HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
They are in their 30s.
That Time I Became A Dictator Of A Small Asian Communist Nation
- Thread starter HeroCooky
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In other news, I'm going to say that as part of public sanitation campaigns, we make bidets standard for bathrooms.
Unlike the filthy americans, our butts will be washed clean.
Unlike the filthy americans, our butts will be washed clean.
Vote closed
HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
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I'm honestly a bit confused about what was supposed to have happened with that "recount." Like, what's the official story? Carter presumably had a vice president, and ran on a Carter-_____ ticket. He was apparently assassinated during his own inauguration ceremony, long after the votes had been tallied. "Rules are rules" would be a strong position, and "rules are rules" would seem to indicate that this is a very uncomplicated case of the Democratic vice-president-elect, whoever they may be, getting sworn in. American elections occur on a fixed schedule and are not subject to 'take-backs' even if an elected candidate dies after the election; that just means that a successor is slotted into the job by whatever procedure would normally be in place.
This was before forty years of Federalist society court-packing and ultra-conservative media saturation. "Rules are rules" was much more the order of the day, as opposed to "rules for me but not for thee," at least within the two big establishment parties as distinct from the wars the establishment waged on minorities.
Within the establishment, to be clear, there was a lot more actual procedural political neutrality. And of course this very much included bipartisan consensus on doing some very bad things! But it also included the idea that both parties had a legitimate right to hold power if they won under the rules, as opposed to (R)s believing that there's no such thing as legitimate authority figure with a (D) after their name.
...
Even assuming the election was very, very close, and I imagine it was, what's the Republicans' story here? Why is this an exception to the normal presidential succession rules, and why did Democrats go along with it without raising a massive stink?
You'd basically have to have the Republicans mount a successful self-coup to pull this off, "finding" votes for Reagan in states that had already declared their electoral slates for Carter. And given how the votes are counted, they'd have to somehow convince Congress to go along with what everyone looking in from the outside would be able to tell was a naked power grab. When I think a lot of the then-prominent Republican congressmen would just say "I'd much rather deal with having a Democrat in the White House for four years than pull obviously unconstitutional shenanigans in an attempt to appoint Reagan; let's take the long view here." Especially if Reagan had made no prior claims of the election somehow being a miscount before late January 1981, and then conveniently started saying there had been an error or a need to recount afterwards.
I find it extremely hard to believe that Reagan could pull this off after losing the 1980 election. Get Carter assassinated, I believe it, but make himself president after waiting until January, I doubt. And if he did, he'd start his administration with effectively zero legitimacy and with basically everyone and their dog knowing damn well what just happened.
Especially with this probably still being basically the Burger court as we know it. This isn't a very safe time for the US government to be running around blatantly trampling over constitutional procedures or civil liberties unless they intend to go full mask-off authoritarian and start shooting the political opposition, and I very much doubt that would end well for them.
This was before forty years of Federalist society court-packing and ultra-conservative media saturation. "Rules are rules" was much more the order of the day, as opposed to "rules for me but not for thee," at least within the two big establishment parties as distinct from the wars the establishment waged on minorities.
Within the establishment, to be clear, there was a lot more actual procedural political neutrality. And of course this very much included bipartisan consensus on doing some very bad things! But it also included the idea that both parties had a legitimate right to hold power if they won under the rules, as opposed to (R)s believing that there's no such thing as legitimate authority figure with a (D) after their name.
...
Even assuming the election was very, very close, and I imagine it was, what's the Republicans' story here? Why is this an exception to the normal presidential succession rules, and why did Democrats go along with it without raising a massive stink?
You'd basically have to have the Republicans mount a successful self-coup to pull this off, "finding" votes for Reagan in states that had already declared their electoral slates for Carter. And given how the votes are counted, they'd have to somehow convince Congress to go along with what everyone looking in from the outside would be able to tell was a naked power grab. When I think a lot of the then-prominent Republican congressmen would just say "I'd much rather deal with having a Democrat in the White House for four years than pull obviously unconstitutional shenanigans in an attempt to appoint Reagan; let's take the long view here." Especially if Reagan had made no prior claims of the election somehow being a miscount before late January 1981, and then conveniently started saying there had been an error or a need to recount afterwards.
I find it extremely hard to believe that Reagan could pull this off after losing the 1980 election. Get Carter assassinated, I believe it, but make himself president after waiting until January, I doubt. And if he did, he'd start his administration with effectively zero legitimacy and with basically everyone and their dog knowing damn well what just happened.
Especially with this probably still being basically the Burger court as we know it. This isn't a very safe time for the US government to be running around blatantly trampling over constitutional procedures or civil liberties unless they intend to go full mask-off authoritarian and start shooting the political opposition, and I very much doubt that would end well for them.
Honestly from m pov its more of a ignorance thing than stigma? most probably don't even know they can buy and install one let alone know what a bidet it.
HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
This is Wonderland. History bent itself to allow the things that are now happening.
In this specific case, it means that the US is undergoing a political meltdown of horrific proportions. Which includes the Republicans grabbing the presidency from the Democrats due to long-standing power plays and machinations.
If you want a spoiler for the future of the world? The EU will occupy the position the US has, but in reduced form. And the USSR won't fall in 1990. China is going to splinter. Africa rises. New Zealand will still be missing from half the world maps but vote for the Laser Kiwi Flag, and South America will have Communist Christians.
This is Wonderland. Not the Rabbit Hole.
Finally some adults in the room.
Tabascoheath
Unkempt, Evil-eyed Charlatan, and Pseudo-Mystic
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Fuck yeah. Laser Kiwi Flag FTW.
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- Mid-Atlantic
I'm just saying, there's no way this ends quietly or with Reagan being able to sit easily on his metaphorical throne.
Assuming the US's constitution and institutions at least roughly resemble the real ones from this time period, there are a lot of powerful people who know what Reagan and his backers did here. And who have the tacit support of much of the electorate who knows, too. And those powerful people won't like it one bit, because it sets a precedent for them, too, to be overthrown by naked force and blackmail and so on. Even Republican politicians who don't stand against things on principle are going to be looking and asking "and what happens if the guys who blatantly threw a presidential election to the losing candidate decide they have no further need of me to legitimize their actions?"
People like J. Edgar Hoover were not popular among the American political elite in real life for exactly this reason, and Nixon was basically told to resign by his own party's congressional delegations for exactly this reason. Because their habit of getting Up To Shit would inevitably make it too radioactive to protect them forever once their reputations came out in the open (as Nixon's did, and as Hoover's was starting to before he died of old age in '72)... And because their tendency to turn on other members of the political elite made it deeply uncertain for that elite whether it was even worth bothering to cover for them.
So I guess what I'm saying here is that I expect this to lead to a lot of even worse troubles in American politics, because while people will happily believe that a black communist killed Jimmy Carter, they won't reliably fall in line behind "and this is why Ronald Reagan is the duly elected president of the United States." With the result that Reagan (and realistically, his handler-advisors) will have a tremendous burden of political pressure and people trying to discredit or unseat them or just refuse to work with them as an illegitimate phony administration. Over and above any actual recessions or other problems they encounter.
Reagan's not going to be able to focus on advancing his own agenda to nearly the same extent, because of how much of a cloud he's under.
That's my prediction, anyway.
This isn't going to end well for Reagan, even if it will assuredly end badly for everyone else in America too.
HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
That is the general idea, yeah.
So I guess america will collapse from this
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Next Iron Tiger eh? We already have a sort of direct combat model. You guys thinking of maybe a support one? Maybe a long range IT?
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I figure there's some contingencies, and it depends on what you mean by "collapse." Barring HeroCooky putting his thumb on the scales to force a desired outcome...
I'd expect there to be a better than even chance that a more or less territorially intact version of the United States, probably still calling itself "the United States," continues to exist as a country in the year 2000.
Broadly speaking, the outcomes break out into three clusters:
1) Ronald Reagan tries to pretend that he's a normal president. This is what he excels at, because his natural skill set is in playing the role of a kind, jovial, Father-Knows-Best leader who knows what's right and may not always find it easy to do things but cares about real red-blooded Americans, goshdarnit. While there are plenty of people around him who are capable of doing dirty tricks and unconstitutional shit and so on, he himself has almost no practical value to his own administration except to be a smiling face... but to be a smiling face, you have to smile on people. In this case, well, Reagan can probably keep up the pretense of a normal president until 1984 without being impeached if he plays his cards right and, importantly, doesn't piss too many Democrats off and doesn't ask too much of them. However, the flip side of that is that he won't actually be able to do much to further his own agenda in the legislature except in ways the Democratic Party would approve of. Guys like Scoop Jackson and several justices on the Supreme Court are gonna be watching him very closely, and they still probably have a lot of power. So this results in a "diluted" Reagan administration, and it may cause Reagan's general strategy of making ongoing crises worse and crazier backfire on him. Whoever runs against him in 1984 is going to boomerang him with the same question Reagan asked the voters in 1980: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" And the answer will probably be "no," because Reagan won't be able to create the impression that he's doing good things for the country, but will be able to exacerbate ongoing crises.
2) Reagan tries to avoid the outcome (1) by pulling a lot of violent pro gamer moves. He tries to use extralegal and unconstitutional force to further entrench his power. He gets smacked down by the system because people are watching him, much as Nixon did; his vice-president (Bush or someone else) enters office in a cloud of complicity. Revert to (1).
3) Reagan at least temporarily succeeds with his gamer moves, effectively terrorizing or purging opposition to his authority to the point where he is blatantly trying to rule as "Pinochet with American characteristics" or something. This is the scenario where the US is likely to experience a civil war.
Only in the third case are we likely to see the US break up, but all three scenarios involve the US undergoing years of political instability and a bad case of "I want off Mr. Reagan's wild ride" before things get better.
This quest's USA has more in common with Lind's christian-taliban state of Victoria than OTL's USA. One of the series that we voted for Commiewood to produce had a marked focus on the homosexual relationship of the protagonist (or something of the like), the effects of this series was told from POV of a US citizen who kind of noticed that they were homosexual because of it and once their sexual preferences were discovered she ended up in a "re-education camp" (I don't remember if the camp was runned by any christian denomination or not).
There's also the fact that the KKK seems to be both stronger and more violent than it was in the 70's. They seem to not be satisfied with only commiting terrorist attacks against the african-american community and instead decided to also attack immigrant communities, non-christians and non-protestant christians. Given that no effort on stopping them has been noted we can safely assume that they have some kind of endorsement from the establishment.
The few glances we have taken at the USA seems to indicate that it is, generally speaking, more polarized, intolerant and totalitarian than ever.
There's also the fact that the KKK seems to be both stronger and more violent than it was in the 70's. They seem to not be satisfied with only commiting terrorist attacks against the african-american community and instead decided to also attack immigrant communities, non-christians and non-protestant christians. Given that no effort on stopping them has been noted we can safely assume that they have some kind of endorsement from the establishment.
The few glances we have taken at the USA seems to indicate that it is, generally speaking, more polarized, intolerant and totalitarian than ever.
That's just the modern US?
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Good thing we're already hard-selling Guangchou as Land of the Actually Free. 
Do you mean present day USA? Because (sorry if I wasn't clear enough) but I meant the 70s-80s USA which seemed more focused in refusing to admit the existence of gay people (and hoping they die off due to STDs which are, obviously, "divine punishment for their sodomy" or some other BS) rather than actively participating in a pogrom.
Edit: I would also argue that present day US hides their homophobia within their transphobia because transphobia is a more socially accepted hatred so the person would have to be transgender to fit the bill (by no means do I pretend to lessen the descrimination that anyone suffers due to who they are with this statement, all discrimination independently of their social acceptability or nature is reprehensible).
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I wonder if we can somehow steal Japan from America's sphere...
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No, and if we could we wouldn't want to. It would take a bonafide communist revolution in Japan to make it happen, and I don't think the conditions are there.
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Pity about that. We could use more friendly neighbors.
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Our geopolitical situation should count as some sort of hilariously bad malus.
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Could be worse I guess. We coulda spawned right next to Murica.
Cuba playing on Dark Souls difficulty.