(08-22-2017, 06:54 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(08-22-2017, 06:41 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: History shows that fascistic regimes start wars that democratic countries dread -- but that the democracies win. Twist America in 1940 into a fascist society (1915 Klan) and Germany and Japan into liberal democracies, and... our freeways in the East are called Autobahns, and some of the most common names for little girls on the West Coast include "Michiko" and "Sumiko".
Fascistic regimes greatly overestimate the likelihood of winning because of the 'ethnic' superiority of the people that they lead... to disaster. Once the democracies start winning, they establish themselves as the best of all possible worlds, and make sure that people who happened to be on the wrong side have no cause to resist.
You should be concerned about a possible Washington-Beijing Axis. What the Russians could have done in 2016, the Chinese can also do. Maybe they would be more subtle, supporting Americans more amenable to free trade without the knowledge of such people that the support for their candidacies has come ultimately from China. If the Chinese dislike the way America is going now, then maybe they will support Democrats.
So your response to the ridiculousness of your mental model is to drag out the Man in the High Tower and to claim that Vladimir Putin somehow, someway mind controlled the American people to vote for a man you don't like.
Americans became amenable to Donald Judas Trump by becoming impatient even with competent and benign government and falling for a demagogue. Demagogues, Right or Left, almost invariably get bad results. America is proving no exception. What should scare any conservative who may have thought that however objectionable President Trump would be he would at least be useful for achieving some 'desirable' ends -- like privatization, tax cuts especially to the benefit of the rich, greatly shrinking the welfare state (work or die!), and eviscerating the labor unions.
Donald Trump is a right-wing demagogue. Just think how amenable America will be to a left-wing demagogue should Trump fail and a left-wing demagogue offers himself as a solution for everything. Demagogic rule often leads to such failure of a Constitutional order that the Armed Forces often step in with a military coup.
...If you think my literary dream (The World Turn'd Upside Down) has obvious parallels to The Man in the High Castle -- then you are right. I believe that a fascist coalition would have a very difficult time in any effort to conquer America. As Yamamoto said, "There will be a gun behind every tree if we invade America". But I would do things a bit differently aside from turning villains and heroes as national entities around. First, because an occupation of the western US that had recently been Kluxist (and that ugly word would be as commonplace in that alternative world as fascism in ours) would be very similar to the scenario in The Man in the High Castle I would put the bulk of my story in the German and British zones of occupation. Because the KKK of 1915 had much the same objects of hatred as the Nazis it would be similarly murderous. American recovery, at least in the East, depends heavily upon using demobilized soldiers in building such big projects as the Charles-DeGaulle-Autobahn connecting Quebec City to New Orleans, the Walther-Rathenau-Autobahn that connects Chicago and Philadelphia, the Alexander-Kerensky-Autobahn that connects Detroit and St. Petersburg, and the Winston-Churchill-Autobahn that connects Boston and Miami. (Churchill becomes the Prime Minister of the UK after the unmitigated military disaster that traps most of the British Army behind German lines and hunger riots resembling those of Russia in 1917 lead to a revolution that the conservatives take over. The dictatorial lackey regime of William Joyce collapses, and most of the British Royal Family that has taken refuge in the independent Kingdom of India (think of how the Brazilian monarchy came into existence) returns. Vichy? Its figures collaborate with KKK America and often pay a lethal penalty for having done so.
War criminals of the UK and America will of course have their necks snapped after due process of the law.
The best American military figures of America, except most obviously Douglas MacArthur who spends most of the war as a guest of the Japanese safe from the murderous purge, are killed and replaced with figures willing to do the worst on orders from the Imperial Wizard. But those are ineffective top leaders of the Army and Navy.
The ally of the USA in the form of Stalin's Soviet Union has not been all that valuable to America. It has expended great amounts of materiel and cannon fodder in the horrible Indo-Soviet war. I can hardly resist my suggestion for a widely-circulating poster in which a tiger whose stripes spell out Resistance (Widerstand in Germany) is shown overpowering and devouring a Soviet commissar.
So where is the dispute at the end of the war? The Japanese have annexed Alaska as a prefecture of Japan, but that isn't a real problem. The Dutch East Indies annex Mindonao; having never undergone a brutal occupation by Japan, Indonesia is slower to undergo independence. The Japanese have set up a "Dominion of Oregon" that encompasses much of the western USA (Texas, New Mexico, almost all of Arizona and Louisiana, much of Colorado, and the parts of California south of the Central Valley have been transferred to Mexico as compensation for a horrible occupation -- you know the parallel.
Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Miami, and Tampa have rather impressive Carnival celebrations. Brazil is one of the occupying powers.
Major league baseball begins the 1947 season (and its revival) with Erwin Rommel tossing the ceremonial first pitch for a game that he does not understand... but he would not allow it to come back to life without the merger of pre-war Major League Baseball and the Negro Leagues. Phil Rizzuto gets the first pitch from Satchel Page as the Yankees face the Senators -- how different the world is.
In our world, Henry Kissinger interrogates Gestapo chiefs. In my fictional world he is Heinz von Kissinger, fair but lethally-efficient Inquisitor specializing in grilling persecutors of Catholic clergy. He is still Jewish, but the Catholic Church thinks it best that Jews prosecute those who persecuted the Catholic Church because Jews are more likely to clear innocent people than get wrongful convictions. A member of the American family loses one of its members to the Inquisition (yes, that is what the organization is called, and the implications are obvious!) for an unjust execution of a Cardinal and sundry other clergy, monks, and nuns. (Catholic Inquisitors specialize in prosecuting those who persecuted Jews).
There will be no threat of nuclear war. Germany and Japan have successfully tested nuclear weapons in the Sahara and the Australian Outback, respectively... but never got a chance to use them in warfare on any American city.
I have no intent of writing a pastiche of The Man in the High Castle. There is no need for one. Philip K. Dick did well enough. I expect to pay more attention to mass media and mass culture. The Axis Powers lost the war largely because of their atrocities and their brutal exploitation under Axis occupation.
Quote:Well at least I have my answer. You work on being clueless. Not even my politically brain dead mother bought the "Muh Russia" narrative. China has greater problems than a possibly hostile man in the White House. They have to deliver the goods to their people or face revolution.
As I said, Europe has no ablity to fight a world war, and Asia has no desire to (not even Mr. Kim).
Have you thought that if the Russians (whether their intelligence services or their Mafia) find Donald Trump no longer useful that they might 'off' him and those connected too closely to him? The KGB toppled the puppets that it set up in Afghanistan when they proved unreliable or ineffective. President Trump rides a tiger... excuse me, a bear makes a better analogue more suitable to a Russian motif.
What is the old saying? Those who ride tigers dare not dismount. Bears are similarly dangerous.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.