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Published: 2018-04-12 01:06:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 29390; Favourites: 150; Downloads: 244
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A neoliberal dystopia I worked with @The-Artist-64 on. He did most of the work, I just made the map and added a few bits to the text.2008. Congress was mired in political deadlock, the United States dollar was worth about as much as toilet paper, and the military was sinking in the quagmire of Iraq. The unemployed masses, the workers' unions, and trouble youth, the ignored turned their frustration toward the callousness of Wall Street. It seemed as if all hope was lost...and then, he came. The progressive, charming statesman, the champion of the American people, the Roosevelt[1] of his time: Barack Hussein Obama.
The reforms came at full speed, backed by a solidly Democratic congress. American forces largely departed from Iraq and Afghanistan, allowing for billions of dollars to be spent on the installation of universal health care, a pivot toward clean energy, the restoration of 500 acres of tribal homelands, and the establishment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The pinnacle of the second term came in 2014 with the foundation of the North American Union, a common market eliminating the borders between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Then, World War III hit.
It started in the South China Sea, then spread to Ukraine, and engulfed the already chaotic Middle East. Russia and China joined forces against America, the former seizing vast swaths of land in Europe. The EU mobilized, quickly forming an integrated military structure to combat the invaders. After one year, the New Axis had been defeated by a united front of allied powers.
Heeding the words of Joe Biden, governments are now held accountable by the international community, and the world has a say in every nation's affairs. This is a necessity, "to prevent another Crimea from happening". As supranational unions have been said to be the first step in eliminating borders, the world's policemen are determined to install a world government to unite the global village at last. The vehicle for this integration comes in the form of the One World Community, headquartered in the International City of San Francisco. While the Community is a multilateral organization, the NAU and EU provide political leadership to the globe, while deep green Brazil and India fill in as the other two superpowers on the Security Council.
World War III did several good things for the Democrats. The conditions of the war were such that the women and minorities had to take up the occupations held by the young white men off fighting in Eurasia. That disproportionate amounts of these young men died overseas made the survivors a minority, and left these groups with substantial power. Far right extremist movements, both real and imagined, continue to assert that these men were fighting for the wrong side. Already entrenched in the economy during the Depression, the government also seized unprecedented power over Wall Street during WWIII. Those corporations that didn't survive were gobbled up by government-sponsored ones, like Disney and Comcast, which became monopolies. The new global economy is oddly state capitalist; highly regulated, yet matched with a very "buy! buy! buy!" attitude. The line between these megacorporations and the government are now incredibly blurry. Even the 2nd Amendment has been revoked in an unofficial capacity. Indeed, the founding documents of the U.S. have been superseded by the directives of the One World Community. Whether or not further legislation will be undone remains to be seen.
The NAU has integrated most of Latin America, and it is an open question whether the NAU will remain dominated by the former United States or if its Latin American portions will form a cohesive political bloc enough so that they will dominate NAU politics. So far, the influx of Latin American (and Canadian) voters has shifted American politics much further to the left, to the point that the old Democrats seem like conservatives by comparison. Of course, Democratic political hegemony is maintained by a nigh-impenetrable system of corporate, governmental, and media network, but their hegemony is still reliant on a left-wing political narrative. The establishment may have successfully neutralized the political right as a terroristic force, but if a cohesive movement can attack the Democrats from the left....
The EU is further along on the road to political integration, and if it weren't for the NAU's clear leadership of the world, it would form the core of the One World Community. The EU is a fully federalized state, with national governments appointed directly by Eurocrats from Brussels. Democracy hasn't been done away with, yet. Elections are frequently held, until Brussels gets the results it wants, and then they are sacrosanct and the will of the people. Censorship, reliant on the ever-present threat of the far right or resurgent Russian nationalism, is ever-present, with police spending more of their efforts on enforcing speech laws than they do crimes such as murder or robbery.
The broken Russian Federation is under the control of a gaggle of pliant, Western-educated oligarchs, just as brutal and corrupt as their predecessors but with the decency to hide this activity. Russian nationalism is an ever-present threat, with many Russians refusing to accept the destruction of their country. Many groups have risen to try and reunite Russia, but apart from the brutal Russian Liberation Army, none of them are united enough themselves to actually fight EU and NAU occupation. The constant barrages by drones do not help.
Remilitarized Japan is among Washington's closest allies in post-war East Asia. The Third Sino-Japanese War was just a few naval battles in the Pacific, allowing an attitude that Tokyo is "unbeatable" to prevail. Nationalists are gaining traction with the government, particularly with claims that the OWC is subverting the Japanese economy to prevent its rise once again...claims that aren't far from the truth.
China is under a weak, "liberal" government, which is always on the precipice of collapse. Many areas of the countryside are under the de facto control of warlords, some dating back to the Third World War. Although the Chinese middle classes initially welcomed the fall of the Communist Party, it sees the new government as a weak puppet of Western interests which is not only not advancing Chinese interests, but is making the country go backwards. A new generation of nationalists hope to reverse this second era of humiliation, and they are growing more powerful by the day.
Africa, too, is being united under OWC guidance. South Africa is the model, the Republic having conquered Apartheid and now taking its multi-cultural inclusive ways north...nevermind the ever-louder voices calling for white genocide.
The UN International Zones, areas managed by the Security Council, are effectively modern day colonies. These include much of the Amazon (now an ecological preserve), some bits and pieces of the Middle East, Kashmir, and parts of China.
Only a few areas are outside of the OWC's control. The Islamic State resembles Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in some aspects, and a Mad Max film in others. The Islamic State only makes money through the sale of oil, although no government would admit to buying crude from jihadis. The Greater Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the world's last hope of resistance against the OWC, continues to cross red lines with impunity. Currently backing everyone and anyone who hates the central banks, and stable only because its huge Chinese refugee population is practically enslaved by the theocratic philosophy of Death Worship. Their fun collection of sci-fi tier WMDs would make invasion...unpleasant.
[1] Which one? Both of them.
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Comments: 57
AbleArcher1928 In reply to ??? [2018-04-12 23:47:28 +0000 UTC]
Well the "Atari Democrats" form half of what ottovonsuds calls the "yuppie vs reaganite infighting " with Bezos as the Yuppie and the POTUS as the Reaganite. It also makes me think of his Al Gore's World timeline where he states, "Meanwhile, the fact that Gore was working with DLC democrats plus republicans led to the GOP's business getting more of what they wanted -- Bush's policies got implemented but without OTL's sunsetting" and "With a vice president who practically campaigned for it on a regular basis, a war with Iraq under Gore's watch was probably even more inevitable than OTL's war under Bush. America's having a president who was more acceptable to both the Media and international opinion made the road to war smoother" In the comment section he stated, "[Bush] and Gore weren't different in practice with the only thing Bush didn't have is Gore's ability to get away with all sorts of stuff without media criticism due to partisan affiliation."
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OneHellofaBird In reply to AbleArcher1928 [2018-04-13 00:44:29 +0000 UTC]
the "Gore's Iraq" AH scenarios I always find interesting, especially a decade later; I see him around Bob Graham in terms of FP--Tomahawks rather than boots on the ground against a right bastard that we agree didn't do 9/11; Lieberman definitely ups the chances for Iraq but also of an isolated Veep at odds with the Administration, a sort of super-Thomas R. Marshall
90s Gore was often at odds with his bosses--he didn't know what to make of their "legacy" 2000, and even 2015-6 he waited until the last day of Philly to endorse Her Herness (while sweating heavily); he was a technocrat and knew that certain policies just couldn't last (mass incarceration, incinerating the safety net, sending jobs to China, the whole fire-sale economics); it also made him less of a Culture-War brawler--he might continue DOMA and DADT, but is also going to try and defuse it as an issue to keep it out of the GOP's hands ("see? the 'gays' are just like us--why, some of you have 'gay' relatives")
and unlike the Bourbon-Dem Clinton newcomers Gore was a legacy, part of a political family; ironically this makes him more vulnerable to "bedroom issues" with Tipper, like Mario Cuomo would've been; like Trump (ironically) he has this inertia that vaseline-toothed gladhanders like Clinton or Blair or utter puppets like Dubya lacked: there was a center of gravity--IRL 2018's Gore isn't shilling to bomb Syria like Howard Dean is (he went all Coulter!)
spinning off OttoVonSuds, another big factor is 9/11--Bush did ignore that OBL fellow while the Clinton WH was condemned as obsessed with him, and a thwarted attack is far far less politically viable than a real one; so that changes the theological equation (no fundie revival against the Muslim threat, no New Atheism invigorated by the ever-so-reasonable crusade against Iraq)
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AbleArcher1928 In reply to OneHellofaBird [2018-04-13 01:17:36 +0000 UTC]
It doesn't seem like you to suggest that there are actual differences between politicians who don't read Jacobin Mag! It seems strange to me that you would defend Gore as a rebellious person given how to Nader supporters in 2000, he was everything disappointing and infuriating about Clinton accept more so (see Al Gore: A User's Manual for background information).
Also, ottovonsuds has a Dean presidency in his No Iraq War scenario.
Anyway, what do you think about the "Yuppie vs Reaganite infighting" insight from ottovonsuds "2000 from 1967"?
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OneHellofaBird In reply to AbleArcher1928 [2018-04-13 20:01:50 +0000 UTC]
it's not really that divergent--he'd have been the Brown to Clinton's Blair, even if there's a bigger gap than between those two PMs; and Kerry's even more liberal than Gore--the surface problem with neoliberalism isn't so much that it's insufficiently towards the left, but that it's hypocritical and corrosive of governance
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Void-Wolf In reply to PachPachis [2018-04-13 03:30:02 +0000 UTC]
Hmm yeah that is a good point
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