu9SL_ADHmb9FTITQzHZ-jgbaxJDv6cBWLOSwOcSzHXpuZjbvScjFML95bnfb/s1600/IMG_20160727_220354.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsGhH4c54OxIBjsUtq-LMQkS57monRRgMj4KspPKWs7hFW-zVEAjXaWGHzX8ljjpqAIz_W1aFl8mX8IalDu9SL_ADHmb9FTITQzHZ-jgbaxJDv6cBWLOSwOcSzHXpuZjbvScjFML95bnfb/s320/IMG_20160727_220354.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Unless that is actually what America wants to do...</i></td></tr>
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But what do you think? What would the United States be like if it took the political system Ye Old Englande? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992</a>.<br />
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<br />Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-76560209392467353762016-10-10T23:18:00.000-05:002019-07-14T01:18:14.717-05:00AltHistory Scenario #25: What if Israel Lost the 1948 Arab-Israeli War?Oooooh boy, flame war time!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8fsD2oW5C_AqpGivC8RJ1N5MEZvp7SB2bhrAOpAhwNlkpJqcnlcZaBiW9o1kVvqRWzXctXK15WBhHs5yRpQ9AfLr6G5cYrag1D7aQLUzgFNA_d0wVUco4-JdBSEKWZZrjgR4J-AyCo5u2/s1600/6a00d83451b54369e20120a59396b3970b-800wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8fsD2oW5C_AqpGivC8RJ1N5MEZvp7SB2bhrAOpAhwNlkpJqcnlcZaBiW9o1kVvqRWzXctXK15WBhHs5yRpQ9AfLr6G5cYrag1D7aQLUzgFNA_d0wVUco4-JdBSEKWZZrjgR4J-AyCo5u2/s320/6a00d83451b54369e20120a59396b3970b-800wi.jpg" width="294" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>He will never be able to recover if I call him Hitler!</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As anyone that has looked at a newspaper in the past seventy years can tell you, the Middle East is a mess. The legacies of colonialism, the wealth of oil (and in some places, the lack of it), and the ever present tension of religion, ideology, oppression and great power politics have turned the region into a powder keg, which has gone up into flame time and time again.<br />
<br />
At the centre of it all is Israel. For decades, the goal of many Arab strongmen and Islamist ideologue was to drive the Jews into the sea, and liberate the land for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, many of whom fled to refugee camps in surrounding nations but have never been able to integrate with the nation they found themselves in.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to get into who's right or wrong here, but I'm going to pose a simple question: What if the modern nation of Israel just didn't exist? What if Israel lost the 1948 Arab-Israeli War?<br />
<br />
<b>Background</b><br />
<br />
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Jews that survived the Holocaust desperately wanted one thing: to get as far away from the horrors and the trauma that the past years had taken on them. Many immigrated to the United States and other countries, but as many traveled to Palestine, to full fill the long promised Zionist dream of returning to the homeland of Judaism, Israel.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKdaecx2_BFV-hEZu12F8x7QwxJaUHx8ZjUbgukkKxiTmu81R1FEd3BSygEUVmW6pubrXCbCNn7yJSidyQqMdzqHKd-H04U44RqSy4SywJ7PLRglvQ6-0C56zWQogWE8p_mnou1sRxvYWK/s1600/Is-wb-gs-gh_v3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKdaecx2_BFV-hEZu12F8x7QwxJaUHx8ZjUbgukkKxiTmu81R1FEd3BSygEUVmW6pubrXCbCNn7yJSidyQqMdzqHKd-H04U44RqSy4SywJ7PLRglvQ6-0C56zWQogWE8p_mnou1sRxvYWK/s320/Is-wb-gs-gh_v3.png" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Borders subject to change without notice.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Palestine was a former Ottoman territory, which, along with areas like Iraq and Transjordan, was held by the British as a League of Nations mandate. Syria and Lebanon was held by the French under similar conditions. While the British as early as 1917 had promised a new homeland for Jews in Palestine, the Arab population that lived in the region were nervous and resented the immigrants. Violence and civil war between the two groups broke out, which gave the British Empire headaches for decades, as they supported first one group, then the other. By 1947, Britain wanted to get out of Palestine and wash themselves of the whole mess.<br />
<br />
The new United Nations proposed a partition: half the land to Jews, half to Arabs, and Jerusalem would be divided along similar lines. While the Jews supported this, the Arabs despised the dictate from the world organization. Fighting between the two groups reached a fever pitch, until eventually war broke out. Eventually the US withdrew its support for the split, which encouraged the Arabs to push on.<br />
<br />
<b>Point of Divergence</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The supporters of Israel were many: the US, British and French all wished to give a homeland to the long suffering Jewish population, as well as providing a beacon of Western democracy (and interests) in a region where the locals were less than hospitable to the colonizing powers. However, except for diplomatic recognition, almost no support was given. In OTL, a major supporter of the new state of Israel was Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR, who as early as 1947 allowed Czechoslovakia, soon to become another satellite state of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, to send arms and train flight crews for Israel that proved decisive to allow them to fight for their independence. However, by 1949, Stalin had lost interest and began to see Israel as a stooge to the west, and began to denounce it.<br />
<br />
However, what if Stalin came out against Israel at the beginning? What if those arms and support from Czechoslovakia didn't happen?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDMOq9OghEkHPUFl6aStXjcLoNo_OVYSlXe-Xx2Za_ctIXCQv68fzYB250RYAQ2ZIS9oewq0xLrxp4NRdq3uXNU91VEQp7tSPlR0aiaXUzob4WVh4mdl4rCzhrrO8AWysPmoQgerBTAy4/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDMOq9OghEkHPUFl6aStXjcLoNo_OVYSlXe-Xx2Za_ctIXCQv68fzYB250RYAQ2ZIS9oewq0xLrxp4NRdq3uXNU91VEQp7tSPlR0aiaXUzob4WVh4mdl4rCzhrrO8AWysPmoQgerBTAy4/s320/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Joseph Stalin: ruining history (and alternate history!) since 1878.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In 1947, Stalin sent a memorandum to the government of Czechoslovakia, demanding that they do not support Israel. Faced with possible invasion and the destruction of the last democratic government in the region, Czechoslovakia acquiesced. No weapons or planes arrived in Palestine to help the Jews.<br />
<br />
<b>Outcome</b><br />
<br />
The Jewish Agency, the nominal government of Israel, felt it would be able to purchase weapons if they declared themselves an independent country, and they did so the day before the British Mandate was to end on May 14, 1948. However, the nations of the Arab League: Transjordan (soon to be known simply as Jordan), Iraq, Syria and Egypt declared war the next day, and with support from nations like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and irregular forces like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Liberation Army all invaded the upstart nation. Egypt, with the largest army, and Jordan, with the British trained and led Arab Legion, made quick strides, occupying the Negev Desert, Gaza Bank and West Bank within a few weeks, cutting off Israeli settlements, and pushing the Jewish fighters out of much of Palestine.<br />
<br />
With only the few supplies left by the British behind and whatever could be smuggled in past the British Blockade that remained up until the British surrendered the mandate. Some airplanes, like B-17's, and trucks were purchased in the US, but they were lacking rifles, artillery, machine guns and tanks. Attempts to purchase weapons in the US, France and other nations was hampered by the difficulty in getting them into Israel. The little bit that did arrive showed up infrequently, and some was captured by the invading Arab armies. United Nations attempts at a cease fire failed dramatically, severely crippling the world organization only a few years after it was created.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8umWsS0rUZcdRd_B8_LG5jysfm6XEw_sVH1xRCGojWNwW4PDwMse6dXyB_hS9rgAL1BHGRcaVE1wtvOE48VhwnHQ4jpxUlWDJh6pmkiNRCy73wWyz5czf6JX41dBkDm80tEn6lJ7PhGA/s1600/RIAN_archive_828797_Mikhail_Gorbachev_addressing_UN_General_Assembly_session.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8umWsS0rUZcdRd_B8_LG5jysfm6XEw_sVH1xRCGojWNwW4PDwMse6dXyB_hS9rgAL1BHGRcaVE1wtvOE48VhwnHQ4jpxUlWDJh6pmkiNRCy73wWyz5czf6JX41dBkDm80tEn6lJ7PhGA/s320/RIAN_archive_828797_Mikhail_Gorbachev_addressing_UN_General_Assembly_session.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>You would think if you could get almost every nation in the world to sit in a room together would actually help solve issues....</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
However, this was far from enough to supply the thousands of Israeli fighters, and soon brigades established had to be disbanded or merged with others. While hidden factories managed to produce some of what was needed, it wasn't enough. By the start of 1949, the outgunned and outnumbered Jewish fighters were surrounded at the port of Tel Aviv, having been forced out of the rest of the territory. On March 3, 1949, the Siege of Tel Aviv ended as the last members of the Jewish Agency surrendered.<br />
<br />
<b>Aftermath</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Within weeks, the Jewish settlers of the region were being driven out, on top of the massacres that the Arab armies and Palestinian fighters had already engaged in. Ships full of Jewish refugees sailed away from Palestine, the hope of the Zionist movement crushed. Many fled to the US and Canada, helped by Jewish populations that already existed in both nations. Those that weren't able to evacuate by sea instead were able to go to the territory held by the Arab Legion and Jordan, namely the West Bank. King Abdullah I of Jordan was a moderate, compared to most of the rest of the Arab League, and he favoured the division of Palestine, if just so areas like the West Bank could be annexed by Jordan, and that a Jewish state would be easier to deal with than one run by Arabs who opposed him. Of course, Syria and Egypt had their own land claims on Palestine as well, to the point that any possible Palestinian state would be non-viable.<br />
<br />
King Abdullah, however, was patient. He decided not to annex the land he held immediately, instead allowing the Palestinian Authority to set up it's government in occupied Jerusalem, only so long as they promised to end their attacks on the Israeli refugees. Reluctantly, Amin al-Husseini, who had been loosely allied with Nazi Germany during World War Two accepted. While Abdullah's goal was for a Middle East spanning kingdom, he was also a realist, and knew it would take a lot more than the 10,000 soldiers of the Arab Legion to make it a reality. He instead began a press campaign to encourage Palestinians that they would be better off in Jordan, with seats in the Jordan parliament (along with the Jewish refugees that resigned to live in Jordan), and announced that a referendum would be held in 1950 to determine the fate of the West Bank.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMfw9_UY9GYZOLjrVSUZWowlDPquWggb0pHNz3STjf5ykeBdqxkh14r89swvwwlDXr1Y9TDlxYlWtZFqDaCmMnrq_9kagwP_fN3ti5wlcnmtm_L4G_hB2cUZV90hEY8S8JbDBWBDkg59EJ/s1600/maxresdefault+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMfw9_UY9GYZOLjrVSUZWowlDPquWggb0pHNz3STjf5ykeBdqxkh14r89swvwwlDXr1Y9TDlxYlWtZFqDaCmMnrq_9kagwP_fN3ti5wlcnmtm_L4G_hB2cUZV90hEY8S8JbDBWBDkg59EJ/s320/maxresdefault+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And then he scored a slam dunk, winning the NBA Championship... wait, not that Jordan? Oops.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
King Farok of Egypt, however, was not to be denied, and he annexed the entire Gaza strip and other territories he held, earning him enmity among the Palestinian's who wanted their own territory. Attacks on occupying Egyptian troops soon began. Jordan used it as an excuse to attack Egypt, which was then supported by Syria and in June 1950 the Palestinian War flared up again. Jordan quickly gained the advantage, splitting Egypt and Syria on land, and using the British trained air force to rain bombs on Cairo and Damascus. By September, the Palestinian War was over, this time occupied by Jordan.<br />
<br />
Now, with all of Palestine under Jordan's control, the entire territory was annexed. This sparked anger in much of Palestine, but after two decades of war, most of the people in the region wanted peace. The assassination of King Abdullah in 1951 over his failure to allow a free Palestinian state hung over the expanded Jordan for years, but after years of fighting, and the Six Day War of 1964 that saw Egypt, Syria and Iraq, all under influence from the Soviet Union attack the overstretched American and British allied Jordan and forced them out of Palestine finally allowed Palestine to become an independent nation. Jordan retreated, but would became a bellicose and aggressive nation, seeking to avenge the humiliation, which they did when they managed to overthrow Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1985 after his successful war that toppled the Shah of Iran.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPoPt65_4ZuE2tM0VHCieU93ME8arZrZckw_R5CdIymIdRcTU_sSS6_i-KhMsjU4qK3iqgH645IVMxY2KzvvBKFPXDyd3o0g9qecFBlrCxe3wDfbSNaLprJALenas30d1_KXDzMH4G3abW/s1600/image1433835985-32743-PlaceID-0_s1000x650.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPoPt65_4ZuE2tM0VHCieU93ME8arZrZckw_R5CdIymIdRcTU_sSS6_i-KhMsjU4qK3iqgH645IVMxY2KzvvBKFPXDyd3o0g9qecFBlrCxe3wDfbSNaLprJALenas30d1_KXDzMH4G3abW/s320/image1433835985-32743-PlaceID-0_s1000x650.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brutal Middle Eastern dictator or Prohibition-era gangster wannabe? You decide!</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The rest of the Middle East continued to fight, first supported by one of the superpower blocs, then another, all in a quest to get a source of stable oil supplies. However, because of the wealth in oil, and long simmering nationalist and religious tensions in the area, peace in the region was fleeting, and by the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the US wanted little to do in the area, especially after the effort to occupy and stabilize Iraq in the 1990s proved expensive and costly. The valuable oil of the area was just not worth the price in lives, and soon efforts in the US and Europe turned more to trying to end oil dependence on the Middle East, which was still ongoing as of 2016.<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusion</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Plausibility wise, I give it a 6/10. The possibility that Israel would survive was a 50/50 chance in 1948, and would be less without the supplies it got from Czechoslovakia. Had the Arab states worked together, had the leaders of the nations sought to establish an independent Palestine instead of tearing off pieces for themselves, then Israel wouldn't have stood a chance. Even with the disunity, Egypt, Syria and Jordan were able to claim territory of the Palestinian Mandate that Israel would have to fight multiple wars in the next few decades to reclaim.<br />
<br />
But the thing about the Middle East, something that has bedeviled the rest of the world for decades, is that there just doesn't seem to be a solution that anyone will find satisfactory. Land, religion, oil, ideology, the wishes of the great powers; everyone has a hand and a say in the area, and no one can agree to anything. In an attempt at Middle East peace, someone will lose. And in geopolitics, no one likes to lose.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUzcg4ZN_xMdy92fTFplvhcX7MOkCcNeG04167i6tamxNqgQxJd3LDOIiEKMsuz-GNcDyyMZyJ_YaOhNFI_Z_wMf8ltW7lCTZ-NVbbd46QYvauu7fIlTuWVD79wFz7WvdQ0CsNUq9ljxb/s1600/Revised-Map-Of-Geopolitical-Anomalies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUzcg4ZN_xMdy92fTFplvhcX7MOkCcNeG04167i6tamxNqgQxJd3LDOIiEKMsuz-GNcDyyMZyJ_YaOhNFI_Z_wMf8ltW7lCTZ-NVbbd46QYvauu7fIlTuWVD79wFz7WvdQ0CsNUq9ljxb/s400/Revised-Map-Of-Geopolitical-Anomalies.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Let's face it: we already lost.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But what do you think? What would have happened had the nation of Israel never came to be? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992</a>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1867093162845423331.post-35090208972557910802016-10-03T01:06:00.000-05:002017-09-30T16:04:14.269-05:00AltHistory Scenario #24: What if the Russian Empire Never Fell?Time for another Russian Alternate history! However, since most of my previous articles on the largest nation on earth focused on the Soviet Union, instead let's take a step further back to the old Czarist Russian Empire.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Russia_Empire_1800-1900.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Russia_Empire_1800-1900.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>As if modern Russia wasn't big enough...</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The Russian Empire, by the end of it's life, was a bloated, corrupted, decadent and anachronistic society, with great wealth, great poverty, modern industry, overstaffed bureaucracy and ancient beliefs all commingling together. The fact that it lasted until 1917 is amazing itself, as the writing was on the wall decades before.<br />
<br />
However, Russia of the period was on the verge of altering itself: with industrialization running at full tilt and the lessons of the humiliating defeat in 1905 to the Japanese being absorbed, but the only way to prevent Russia from falling in 1917 is to make sure it doesn't go to war in 1914. Maybe later, say about 1920, but any time before that is a bit iffy. And the only way to prevent World War One from starting in 1914 is to not have Russia support Serbia, so that POD is out. And by 1917, with the pressures of a failing war, and Czar Nicholas' face on the defeat, it is apparent little would save the Czar now.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwhkG5fKsXBQ8g5BZ_edbMuBh-wW6n0U2zj0v54d0pTgrtAhpKcSnTVeogwSxr70PMooAbOyJNlwbun_XdevO4l4C9pnIiE1CvsEE_nMZpzMV85ZWQ6QU-XvVto_32Izimdri6zoVL65y/s1600/MV5BMTYwNTA4NzY1N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwODE1NzM5._V1_UY1200_CR49%252C0%252C630%252C1200_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwhkG5fKsXBQ8g5BZ_edbMuBh-wW6n0U2zj0v54d0pTgrtAhpKcSnTVeogwSxr70PMooAbOyJNlwbun_XdevO4l4C9pnIiE1CvsEE_nMZpzMV85ZWQ6QU-XvVto_32Izimdri6zoVL65y/s320/MV5BMTYwNTA4NzY1N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwODE1NzM5._V1_UY1200_CR49%252C0%252C630%252C1200_AL_.jpg" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Not even a totally historically inaccurate film. </i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
However, we can look a bit further back, to 1881, to the last great chance for a reformed Russia, to the grandfather of Nicholas II, Alexander II, the man that liberated the serfs and Bulgaria and expanded his empire into Central Asia and deeper into Asia.<br />
<br />
<b>Point of Divergence</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
On March 13 (or March 1 by the old Julian calendar Russia was still using), members of an nihilist terrorist group, using bombs, attacked the bombproof coach of Czar Alexander II. Although the leader of Russia wished to step out to see what he could do to help the injured cossacks that were guarding him, the driver of the coach quickly hurried away to the military review the Czar was attending. While originally it was seen as cowardly, the revelation that two more men with bombs were in the crowd and ready to kill the Czar later changed public opinion.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Attentat_mortal_Alexander_II_(1881).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Attentat_mortal_Alexander_II_(1881).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Yes, let's kill the man who might actually be able to address our grievances! That will totally convince them to give us what they want!" - Every anarchist/nihilist/nationalist assassin ever. </i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The committees that Czar Alexander II had officially announced that day to look into parliamentary reforms presented their proposal to turn Russia into a constitutional monarchy, though along the lines of the system the German Empire had established decades earlier: the czar would remain head of state, and appoint the leading ministers including the Prime Minister, but an elected Duma, elected every five years by a limited male suffrage determined by property and education requirements at first but slowly expanded over time, would have a hand in passing laws including managing finances and the military. The State Council, an appointed advisory body to the Czar, became the "upper house" of the new parliament and had to approve all laws as well, while the Czar had a final veto power. After careful deliberation, Alexander II accepted the proposals in July 1881, with orders to elect and assemble the Duma by November being sent out.<br />
<br />
<b>Outcome</b><br />
<br />
The Duma thus elected was a moderate body, with a strong Conservative bent but a vocal Liberal minority, and the first Prime Minister was the man who helped push the reforms, Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov. However, it was a first step, and the members took advantage. The more Liberal members, using guaranteed parliamentary privilege, began to agitate for more reforms, including more liberal trade, reducing the bureaucracy, cutting taxes, funding railroads and other infrastructure. Alexander II, seeking to strengthen the Russian nation, was willing to accept many of these plans, and personally sponsored laws that gave charters to new railroads and canals, setting up new schools to train the young and the former serfs, and many other proposals. However, more conservative members, especially those with ties to the nobility and large landowners, were hesitant to agree to these new laws, seeing them as attacks on their privileged position in the Empire. However, with the popular Czar supporting some of these laws, the Conservatives found little ground to stand on. By 1886, new railroads were beginning to be built all over Russia, allowing small cities better connections to the outside world, as well as access to raw materials that not only the booming Russian economy demanded but also the other great powers in Europe.<br />
<br />
However, one thing that the Conservatives and the Czar refused to consider was land reform to break up the estates of the nobles to give to the peasants and, perhaps most importantly, reduce the power of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was a beacon of reactionary thought in Russia. Extremist Liberals saw the Church and it's massive influence as an anachronism in the modern world, and wanted to move to a more secular society. The lower class was divided on this point: many wished to be able to own and farm the valuable land held by the Church, but were scared that they would be seen as heretics and be damned to eternal damnation. But as the years went on, and land reform continued to be ignored, peasant agitation increased throughout Russia. Many left their lands for the promise of the New World, but many others simply left the land and to the factories in the cities which promised better wages (though also a higher cost of living).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDUqJ1d2R_hOPwqUqISdsj_F1lM8qFFeRqXZzkFswkfNLEfbjm8o0t0qHAbJ1qUMotoshI2NeX_fGuzL0subCKnwb5GhZn2NxuZPysbHoApifyP7_R1anVYgInxIizJdfMTuq5baaERFqx/s1600/Modern-Times.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDUqJ1d2R_hOPwqUqISdsj_F1lM8qFFeRqXZzkFswkfNLEfbjm8o0t0qHAbJ1qUMotoshI2NeX_fGuzL0subCKnwb5GhZn2NxuZPysbHoApifyP7_R1anVYgInxIizJdfMTuq5baaERFqx/s320/Modern-Times.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>It wasn't all slap stick comedy in old-timey factories.</i></td></tr>
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By the time of Czar Alexander II's death in 1892 at the age of 73, the reform efforts had begun to slow, until only simple military acts that were desperately needed but also uncontroversial such as reorganizing the general staff, changing the curriculum in military schools, and making promotion merit based rather than at the whims of the Czar and his adivsors, as the State Council became more conservative while the Duma began to push more liberal and reformist, with several socialists being elected in the 1891 Duma, leaving the Czar in an uncomfortable middle position. But the accession of Nicholas II raised many questions as to what way he was going to go. His father, though in his forties, died of a sudden illness the year before, leaving the young, twenty-seven year old as Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias.<br />
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Nicholas II, though was woefully unprepared for the position, having received no experience in government or management at all. Because of this, Nicholas was reliant on his grandfather's ministers, many of whom were still reformist in nature. Nicholas' experiences in Britain and America and seeing democracy in action impressed him as well, and when a delegation of peasants and workers came to present a petition in the first weeks of his reign, the Czar carefully listened to them, and promised to look into it. While the petition wasn't enacted in its entirety for years, several proposals were: the suffrage was extended to all men by the 1901 Duma election, censorship was reduced, and taxes were overhauled and reduced.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgUcWoHFXbC9m6j37iPagDfo5apkt67fg5Z1rju2bVI7Bv1d9a3WBTOyMkD9qjZf5f0dSCfa-GChepFdcw-VuKcsieWbzQO0LFVJAI1YYTmn7hJb0GnPb51c8fB5AawHQJW3qpEVFsoto/s1600/Donald.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgUcWoHFXbC9m6j37iPagDfo5apkt67fg5Z1rju2bVI7Bv1d9a3WBTOyMkD9qjZf5f0dSCfa-GChepFdcw-VuKcsieWbzQO0LFVJAI1YYTmn7hJb0GnPb51c8fB5AawHQJW3qpEVFsoto/s320/Donald.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Not paying taxes is great, eh?</i></td></tr>
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<br />
It wasn't until 1902, with clashes between peasants and landowners reaching new highs that land reform finally came to the forefront. With the Duma's majority now composed of various members elected on the platform of land reform and helping the long suffering peasants, they began a series of political maneuvers to force the issue. However, the Prime Minister, Sergei Witte, was caught in a quandary. While he saw the benefits of giving the peasants their own land, he saw no way the act could be passed through the State Council, and he had no idea if the Czar, easily influenced by those around him, would accept the law or if he would veto it. With Duma members like Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and Alexander Kerensky, leaders of the Russian Socialist Party and the Liberal Party of Russia respectfully, threatening to not pass the annual budget of 1903 unless some action was undertaken, PM Witte was desperate. So he proposed a sweeping land reform act that would break up many of the largest estates, enough to guarantee every peasant family at least 250 acres of land, in return for each to repay a low interest loan in 25 years to the landowner which could be paid for in cash or in kind.<br />
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<br /></div>
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Before Witte even finished proposing the law he had written up without the help of either Ulyanov, Kerensky or even notifying the Czar himself, the howls and threats from all sides in the Duma chamber nearly threatened to cause a riot. The State Council vowed to never accept such a demeaning law, and Nicholas II was blindsided by his minister and furious. However, when the press reported the law, many peasants were ecstatic, some believing that it had already come to pass. When armed guards fired on peasants on the estate of one of the largest landowners in Russia who were simply offering their first instalment of the loan, killing 26, the outcry was even larger. Mobs and riots broke out all over Russia.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguPmPmrUptvQA3iAaPypb91KX_PxAKOXC3lYnZQbFMqlangafIiO-V90vNpbNuFzeNMN6IHN-nOfmh-HJKdAZJmPdyU24TCl7SOFeDW8AZFy9rVs9fsbA8sGkjTUQP5dZOC0Mm7sNYSKbt/s1600/russia_riots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguPmPmrUptvQA3iAaPypb91KX_PxAKOXC3lYnZQbFMqlangafIiO-V90vNpbNuFzeNMN6IHN-nOfmh-HJKdAZJmPdyU24TCl7SOFeDW8AZFy9rVs9fsbA8sGkjTUQP5dZOC0Mm7sNYSKbt/s320/russia_riots.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>So... not a lot has changed, huh?</i></td></tr>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
With Russia on the verge of a civil war as peasants began to attack the landowners and their families and burning their homes, Nicholas II, who had fired Witte the day after he proposed the law, recalled him a few days later, rescinded the order, and told him to get the law passed through the parliament before "the anarchist and the Marxist kill us all."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Using ever political maneuver he could think of, and with the support of Kerensky and, reluctantly Ulyanov, and the threat to ask the Czar to create enough members to the State Council to over ride the conservatives blocking the bill, the Land Reform Act of 1903 was passed. The Conservatives and even some liberals saw it as the death knell of the Empire seeing their land ripped apart by dirty peasants who were on the march to kill them all as the communists wanted, the vast majority of peasants were just happy to finally have their own piece of land. While extremist socialists, many of whom splintered from Ulyanov's party, demanding full state ownership of all the land, and some reactionaries demanding the death of every agitator, they were increasingly marginalized as public protests turned overnight from near riots to massive outpourings of gratefulness. </div>
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<div>
The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 further pushed the memory of the land reform into the back of people's minds as the public rose to support the Czar and the Empire, and recruitment soared. With a strong industry and an army that was well equipped and trained, the Russians managed to hold the line, preventing the Russians from seizing the city of Port Arthur and capturing Vladivostok. A daring maneuver to send the powerful Baltic Fleet half way around the world (with the aid of traveling through the British controlled Suez Canal) to reinforce the fleet that had been crippled by a surprise Japanese attack in the early days of the war resulted in an inconclusive battle that, while it didn't destroy either fleet, did force the Japanese to withdraw. With the aid of American president Teddy Roosevelt, the Treaty of San Francisco was signed in early 1906 when the war turned into a trench like stalemate in Manchuria. Japan managed to inflict some defeats, but wasn't able to win the sought after victory against an European power, so retreated to lick its wounds.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLd-MV2lbtMgyu8XM8vEq4-X-koIN-UZCfJiUIdy7d1xZKZEXj_l5VbIrlQtfDS_6iS0_Bf6grG4i5X65oyAECvD_hSPLSvxYUh948yk-YJ9EQGxUnNIbkw2lJiuXvvHUO8bXolpTwxFeh/s1600/pod79.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLd-MV2lbtMgyu8XM8vEq4-X-koIN-UZCfJiUIdy7d1xZKZEXj_l5VbIrlQtfDS_6iS0_Bf6grG4i5X65oyAECvD_hSPLSvxYUh948yk-YJ9EQGxUnNIbkw2lJiuXvvHUO8bXolpTwxFeh/s320/pod79.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Yay old timey racist propaganda!</i></td></tr>
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<div>
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<div>
The result of the war lead to serious questions being raised in the Duma as loyal and brave Russian troops were nearly defeated by an upstart Asian power. Many generals were cashiered out of the service, and young, smart officers took their place. When the war finally broke out in 1914, Russia was ready, and easily captured East Prussia in the first weeks of the war and bore down on Berlin. Only a desperate defense on the Oder River and the overextension of Russian supply lines prevented the war from ending in three months. However, the unstable situation in Germany that forced troops that were marching on Paris to turn around to stop Russians from capturing Berlin meant that by mid-1915, Germany was in no position to continue the war as reinforced Russian troops pushed on again in the spring and were besieging Berlin. The war lasted only 11 months, mostly thanks to Russia. Austria-Hungary collapsed, but Germany, still with Kaiser Wilhelm II in charge, became a Russian ally in the aftermath, though it was increasingly seen as a vassal.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The Russian Empire would continue to prosper for years, pushing their influence deeper in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. But in 1923, when a Russian ship exploded in the Dardanelles, the Russian Empire sought to force Ottoman Turkey, who stayed out of the last war, to pay compensation. Nervous of their former ally, Britain and France instead supported Turkey, and the Great War broke out, with Russia invading Turkey through the Balkans and the Caucasus. While Russia was strong, it wasn't strong enough to face all three nations at once (especially when the vengeful Kaiser Wilhelm, now just King of Prussia, refused to aid Russia. It took four long years, millions of casualties, and the unveiling of new weapons like the landship and poison gas, during but Russia was eventually driven from Turkey. However Nicholas II died and his son Nicholas III came to the throne during the war, but he wasn't on the throne long, as he was forced to abdicate in the aftermath of the war. Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine all became independent, and Russia became a republic, with Alexander Kerensky as first President. Russia has remained a massive, isolationist power: a strong military that could defend Russia, but rarely engaging in conflicts outside it's borders. The rise of Communism in Germany was crushed by the Russians, along with the French, but soon after Russia returned back inwards, turning into a mighty capitalist economic powerhouse.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik9VHWXwMz94yA02S7oxo_NHqUNehQgnY3MDL2zGak2gOybBry3ZiyFOc5rSvl0doyXRu-OIOnZ-Av-uqyLj8gQVnKrap-wE7-N94dg9cSmPLnWL1p7clWQdYtMoSGZ1Uj6Z354o92a7ji/s1600/MTI5NDc3MjYwMTIxMDUzNjYy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik9VHWXwMz94yA02S7oxo_NHqUNehQgnY3MDL2zGak2gOybBry3ZiyFOc5rSvl0doyXRu-OIOnZ-Av-uqyLj8gQVnKrap-wE7-N94dg9cSmPLnWL1p7clWQdYtMoSGZ1Uj6Z354o92a7ji/s320/MTI5NDc3MjYwMTIxMDUzNjYy.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And totally not ruled by a corrupt, megalomaniac who looks like a James Bond villain.<br />Please don't poison me...</i></td></tr>
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<div>
<b>Conclusion</b></div>
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Is this possible? If I had to rate it, I'd give it a 3 out of 10 chance. While Alexander II was a reformer, I'd think he would be bogged down by a Duma that would be wanting to take more than the Czar, the nobility and the landlords were willing to give. And if Alexander II died sooner than I said, then his son, Alexander III would have undone all of it. I decided to just skip Alexander III altogether, because this was a better story and outcome, wouldn't you think?</div>
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Also, would Russia go isolationist after such a war? I highly doubt it. But at the same time, this article was long enough, and I kinda wanted to wrap it up. Most likely a communist or fascist style government would try to take over, launching a new world war... but again, this article was long enough.</div>
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But what do you think? Could the Russian Empire have lasted longer? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/tbguy1992" target="_blank">@tbguy1992</a>.</div>
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Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12576024473014951233noreply@blogger.com1