I feel like that's a common thing in alt-history of any country- that if you just have them solve the problem(s) that historically ended them, they'd just continue existing forever.
I suspect it's related to the previously mentioned issue of Rome (or other ancient cultures) not just surviving in the new timeline, but surviving unchanged possibly even to the modern day. The latter actually leads almost naturally to the former; no changes, no new problems. There seems to be this assumption that if some key issue that historically led to the collapse of a culture was fixed, it would have just entered a steady state and kept on going as it was forever.
It has been argued that securing the Elbe or Vistula as a border would actually shorten the defensive lines, to there is that.
Get firmly into the habit of orderly successions, and one solves a lot of problems facing the Roman
It's pretty widely well regarded as far as I know. So while it's alternate history, I don't think it's accurate to lump it into a "most cringeworthy" catagory.
Fair enough, though Lex Luthor's global American conquest feels kind of cringeworthy to me personally?
Yeah. It's not "America is unstoppable", it's "Lex Luthor is just that incredible, and happens to live in America".
Yeah, when the catalyst for a different path is "this side has Superman and isn't afraid to use him for military goals" it justifies things being radically different.
Exactly; it's not even a stretch, Superman is just that powerful.
And, you know, space alien invasions, the island of the Amazons, and Brainiac all occured, which can also radically alter history.
Even the Red Son comics recognize that it would just be Utopia, right? Like, only started going downhill after Brainiac started getting his claws in Supes. After all, while we might say that absolute power corrupts, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, or even the Global Socialist Republic, isn't actually more power than just being The Last Son of Krypton. A Superman who also has the power to institute dramatic structural changes, basically at will?
Wasn't that Brainiac? This Superman was, at the beginning, to talk to Stalin's son who had just shot him and was really wanting to be the next leader himself, I feel like his default action, before Brainiac started to puppet him, would have been to have a sit-down with the dissenters, and either explain to their satisfaction why the problem was occuring, or change the policy. In the animated series, he kills Stalin outright with his laser vision when the extent of his monstrosity is revealed, to save peasants, I feel he'd go to similar extent to all the citizens of the SU. He is, after all, probably the only person to fully believe in the Soviet constitution.
A lot of rebels and domestic unrest are going to make Superman make some interesting decisions. He is the GenSec, after all, so if he intervenes on behalf of a black man in a KKK mob, it's not the hero of Truth, Justice, and the American Way telling them to stop, it's the leader of the uncontested superpower. Can he afford to do that? Can he afford not to?
I think that it's possible that capitalism might be more strident or reactionary as a result.
After the "five good emperors", the Economic Center moved from Italy to Africa.
There is a possibility that Islam will not exist - which is good for Mediterranean trade - on the other hand, all economic power will be concentrated in Egypt and Syria.
Well, at least in the animation. I believe that Brainiac did not exist in the original comic.
Brainiac was in the original comic
Oh, then I must have made a mistake. It's been a decade ago that I saw the original.
I imagine at least some of the territorial expansions followed this scenario, after all who is gonna stop him exactly?
Yeah, Kal-El as the one who leads the Russian Revolution is an interesting idea.
For extra fun he's an anarchist
