Ever'body might be just one big soul, well it looks that a-way to me
(State of Nations Part XXVII)
United States of America
Despite significant hardships, the US continues its upward economic trajectory in the postwar years, seemingly with multiple limbs tied behind its back. These drags include massive debt, major societal disruptions, and significant political violence. But the debts and leveraged investments of the US pay off, with the unifying and stabilizing world repaying loans and trust with profitable windfalls. The political violence dissipates in the face of a uniting people who find new national goals to strive for. And the societal disruptions, though hardly a smooth ride, provide opportunity to significantly improve standards and modes of living.
The nativism of the early Reagan years is thrown aside as the US is once again seen- at least in the domestic discourse- as the savior of the world, and therefore somewhat responsible for its continued well-being. This paternalism merges with long-present strains of liberalism and progressivism to clear the way for a massive uptick in immigration. Unprecedented numbers arrive from China and Korea, with smaller but still major waves from most of the rest of the unsteady nations of the world.
Though global immigration slows overall as the world continues to stabilize through the 1990s, the US still remains the country of first choice for most immigrants seeking to leave their home regions. European and East Asian immigration comes in a bubble that drops off significantly by the mid-to-late 1990s. Latin American immigration (seeing a general upward trend before the war) never recovers to previous levels thanks to significant opportunity in that region's major economies. The US only ever sees smaller waves from South and Southeast Asia, which are also plateauing by the turn of the century. Only immigration from Saharan and Central Africa is on the uptick.
The strongest effect this has is on the nation's once stumbling industrial cities. Urban areas that had been losing population since the 1940s and 50s see major growth, with entire ethnic neighborhoods springing up in every population center across the Rust Belt. Federal programs make resettlement attractive in these areas, with an entire public-private construction sector springing up to provide housing and infrastructure for the new arrivals and resettling citizens alike.
Roughly 20% of new immigrants join a different resettlement pattern: that being undertaken most commonly by internal migrants leaving mostly rural areas to swell the small towns and cities of the nation outside of major cities. For example, while the rural population of Iowa drops by more than 25% from 1985 to 1995, almost 80% of relocating Iowans stay in the state, most moving to places like Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and the Quad Cities. Many relocate within the same county, swelling the populations of county seats and edge towns around the smaller metro areas and micropolitan statistical areas.
As the cooling period comes to a close, some efforts are made to re-settle the temporarily untenable parts of the country. This effort is mired in political squabbling, with dozens of priorities competing in open Congress. The reality is, though, that the nation has changed. The new focus on local food self-sufficiency means domestic markets for unbroken leagues of farmland no longer exist. While some contribution to global food sufficiency is welcomed, the movement towards local production has advanced across the planet, meaning the full effort of the pre-war US agriculture sector is no longer tenable. Beyond that, only about 30% of former rural Americans want to return to their old lives, with even lower percentages of new and recent immigrants considering such a move. Still, roughly 6 million acres of farmland are returned to production in the hands of mostly family farmers and purely economic land cooperatives.
Speaking of, one constituency ready to occupy fallow farmland is the growing communitarian movement, with communities of all political stripes and makeups occupying close to 8 million acres of land redistributed by the government. Another factor is Indigenous Americans, with over 500 tribes growing their holdings by a combined 18 million acres, though the vast majority of this is actually land being taken out of standard commercial agriculture and developed as restorative ecology projects with some commercial components. These native-run wilderness sanctuaries and conservation areas are joined by 22 new national parks by the turn of the century, as well as almost 200 additional federally-protected units administered by the NPS. The symbol of this shift is the large-scale reintroduction of the North American bison, underway across 15 western states as of 2000.
One area where the US lags the developed world is in the power sector. Wind leases sell fast enough, but solar adoption is the slowest among wealthy nations. Nuclear regulation is also only cautiously updated after proofs of concept elsewhere demonstrate the benefits of next-gen thorium plants. Nuclear share of power stands at 24% in 2000, but is finally expected to take off in the next decade to achieve at least 33% by 2010. The US also maintains the largest number of "traditional" nuclear plants in the world, treating them as a strategic reserve to construct fissile weapons should the need arise.
With domestic power consumption skyrocketing in the new era, the lion's share is made up by increased fossil fuel production. This deepens future battle lines as the cooling period ends and the international consensus begins to focus on impending global warming. On the bright side, it means there's significant slack in the world's largest economy for growth in alternative energy. The conservative energy mindset produces positive results in another sector: the electrification of automobiles. Increased demand for petroleum in other sectors helps speed the transition to EVs throughout the 1990s. But even here the US is a following market. Whereas close to 1/3rd of all new car sales globally are electric by the year 2000, in the US this number is 1/4th.
However, the transformation of society has somewhat altered the relationship between America and cars. With living patterns changing, auto ownership is no longer the omnipresent right of passage it once appeared to be in the US. People are increasingly getting by with public transit, motor scooters, bicycles, and their feet. Two-car families no longer represent the median, and by 1994 51% of teenagers no longer receive their license by age 17.
The US catches up slightly to the developed world in terms of its rail network, with high speed corridors running on both coasts- from Seattle to San Diego in the west and Boston to Charlotte in the east. There are also two additional high-speed systems under construction as of 2000: one from Minneapolis to St. Louis via Milwaukee and Chicago, and the other running in a triangle loop from Dallas to Houston to San Antonio. More than 60 US cities have subway systems thanks to programs begun during the war, and another 70 light rail and streetcar systems are also in operation or under construction (there is significant overlap between the two lists). 41 states have existing regional rail systems, 33 of them expanding. Most of this is done thanks to slack in freight rail systems due to altered internal US trade patterns, but new right-of-ways are often carved out in highways as well.
Another sacred cornerstone of Americana sees a tremendous drop in status during the cooling period: the grass lawn. It is estimated that lawn cover in 2000 is less than 30% of what it was in 1983. Naked, purposeless grass has many replacements: infill development for booming suburban populations; neighborhood parks; personal and community gardens; low-water, native ground cover to save energy and promote natural habitats for native species. Root-dense plants that hold the soil through the windy, dry winters of the cooling period are the most common replacement. Private citizens are raising more chickens than at any time in the modern era. Fruit trees and bushes are planted in record numbers. Apiculture thrives.
The extra time devoted to food production and local food co-ops (which, as in most countries, replace commercial markets as the primary node of staple food distribution) is part of a broader trend devoting hours to community endeavors. Programs created during the war to keep people occupied and perform vital organizational tasks are modified into service programs that contribute to community development all across the country. Over 70% of the working-age population (and substantial numbers outside that demographic) work at least five hours a week in a wide range of public works, teaching, environmental maintenance, and civic beautification projects. These hours are part of the calculus used by state governments to support increased benefits such as vouchers for housing, transit, health care, utilities, and food programs.
The effort is possible due to a general reduction in working hours, with full-time redefined federally (and adopted by most of the private sector soon after) as 37 hours a week in 1985 and 32 hours a week in 1994. Six new federal holidays are added to the calendar by 2000 as well: Civil Rights Day (marked by the observed birth of Martin Luther King Jr.); Constitution Day (marked by the observed date of Congressional adoption of the Constitution); Exploration Day (marked by the observed date of the first lunar landing); Pursuit of Peace Day (marked by the observed date the Stockholm Treaty was signed); Earth Day; and the Friday after Thanksgiving.
The US remains outward-looking through the turn of the century, swimming in a heady mix of triumph, shared trauma, and a preoccupation with the nation's role in it all. The wary nation grows more comfortable with international legalism, seeing the war as a referendum on their way of life that the planet has come to accept as a unifying standard (not exactly how the rest of the world sees it, but many would say that's par for the course as far as the Yanks are concerned).
Military spending remains extremely high by world standards. The practical argument for this is that present US military commitments actually exceed those of pre-November 1983. Draw-downs in Central Europe and East Asia are more than countered by major garrisons in the former Eastern Bloc. This is before UN commitments are taken into account. While most other nations are drastically downsizing their militaries, the US confirms the majority of expansion plans greenlit during the war.
Beyond practicalities, the military expansion is a manifestation of the nation's fear: the fear of being taken by surprise again. It's the shadow projected by the light of the new internationalism and opening up that completes the American dialectic in this period.
It's only in the last two years of the Leland presidency that military budgets begin to see signs of vulnerability. Reductions of 6% and 2% in the federal budgets for '96 and '97 are not expanded upon as Republican Nancy Kassebaum takes office in '97, but she does maintain those cuts and continues to look critically at projects on the drawing board.
But even within the context of an expanding military, not every program is safe. The nuclear arsenal is stripped down to 1,000 warheads, freeing up resources that are redeployed elsewhere. The important role of air forces during the war keeps the funds mostly under the roof of the USAF, with major programs in electronic warfare, air transit, logistics, and long-range bombing (most notably the B2) being the largest beneficiaries.
The US Army goes through a major restructuring in response to the speed of the war and the need for increased modularity in responding to post-war threats. The conversion from combat divisions to brigade groups begins as early as the Schulz presidency and is completed under Leland. Changes in doctrine instill an even heavier focus on improved communication and battlefield awareness. The US maintains 52 active combat brigades by the year 2000, though this is likely to shrink somewhat in upcoming federal budget negotiations as active deployments finally begin to taper off.
While maintaining by far the largest fleet of submarines in the world, the Navy gradually reallocates resources from that arm elsewhere. The Navy is often the first-responder to crisis zones, and as new ships are developed the focus is on speed, staying power, and maximum self-sufficiency away from friendly harbors. The decision is made to once again remove the big gun battleships from service. Rather than the mothball fleet, the two recommissioned ships and two still-mothballed ships are converted into floating museums but maintained at a state of readiness to be fairly quickly recalled to service if needed.
Though the Marines maintain their divisional formations, they enhance their ability to deploy fractally, which helps them maintain a nimble presence in southern China where they are mainly deployed.
The US also maintains the largest space organization independent of GAEA, with NASA remaining the only outside service to continue manned missions to outer space. Originally set to cease manned operations, the US Congress finds the budget to keep a reduced manned program running. The organization hands over much of its observational and scientific remit to GAEA and reverts somewhat to the character of its early days: NASA is a hotbed for technology testing and proof-of-concept work, where the test pilots rule the roost.
While most of the shuttle fleet is transferred to GAEA, NASA maintains two shuttles as of 2000: the converted Enterprise and the Kitty Hawk. The latter is the last craft in its class. GAEA determines it has enough shuttles to suit its needs and moves to cancel the final vessel before construction begins. The US government steps in to foot the bill for one last shuttle- mostly to allow the manufacturers time to find new contracts before the workers are affected and that crucial aerospace capability is potentially lost.
Private outer space enterprises also come into their own in the US, though on a much smaller scale. These businesses rely on government subsidies, surplus military rockets, and orbital infrastructure developed for GAEA to remain viable for the time being. But reliable satellite launches occur from over a dozen commercial spaceports, mostly located near military and NASA launch sites. And the first three private, manned spacecraft systems are currently in development from three groups. Two are entirely American: the worker-owned Martin-Grumman Corporation, and a partnership between Civitas Space Corp, GE, and Boeing. The third is a partnership between the team behind the Concorde and Concorde II- Aérospatiale and British Aerospace- as well as US company Northrop and Canadian company Héroux-Devtek.
On December 28th, 1999, several hours before midnight, Ralph C. Smith passes away in his sleep after a bought with pneumonia. He is 106 at the time of his passing. Smith learned to fly as a young second lieutenant, instructed by Orville Wright himself. He fought against Pancho Villa and in World War I on the Western Front. He commanded the 27th Infantry Division in the Pacific during World War II, the last surviving American general officer of that war at the time of his passing.
Coming partially out of a long retirement in 1983 at the age of 90, he helps manage evacuation convoys out of central California and into the Sierras. He oversees the conversion of a deep mineshaft into shelter space and serves on the governing council of the community. After the war he returns to his home in the Bay Area more active than he's been in decades, giving seminars on war and the process of peace with a particular focus on his work in post-war famine relief in Western Europe. He consults on relief projects and helps push funding to those in need. He advocates for the new international system. He also converts his home into a triplex, taking in two families of refugees in 1985, one Chinese and one Korean. They become like family.
Smith's passing isn't particularly noteworthy, nor is it particularly obscure. His obituary is carried in most papers and his funeral befits his wishes and military protocol for a general officer. He is not the most generous spirit of his time, and conclusively far from the least. Some might say, if they were inclined to force a metaphor, that he could be said to exemplify the American Century. Beginning with promise, mystique, an air of adventure. Proceeding through a slog of middle years to controversy, hard study, effort, and sober choices. Drifting into a twilight of uncertainty. Snapped back into focus, drive, and purpose by one final terrifying crisis. And closing with growth and grace. It's not the worst metaphor; a square peg in a slightly rectangular hole.
What Ralph Smith's memorial on the crisp morning of January 1st will come to be known for in the future, however, is the last public appearance by President Ronald Reagan. Most doctors say his decision not to run for a second term gave him a reprieve from the early symptoms of dementia, setting in by the end of the war. He still slows down through the 1990s, never again leaving California after attending Richard Nixon's memorial in 1993. But the extent of the illness is hidden from the public. His yen to attend the Smith funeral comes out of nowhere, lights a fire under the household, and gets his wife excited for the prospect of a new wind for her husband.
But it doesn't last. As taps is played, Nancy notices the tears streaming down his face in a way that signals to her, who knows him so well, that her partner is no longer entirely present. With the end of the service she signals their agents to get him quickly back to the car. She says their goodbyes to the surviving grandchildren and Smith's late-adopted family, the two Asian American households who embody so much change and so much promise for the land Ron loves. The Reagans travel to the airport and then home.
Ron would survive that year, but in a way, he wouldn't. And the world moves one man further away from Ur.
America in this timeline is literally this song, and I love it so much.
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