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A Second Sunrise: Taiwan of 2020 Sent Back to 1911

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"Ayn Rand Releases New Book 'It's Okay to Be a Piece of Shit,'" The Onion (May 1943)
  • Sidestory
    • "Ayn Rand Releases New Book 'It's Okay to Be a Piece of Shit,'" The Onion (May 1943)

    Geneva, Switzerland

    Today, author Ayn Rand (born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) has taken time off from debating teenagers half her age to release her new book, It's Okay to Be a Piece of Shit.

    The novel, which portrays heroes whose ideologies just happen to politically align with Rand, who react to the transportation of Taiwan from the Lost History's 2020 to our 1911 by capitalizing on the share in technology while also working to prevent the mistakes of the Lost History.

    Of course, in their case, "Prevent the Mistakes of the Lost History" includes preventing the Food and Drug Administration from being formed and opposing anti-smoking laws, or letting women vote.

    The novel contains several dialogues as well between her protagonist (who definitely does not share her political views) and several ideological opponents who serve as antagonists (who just so happen to have political views opposed to Rand).

    And in typical Randian fashion, her protagonist either wins the argument, is later proven right, or wins the argument and is later proven right.

    It's Okay to Be a Piece of Shit also includes a hundred-page filibuster in which the protagonist Andrew Ryan that just so happens to also politically align with Rand's own views. During said chapters, her protagonist (who is definitely not a stand-in for Ayn Rand and her political views) goes into the details about all of his ideology, how it is morally-justified, and how everyone who disagrees with Ayn Rand is wrong.

    The novel released to rave reviews from some parts of the literary world who see it as a "Return to Form" to Rand's previous works.

    Her critics, who can best be described as "Everyone who doesn't already agree with her, have a more-muted responses, including a "Who?" from F. Scott Fitzgerald, an "Isn't she the lady on YouTube who debates people half her age?" from H.P. Lovecraft, and an "Oh, she finally released her manifest?" from Ernest Hemingway.

    Despite the mixed response toIt's Okay to Be a Piece of Shit, Rand has already announced that she is writing a sequel with the working title of These Are My Political Views and Everyone Who Disagrees with Me Is Wrong.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Forgot to add the threadmark, but I figured I'd take a break and see how some non-war stuff is going on in this world.
     
    Reminder for everyone who doesn't want to look it up, she was 38 in 1943. So that means that was not hyperbole, half her age were literal highschoolers.
     
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    PossiblyEnos said:
    Reminder for everyone who doesn't want to look it up, she was 38 in 1943. So that means that was not hyperbole, half her age were literal highschoolers.
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    90% that those same teenagers who read the uptime reviews of her work, beat the shit out of her arguments, and she got butthurt 100% of the time.

    There are economics professors I know whom would sell their families, cars, careers, and own souls, to have a chance at reaming that idiot while she was alive BEFORE her book caused so much havoc.
     
    Sakuya's Butler said:
    90% that those same teenagers who read the uptime reviews of her work, beat the shit out of her arguments, and she got butthurt 100% of the time.

    There are economics professors I know whom would sell their families, cars, careers, and own souls, to have a chance at reaming that idiot while she was alive BEFORE her book caused so much havoc.
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    And that's why she sticks to debating teenagers and posting it on YouTube if she wins.

    Emphasis on the "if" part.

    Now, I've always argued against engaging with these people for multiple reasons:
    1. They will mock you on social media if you lose.
    2. It's not like they're going to post it on social media if you win.
    3. They're honestly just God-awful people to be around because anybody who makes their money pissing people off on the internet is fucking scum.

    But Ayn Rand strikes me as the person who would post a video of herself "DESTROYING so-and-so with FACTS and LOGIC" when her opponent either wins or is deliberately trolling her.

    Now that I think about it, there are probably people (in-story) who show up to her events just to screw with her.
     
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    ChrisProvidence said:
    And that's why she sticks to debating teenagers and posting it on YouTube if she wins.

    Emphasis on the "if" part.

    Now, I've always argued against engaging with these people for multiple reasons:
    1. They will mock you on social media if you lose.
    2. It's not like they're going to post it on social media if you win.
    3. They're honestly just God-awful people to be around because anybody who makes their money pissing people off on the internet is fucking scum.

    But Ayn Rand strikes me as the person who would post a video of herself "DESTROYING so-and-so with FACTS and LOGIC" when her opponent either wins or is deliberately trolling her.

    Now that I think about it, there are probably people (in-story) who show up to her events just to screw with her.
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    Dude.
    I'd be one of them.

    So would probably 2/3s of the original team that made Bioshock 1 & 2, if they'd gone through the Event.

    Hell, imagine what certain famed members of the NYSE would do, if given the chance to publicly tear into her.
     
    Okay, that's the last time I save my drafts here, because they got deleted for the third time.

    Going to take my third crack at this next chapter, but I'll see if I can get something for you guys in the meantime.
     
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    Information Regarding The International Brigades
  • Informational
    • Memorandum Regarding International Brigades, Nanjing Accord Joint Intelligence Forum, c. July 1942

    In short, the International Brigades refers to over a dozen brigade-sized units comprised of foreign volunteers to the Unionist cause in the Second American Civil War.

    What had originally started as a small movement of Great War volunteers to the Unionist side grew into a mass movement across social media as volunteers flocked to Unionist-controlled territory and supporters raised millions of yuan to purchase equipment for the volunteers.

    Volunteers seem to be a mixed sort that includes veterans of the Great War, post-war former military personnel, and civilian volunteers with little to no military experience. Ideologically-speaking, volunteers tend to lean on the left of the global political spectrum, though nonwhite countries (particularly those in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia) have seen more of a "big tent" support across the political spectrum.

    Units are largely-organized along national lines so as to minimize cultural and language conflicts. Due to the informal, volunteer-based nature of the International Brigades, the hierarchy is largely democratic, with officers selected through popular support from the members.

    While outright arming the International Brigades would be a political quagmire that Nanjing, Delhi, Tokyo, Hanseong, Bangkok, and even Paris, the units' reliance on donations allows for a more-covert (albeit less-efficient) means of supporting them that is already underway.

    Composition of the International Brigades, c. January 1943

    I International Brigade "Jean Jaures"

    Commander:     Antoine Reval
    Order of Battle
    1st French Battalion "Lafayette"
    2nd French Battalion "Thomas Paine"
    1st Iberian Battalion "Bernardo de Galvez"
    1st Italian Battalion "Giuseppe Garibaldi"

    II International Brigade

    Commander:     Thomas Lawrence
    Order of Battle
    1st British Battalion "John Paul Jones"
    2nd British Battalion "William Godwin"
    1st Irish Battalion "John Barry"
    1st Scandinavian Battalion "Vinland"

    III International Brigade "Spartacus"

    Commander:     Hans Beimler
    Order of Battle
    1st German Battalion "Peter Osterhaus"
    2nd German Battalion "August Willich"
    3rd German Battalion "Max Weber"
    1st Netherlands Battalion "Batavia"

    IV International Brigade

    Commander:     Josip Broz
    Order of Battle
    2nd Italian Battalion "Giuseppe Mazzini"
    1st Serbo-Croatian Battalion "Sava Kovacevic"
    1st Greek Battalion "Socrates"
    1st Romanian Battalion "Dobruja"

    V International Brigade "Ferid Pasha"

    Commander:     Yigal Peikowitz
    Order of Battle
    1st Ottoman Battalion "Constantinople"
    2nd Ottoman Battalion "Jerusalem"
    3rd Ottoman Battalion "Cairo"
    4th Ottoman Battalion "Mosul"

    VI International Brigade "Ashoka"

    Commander:     Mohan Singh
    Order of Battle
    1st Indian Battalion "Jawaharlal Nehru"
    2nd Indian Battalion "Chandra Bose"
    3rd Indian Battalion "Rani Lakshmi"
    1st Burmese Battalion "Aung San"

    VII International Brigade "Indochina"

    Commander:     Vo Nguyen Giap
    Order of Battle
    1st Indochinese Battalion "Hanoi"
    2nd Indochinese Battalion "Sai Gon"
    3rd Indochinese Battalion "Phnom Penh"
    1st Siamese Battalion "Chao Phraya"

    VIII International Brigade "Jose Rizal"

    Commander:     Ramon Magsaysay
    Order of Battle
    2nd Siamese Battalion "Mekong"
    1st Filipino Battalion "Andres Bonifacio"
    2nd Filipino Battalion "Antonio Luna"
    5th Chinese Battalion "Michael Chen"

    IX International Brigade "Sun Yat-sen"

    Commander:     Mao Zejian
    Order of Battle
    1st Chinese Battalion "Homer Lea"
    2nd Chinese Battalion "Wang Jingwei"
    3rd Chinese Battalion "Huang Xing"
    4th Chinese Battalion "Tsai Ing-wen"

    X International Brigade "Benito Juarez"

    Commander:     Augusto Sandino
    Order of Battle
    1st Mexican Battalion "Emiliano Zapata"
    2nd Mexican Battalion "Pancho Villa"
    3rd Mexican Battalion "Miguel Hidalgo"
    1st Centroamerican Battalion "Centroamerica"

    XI International Brigade "Simon Bolivar"

    Commander:     Juan de Jesus Franco
    Order of Battle
    1st Gran Colombian Battalion "Francisco de Miranda"
    2nd Gran Colombian Battalion "Francisco Burdett O'Connor"
    1st Commonwealth Battalion "Antonio Jose de Sucre"
    1st Caribbean Battalion "Toussaint Louverture"

    XII International Brigade "San Martin"

    Commander:     Euclidés Zenóbio da Costa
    Order of Battle
    1st Chilean Battalion "Bernardo O'HIggins"
    1st Argentinian Battalion "Jose Gervasio Artigas"
    2nd Argentinian Battalion "Manuel Belgrano"
    1st Brazilian Battalion "Ana Garibaldi"

    XIII International Brigade "Ozaki Yukio"

    Commander:     Karl Yoneda
    Order of Battle
    1st Japanese Battalion "Sakamoto Ryoma"
    1st Indonesian Battalion "Soetomo"
    1st Korean Battalion "Ahn Chang Ho"
    1st Australasian Battalion "Ned Kelly"

    XIV International Brigade "Amistad"

    Commander:     Achieng Aneko
    Order of Battle
    1st South African Battalion "Moses Kotane"
    1st East African Battalion "Mekatilili"
    1st Congolese Battalion "Joseph Kasa-Vubu"
    1st West African Battalion "Sengbe Pieh"

    XV International Brigade "Tadeusz Kosciuszko"

    Commander:     Vasil Kozlov
    Order of Battle
    1st Polish Battalion "Kosciuszko"
    1st Eurasian Battalion "Alexander Kerensky"
    2nd Eurasian Battalion "Nestor Makhno"
    3rd Eurasian Battalion "Yurii Hlushko"
     
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  • Informational
    • Out of curiosity, what will life be like for the average American after the Civil War? Also, how will this civil war impact future generations and the perception, as well as standing, of the United States on the world stage after?
     
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    johndoeofdenver said:
    Out of curiosity, what will life be like for the average American after the Civil War? Also, how will this civil war impact future generations and the perception, as well as standing, of the United States on the world stage after?
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    It's still up in the air, but here's the general idea right now:

    The average American's quality of life will be be at least at our current standard, c. 2024, if not higher. Probably ten to twenty years in the future, honestly.

    The problem is that there will likely be at least some insurgent movements for a while until they are hunted down. The same could be said of Russia, sure, but Russia's coup/civil war was shorter and lacked the legitimacy of the Nationalists' coup, so it's much more extreme in the US.

    In terms of economics, the US will not be as dominant in the 1940s and 1950s as it was in our timeline.

    The United States was one of the earlier modernizers in the sense that American industry had the money and resources to adopt modern technologies and methods, but the civil war will set them back a few years, if not a decade or more.

    Couple that with the economic dominance of East Asia who have had thirty years to rapidly catch up and surpass the US and Latin America filling the American-sized hole in the global economy, and the United States will need to adapt or catch up in order to regain their economic prominence.

    Both sides of the conflict have their own way to do this, with the Nationalists planning to reinforce the Monroe Doctrine to ward off Asia's economic dominance and Europe's ideological influence, while the Unionists seek to create a synthesis of Europe's technocratic efficiencies with Asia's technological strength to leverage the full strength of American industry and resources.

    In terms of geopolitics, it depends on who wins.

    A Nationalist victory would likely see the US try to reassert its influence in the Western Hemisphere via a stronger Monroe Doctrine that would put all of the Americas under their economic and political influence and keep both Asian and European influence to a minimum. Their theory is that they can leverage the resource and economic potential of the Americas to ward off the two and possible expand their reach into Africa.

    The theory is that while the Ultranationalists lost the Russian Civil War, the Nanjing Accord will be overstretched trying to rebuild Russia.

    Should this happen, we could see a sort of "Cold War" scenario happen in which the Nationalist-led United States sees the Americas as its rightful sphere of influence while they try to make moves on Africa. All-out war would likely be avoided, but the Nationalist-led US would back right-wing movements and wage trade wars as a counter-balance to European Radical-Socialist ideologies and Asian economic dominance.

    Or to put it another way, the Nationalist-led US would try to recreate their own version of Pax Americana, as in our timeline (but without the social progress), and they would see China as their main rival.

    Meanwhile, a Unionist victory would likely see the United States have closer relations with the European and Asian members of the Nanjing Accord, as Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, London, Berlin, and Delhi (among others) all have a vested interest in helping a friendly government consolidate its position.

    And while America would probably be weakened in the immediate aftermath of the war, I can see it having more even-handed relations with Latin America when it comes to economics and politics.

    Pre-Civil War Americans saw China as a sort of "Little Brother," due to the Chinese having a democratic revolution and embracing "Western" ideals and concepts like democracy and republicanism. Should the Unionists win, Americans would continue to see China as the Little Brother who has grown up into an equal.

    The crapton of military and reconstruction aid would definitely help.
     
    ChrisProvidence said:
    Should this happen, we could see a sort of "Cold War" scenario happen in which the Nationalist-led United States sees the Americas as its rightful sphere of influence while they try to make moves on Africa. All-out war would likely be avoided, but the Nationalist-led US would back right-wing movements and wage trade wars as a counter-balance to European Radical-Socialist ideologies and Asian economic dominance.
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    ChrisProvidence said:
    A Nationalist victory would likely see the US try to reassert its influence in the Western Hemisphere via a stronger Monroe Doctrine that would put all of the Americas under their economic and political influence and keep both Asian and European influence to a minimum. Their theory is that they can leverage the resource and economic potential of the Americas to ward off the two and possible expand their reach into Africa.
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    Thank you for your reply! But could you please expand on this more? I am a bit confused. Especially considering that I believe a Nationalist run government wouldn't last very long, due to internal strife and external hostile (to their interests and ideologies, at least) foreign nation-states, and it seems weird that they would have an interest in Africa of all places.

    EDIT: What I mean is, would a Nationalist-run government even run that long to make an impact or be stable enough or go the way of the USSR?
     
    ChrisProvidence said:
    A Nationalist victory would likely see the US try to reassert its influence in the Western Hemisphere via a stronger Monroe Doctrine that would put all of the Americas under their economic and political influence and keep both Asian and European influence to a minimum.
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    I can't see the Nationalist US having the political and economic strength to accomplish that. South America also got economically and politically such a heads-up compared to OTL it would be far harder for them to destabilise those countries.
     
    johndoeofdenver said:
    What I mean is, would a Nationalist-run government even run that long to make an impact or be stable enough or go the way of the USSR?
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    It's all hypothetical, but this is more like what they want to do.

    Kind of like how Russia and Japan tried to take slices of Manchuria in the earlier chapters, or how Germany, Britain, and Italy tried to support a right-wing coup in France during the Great War arc.

    My spitball-take is that they would probably be caught in a sort of stagnation where they try to recreate former glory a la OTL's Russia.

    PossiblyEnos said:
    I can't see the Nationalist US having the political and economic strength to accomplish that. South America also got economically and politically such a heads-up compared to OTL it would be far harder for them to destabilise those countries.
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    Good catch.

    I should have worded that better as something that they would try to do, instead of something that would happen.

    Pax Americana is something that these guys strive for, since the idea of an American-led world is appealing to them. For them, it is a means to stopping what they see as a "degenerate" influence on America and the world at large.

    Now, the issue is that any scenario in which they won would see them weakened from over a year of conflict and economically isolated. They would not have the means to force many nations into their sphere (either covertly, economically, or politically) for the foreseeable future, but I would imagine they would still try.
     
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    Figured I'd try using ARMA for some character screenshots, but I'll probably need to do some more editing in Paint.net to get it where I want to be.

    Consider this a proof of concept for now, since the advanced technology in ARMA 3 is about where the story's tech is right now.
     
    With the American split and falling behind economically would it be likely some Asian country or grouping would slip in and acquire Alaska rather than the US? That's a huge change that would echo down the line especially since they would know where the oil and gold deposits would be…
     
    ScottotheUnwise said:
    With the American split and falling behind economically would it be likely some Asian country or grouping would slip in and acquire Alaska rather than the US? That's a huge change that would echo down the line especially since they would know where the oil and gold deposits would be…
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    The Alaska Purchase happened in 1867. You've got your time machine set to the wrong year.
     
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