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What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?

I'd say sometimes he succeeds in doing so, sometimes he fails.

He came by his reputation for being good at it honestly, in that he can be good at it from an artistic standpoint... but that doesn't mean everything he does is good.
 
Britain literally spent two decades as a Republic, so I guess we live in a cringy timeline.

*looks around*

Seems legit.
 
The thing is, we're still capable of looking at other alt-hist timelines and saying "wow, that is even more cringey and edgy than what actually happened." Like, maybe there's a sane timeline out there, in which what actually happened to us seems as weird and ridiculous as S. M. Stirling's Draka timeline seems to us. But then, the Draka timeline DOES seem stupid to us, so we can't be the worst timeline conceivable. If we were, the Draka timeline wouldn't seem stupid, contrived, or ridicuterrible, because it'd be no worse than what already happened in real life.
 
TBF If you wrote a timeline of 2016-2018 and tried to get it published in like, the 1980's, you'd get laughed right out of the editor's office.
 
Vyslanté said:
"So, the Russians help Donald Trump to become president..."
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"So it's all a plot to make us think Communism isn't so bad after all?"
"Not exactly..."

Seriously though, if a time-traveller from this day and age were to mention to someone in 1980 that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination in 2016 it wouldn't be all that shocking. At that time he was an up-and-coming property developer who'd just taken over the family business, and had no black marks on his reputation other than having to settle a lawsuit over a discriminatory company policy that had probably been in force long before he made the board and somewhat exaggerating a medical condition to get out of being sent to Vietnam. It's everything he did in between that's the really unbelievable part.
 
Dark Mage said:
"And the Democrats conspired with Russian Intelligence to create a dossier against him . . ."
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This is BLATANT Jeb! Erasure and I won't stand for it!

> : <

(But seriously the Steele Dossier is just a bog standard opposition research project that was funded by both the Hilary Campaign (Indirectly) and conservative groups.)
 
Jake said:
Seriously though, if a time-traveller from this day and age were to mention to someone in 1980 that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination in 2016 it wouldn't be all that shocking. At that time he was an up-and-coming property developer who'd just taken over the family business, and had no black marks on his reputation other than having to settle a lawsuit over a discriminatory company policy that had probably been in force long before he made the board and somewhat exaggerating a medical condition to get out of being sent to Vietnam. It's everything he did in between that's the really unbelievable part.
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You forgot that Trump was a Democrat until 1987. Even after he changed people though he was a Republican in name only.

Hell, I though he was a Democrat in Republican clothing until the actual election.

Showed what I knew.
 
Dark Mage said:
You forgot that Trump was a Democrat until 1987. Even after he changed people though he was a Republican in name only.

Hell, I though he was a Democrat in Republican clothing until the actual election.

Showed what I knew.
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Reagan was a Democrat at first too. Him changing his party wouldn't have been at all surprising.
 
mesonoxian said:
I think that isn't inappropriate. I didn't know him, but a lot of people did. He wasn't a world leader, just a writer and friend they wanted to memorialize.
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See, I understand this gesture, but I don't see how that couldn't be accomplished with any number of alternatives: adding a "RIP Robert Perkins" to your signature, maybe making a dedicated thread for people to say their farewells, whatever.

But honestly, it doesn't bode well for AH's tolerance and inclusiveness as a community if a blatant Confederate apologist can be honoured by having a permanent award on the site named for him. AH has always had certain blindspots when it comes to being inclusive and tolerant, especially as regards people who write popular timelines. And, ultimately, I think AH should not be a community that caters to Lost Causers for the same reason it shouldn't cater to the views of other repugnant ideologies.
 
Hakazin said:
Plus, you'd think that people who evidently care about history wouldn't tolerate blatantly political revisionism.
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To be fair, at one point it was historical revisionism to disagree with the idea that the settlement of the Western United States was anything other than a glorious civilising mission that brought civilisation to the "savages". So the notion of historical and political revisionism, in and of itself, is not inherently wrong. Historiography is a contentious topic, to say the least.

The thing is though, the Lost Cause is a blatant falsehood that distorts the truth and ultimately supports one of the most nakedly racist countries in the history of the world. To say that the Lost Cause is rooted in bad faith is a gross understatement.
 
Heavy W. Guy said:
To be fair, at one point it was historical revisionism to disagree with the idea that the settlement of the Western United States was anything other than a glorious civilising mission that brought civilisation to the "savages". So the notion of historical and political revisionism, in and of itself, is not inherently wrong. Historiography is a contentious topic, to say the least.

The thing is though, the Lost Cause is a blatant falsehood that distorts the truth and ultimately supports one of the most nakedly racist countries in the history of the world. To say that the Lost Cause is rooted in bad faith is a gross understatement.
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Blatantly incorrect revisionism, then. My point still stands.
 
Jake said:
"So it's all a plot to make us think Communism isn't so bad after all?"
"Not exactly..."

Seriously though, if a time-traveller from this day and age were to mention to someone in 1980 that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination in 2016 it wouldn't be all that shocking. At that time he was an up-and-coming property developer who'd just taken over the family business, and had no black marks on his reputation other than having to settle a lawsuit over a discriminatory company policy that had probably been in force long before he made the board and somewhat exaggerating a medical condition to get out of being sent to Vietnam. It's everything he did in between that's the really unbelievable part.
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Pretty sure the fact that he was a blubbering imbecile was not a secret even then.
 
the atom said:
Pretty sure the fact that he was a blubbering imbecile was not a secret even then.
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Not as much as you'd think. This was before the unfortunate interaction between the Peter Principle and the Dunning-Kruger effect kicked in and killed his reputation: Trump was always a sub-par manager and too proud to admit it, but it took a while for him to sideline or run off everyone at the company with enough clout to rein him in...

You know, someone with more talent for this sort of thing than me should write a timeline where Trump from 1980 is ISOTed to 2016 and takes on his own future self in the primaries.
 
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