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

Nyvis said:
You're reading way too much into this. I was just stating what I think is the first thing I think makes Reagan bad from a leftist point of view. I never said this is the only issue. It's just a massive one that looms over all Reagan did. It's also worth remembering attacks on minority rights were pretty much omnipresent, while Reagan's economic policy was a sharp change in the country.

Also, a lot of minorities are economically disfavored, so quite a few would probably agree the economic issue has to be handled for them to have any hope at getting better.
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Responding to what you explicitly said is not "reading way too much into this", if you didn't mean that social issues are less important then economic one's then don't say it.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
Responding to what you explicitly said is not "reading way too much into this", if you didn't mean that social issues are less important then economic one's then don't say it.
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What I said was that, in regard to Reagan's legacy, economy is probably the first reason most of the left get up in arms. I may be wrong, but that's my perception.

You're the one who derailed it with an attack on my values.
 
Space Oddity said:
On most things it is that he was saddled with a Democratic majority congress.

The immigration stance was truly him. As was the 'selling weapons to Iran'.
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The selling weapons to Iran part was also straight up underpants gnomes in how utterly bugfuck it was.

For the record he wasn't just selling weapons to Iran. He was selling weapons to Iran, and for the first segment of the operation using Israel as an intermediary, to raise money for funding a bunch of right-wing death squads in Nicaragua called the Contras who were famous for doing stuff like shooting nuns and committing all kinds of crimes that land most people in the Hague. They also did fun things like smuggle drugs into the US to fund their operations, something the CIA was fully aware of and may have actively facilitated.

The entire reason he was doing this was because Congress, in one of the few instances of making such a decision ever in the Cold War period, went "these guys are too fucked up even by Cold War standards to legally support" and cut off funding for the Contras.

The number of ways Iran-Contra was profoundly fucked up boggles the mind. I even did an (incomplete) TL about a hypothetical where he actually was impeached over it. It might be fun reviving that one on here.

ON EDIT: Oh and I just remembered to add in that the whole scandal, due to guilt by association, was critical in guaranteeing Ayatollah Khameini's ascent to power in Iran at the expense of a more moderate potential successor who was, by all accounts, much less of a raging theocrat.
 
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Oh and I just remembered to add in that the whole scandal, due to guilt by association, was critical in guaranteeing Ayatollah Khameini's ascent to power in Iran at the expense of a more moderate potential successor who was, by all accounts, much less of a raging theocrat.

@LHB say what?!?
 
LHB said:
For the record he wasn't just selling weapons to Iran. He was selling weapons to Iran, and for the first segment of the operation using Israel as an intermediary, to raise money for funding a bunch of right-wing death squads in Nicaragua called the Contras who were famous for doing stuff like shooting nuns and committing all kinds of crimes that land most people in the Hague. They also did fun things like smuggle drugs into the US to fund their operations, something the CIA was fully aware of and may have actively facilitated.
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Don't forget the vast money-laundering operations that on at least one occasion saw a sizable amount of money lost because Fawn Hall--Oliver North's secretary--put the wrong digit in, so the funds wound up going to a random Swiss businessman.
 
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Sulemain said:
Oh and I just remembered to add in that the whole scandal, due to guilt by association, was critical in guaranteeing Ayatollah Khameini's ascent to power in Iran at the expense of a more moderate potential successor who was, by all accounts, much less of a raging theocrat.

@LHB say what?!?
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The guy who was associated with the whole mess was seen as contender for becoming the next Supreme Leader but he ended up holding the bag when everything blew wide open. It wasn't a good look to be taking weapons from the Great Satan no matter how badly needed the arms were.
 
LHB said:
The shift of immigration becoming a left-right issue is fairly recent and historically unusual. Up until Bush Jr. pushing for some sort of open immigration system (as broken and utterly dysfunctional as it is in practice) has been pretty bipartisan since 1965. From the Chinese Exclusion Act up until then cracking down on immigration also had bipartisan support. Before that there was pretty much no regulation and the only American political party that made an issue of it was the No-Nothing Party who mostly stayed on the fringes of US politics in the 1850s. The Republican Party and the American Right in general betting so heavily on anti-immigration policies is a very new thing.
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Um, you weren't in California in the mid-90's were you?

Google "SOS--save our state"--Rep Governor Pete Wilson's campaign for reelection in 1994. Nor was the sort of Latino-bashing that so sickened me in that campaign a new thing to my jaundinced California resident since 1983 eyes. Generic bile against Latinos was just part of the white conservative package in California as I knew it, as ubiquitous as separate drinking fountains in the Jim Crow South. English-only initiatives and so forth...my favorite response to that was the cartoon of "California grinds to a halt as millions struggle to think up the English word for 'taco!'" This was the 1980s. And it takes just a glance at California history to trace this back, well, to the Bear Flag Revolt and earlier actually.

Reagan looks "liberal" mainly because he was busy laying the groundwork for Bush the Elder, who took us farther right, to enable Bush Jr to take us much farther right, whom Trump owes for opening the way. It is all one big shared project and I hold the lot of them equally accountable.
 
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Shevek23 said:
Um, you weren't in California in the mid-90's were you?

Google "SOS--save our state"--Rep Governor Pete Wilson's campaign for reelection in 1994. Nor was the sort of Latino-bashing that so sickened me in that campaign a new thing to my jaundinced California resident since 1983 eyes. Generic bile against Latinos was just part of the white conservative package in California as I knew it, as ubiquitous as separate drinking fountains in the Jim Crow South. English-only initiatives and so forth...my favorite response to that was the cartoon of "California grinds to a halt as millions struggle to think up the English word for 'taco!'" This was the 1980s. And it takes just a glance at California history to trace this back, well, to the Bear Flag Revolt and earlier actually.

Reagan looks "liberal" mainly because he was busy laying the groundwork for Bush the Elder, who took us farther right, to enable Bush Jr to take us much farther right, whom Trump owes for opening the way. It is all one big shared project and I hold the lot of them equally accountable.
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Oh I'm quite familiar with that. When it comes to national trends immigration tended not to be a left-right issue and you could see Pete Wilson's really awful shit in the 90s as a hint of what was to come. Just because the party leadership were mostly in that consensus, dependent on historical shifts, did not mean the base followed said shifts. Wilson's campaign followed by Bush's immigration reform efforts being scuttled by members of his own party shows this and that the main momentum for the shift to a left-right split came from racial animus against Latinos really picking up steam.

It's also worth noting that became much more of a thing post-NAFTA when NAFTA wiped out Mexican small farmers, setting the stage for emigration into the United States.
 
Information: Official Staff Communication
  • Staff Post
    • official staff communication Do kindly cease the derailing. Unless you're talking about cringeworthy alternate history like having ancient Maya and Aztecs awaken in America to try to invade a Mussolini-led Italy, and having the misfortune of having actually read a book like that, then kindly leave the real history politics and decisions of the politicians thereof for other threads.

    Have a nice day.
     
  • Staff Post
    • There was one I remember from SB years ago by someone who made this AH universe where a fictional OC basically unified the German states in a few years, and then proceeded to make a bunch of advanced tech, and then conquer all of Europe in the late 18th/early 19th century including successfully invading Britain. Actually I wonder if it's still on there

    Alternate Historical Fiction

    Sure enough.

    (ugh, though looking at my old posts from 2005..)
     
    Harbinger said:
    There was one I remember from SB years ago by someone who made this AH universe where a fictional OC basically unified the German states in a few years, and then proceeded to make a bunch of advanced tech, and then conquer all of Europe in the late 18th/early 19th century including successfully invading Britain. Actually I wonder if it's still on there
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    I really hate when people make timelines based on video game logic, this sounds like Total War or Paradox wankery translated into a timeline.

    Honestly I don't see why people do this, just make a AAR for one of those games without the need to pretend that it's somehow connected with historical plausibility.
     
    I mean, I did a (short lived) ISOT using Vicky as the base.

    But I also made clear that it was basically ASB from the word 'go'.
     
    Which precedes to work hundreds of thousands to death in 'reeducation' camps for being the 'wrong class' while conducting mass executions of the intelligentsia while people flee the islands by any means possible all in the name of the workers while forming ministries of truth and love I imagine.
     
    Alane1 said:
    Which precedes to work hundreds of thousands to death in 'reeducation' camps for being the 'wrong class' while conducting mass executions of the intelligentsia while people flee the islands by any means possible all in the name of the workers while forming ministries of truth and love I imagine.
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    Well, sure. If Mosley's lot gets in charge, that happens. Otherwise, the UoB is fairly democratic and not terribly authoritarian, to my understanding.
     
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