Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)

[Curtain Jerker]

lol, that’d sure be ironic!

ITL you may - gasp! - be a swing voter!

Swing voter...what's that?

TBH I'd probably have been radicalized by the Goodell administration, especially if the second term is as much of a clusterfuck as you've alluded to. Especially compared to the "good old days" of the Redford admin.

 

[SultanArda]

"...most influential Black intellectual voice of the generation that followed Frederick Douglass. Washington's contributions to modern Black American culture in the United States are immeasurable; it was his obsession with advancement through education that created the wide push for literacy campaigns, math clubs run out of churches and the demographically disproportionate representation of Black Americans as lawyers, doctors, engineers and scientists, and he was one of many figures who helped bind Black Americans to the Liberal Party. [1]

Washington's death did leave a gaping hole in Black leadership in the United States, though, particularly as the ruling Liberals began to ponder how they would approach the question of looming emancipation. "Bookerism," as his proponents and detractors both called it, had been the ascendant point of view not only among Liberal grandees such as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, but also increasingly gained currency amongst Democrats, who had historically been less empathetic to Black concerns once north of the Ohio even as they were lockstep in opposition to slavery with the Liberals by 1915. With Washington and his advocacy gone, what would follow was for once an open question.

Conditions in Kentucky suggested something of a Bookerite laboratory, for instance. The tens of thousands of freedmen who had worked their way up there were met by educators, clergy and other humanitarians who made their way into refugee camps. The collapse of civil society in Kentucky and its place as a holding area for escaped slaves until the United States could decide what to do with them meant that in many places, freedmen filled those gaps. In war-ravaged towns like Paducah, or Louisville, or Bowling Green, it was suddenly Black faces that appeared when one asked for a grocer, or a clerk at the courthouse, or even policemen or in some cases doctors. Rapid, on-the-fly education for new roles made western Kentucky in particular something of a Black Mecca, a place where they rapidly stepped into new roles and jobs while some could still even barely read. As the war was now well to their south and Irregulars thus had to operate even further south - the United States Army marched on Little Rock at the same time that Washington's funeral was held in Philadelphia, for instance - Kentucky started to show the green shoots of what a postbellum Black-run society could look like, and Bookerite thinking seemed to have been validated and confirmed.

The "Kentucky System" was, however, not mappable more broadly for two reasons. The first was that it was ascendant in a very small area - occupied Kentucky west of Frankfort and north of Lexington - and was not visible to the millions of Blacks both free and in bondage who were further South, often moved even further South by force as the war entered its final, horrifying year. That it was concentrated in a small area that had been in American hands since mid-1914 by-and-large, and where Irregulars and the Home Guard did not operate, and was the focii of an admittedly small minority of Blacks while tens of thousands of others rotted in squalid camps dotted across Kentucky and west-central Tennessee, made it a decidedly minority experience that few were able to really see in action.

The other was that with Washington's death, more radical voices in the Union were now the decisive figures of Black thought, men like William Monroe Trotter or WEB DuBois, whose Niagara Movement had already been ascendant and whose "National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons" was founded in early 1915 as a pressure organization that looked more broadly than mere abolition, which was by now an almost entirely mainstream and uncontroversial view in the United States' political class. While the NAACP was practically incrementalist, if not counter-revolutionary and reactionary, by the standards of the true radicals that were emerging south of the Ohio River during 1916, it nonetheless advocated a considerably more robust program than Washington's plead for schools and colleges to educate Black men into white society, advocating for the dismantling of the white supremacist superstructure of the Confederate States as the end-game of the war above simply abolition and advocating for the civil rights of not only Black men and women but also Natives, Chinese and immigrants.

Booker Washington was dead, and with his death, the movement he had embodied for nearly thirty-five years rapidly began to pass him by before his body was even in the ground..."

- A Freedom Bought With Blood: Emancipation and the Postwar Confederacy

[1] I forget who, but somebody suggested to me that an interesting take in this TL would be Black Americans largely becoming the "model minority" in the US, particularly since they're in such smaller numbers, and I definitely want to run with that. It was happening IOTL at one point before stuff like the Tulsa Massacre and freeways got run through prosperous enterprising Black neighborhoods

I wonder what will happen to Oscar Stanton De Priest, someone who I can easily see as someone in the model minority category.
His parents were freedmen before the Civil War, ones with good jobs, for the South standards so if they manage to leave the Confederacy, I might see him as the Mayor of Illinois, followed by being a Governor, or a Senator.
(I think I mentioned him here again, right?)

 

[KingSweden24]

Swing voter...what's that?

TBH I'd probably have been radicalized by the Goodell administration, especially if the second term is as much of a clusterfuck as you've alluded to. Especially compared to the "good old days" of the Redford admin.

Yeah, if you grew up with Redford as Prez you’d probably look back very fondly on that period, especially his second term, and maybe particularly depending on what exactly your biggest beef with Ol’ Rog is (more on that later…)

I wonder what will happen to Oscar Stanton De Priest, someone who I can easily see as someone in the model minority category.
His parents were freedmen before the Civil War, ones with good jobs, for the South standards so if they manage to leave the Confederacy, I might see him as the Mayor of Illinois, followed by being a Governor, or a Senator.
(I think I mentioned him here again, right?)

You did indeed, and he’d def slot into that category

 

[thenextguy]

I’m still hoping more countries go socialist than just Chile. I know Belgium’s ruling class has enough armed force and enough of a lack of morals to crush a worker uprising with arbitrary amounts of killing (and if a revolution succeeds, the Germans and French will be happy to invade) but other countries also seem like something could happen in them. Especially poorer European countries like Sweden/Norway and Portugal (which probably have a lot of rural peasants getting ultra-giga-exploited by the landlords, akin to the problem Mao responded to in China.) Sweden in particular had a militant labor movement OTL which contributed significantly to pushing its elites to concede a welfare state. And who knows what will happen in the former Austria-Hungary? Not to mention India, the Philippines and Vietnam - though China seems to be foreclosed at the moment

 

[naraht]

I should emphasize that East Asia-as-LatAm is not meant to be 1:1 parallelism but rather a jumping off point, of course

But that is a good q regarding Denmark and we’ll just have to wait to see…

(Would anyone even want St. Pierre? And yes we’ll have some kind of “Atlantic Union” of the Canadian Maritimes, eventually)

Of course, but I'm wondering if Guatemala and Honduras ever had this level of Chaos iOTL (even at the time of the funding by the Sandanistas)
Denmark a wholly owned subsidiary of the German Crown...
I'm thinking the Germans will want it in the post-war treaties and the British just aren't comfortable with that, so they managed to put themselves in the end of CEW treaty negotiations long enough to buy it. (Though the primary effort to buy in the post war treaty will of course be Suez). This will of course led to the commonwealth of Newfoundland, Labrador, St. Pierre & Miquelon.

 

[naraht]

More or less. Probably somewhere between OTL Jews’ and OTL’s Asian-Americans (too broad a term but meant to just give the gist) I’d say. Both in terms of punching above their weight and landing somewhere between the percentages of those groups that vote D IOTL.

The big picture is that technocracy is accepted more broadly but comes to be associated more with the educated, elite liberal-conservative Liberals, which appeals to educated groups such as Blacks and, later, high-education immigrants like South Asians etc, while machine politics/patronage comes to be seen as something more populist/bringing home bacon, which of course appeals to WWC voters and white ethnics. This is part of the reason you won’t see as much of a Great Sort ideologically on racial, ideological or (increasingly) educational lines since this remains a major fault line of American politics, though there’ll be ideologically “pure” splinter parties on left and right if that’s your bag, especially once RCV comes into play.


This isn’t quite as Blursed a partisan arrangement as what @TheHedgehog cooked up in his wonderful “The American System,” but hopefully gets me close to that same feeling. You’ll notice that both these approaches - leaving either the technocrats or ward bosses in charge, depending on who you vote for - is a very hierarchical approach to governing

WWC?

 

[Dragonboy]

Great chapters as always!

 

[Curtain Jerker]

WWC?

White working class

 

[DanMcCollum]

There's something sort of ironic that assuming everything else stays the same that ITTL's version of me, a late 30s guy with a Masters, might be Team Liberal. Then again, I'm a white guy, (grand)son of non-Protestant immigrants who works for a Chicago government agency so 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, it's weird in this TL - I think we've got a situation where (somehow) I'd be even MORE of a Democrat. I'm of Irish and Polish descent, a practicing Catholic, left-center and grew up in a blue collar rural Polish community. With the ethnic communities and identities being stronger here and forming a major aspect of the Democratic Party ... I'm not so sure that my PhD would mitigate me much. Cinqo-verse me is just a dyed-in-the-wool Dem!!!!

 

[KingSweden24]

I’m still hoping more countries go socialist than just Chile. I know Belgium’s ruling class has enough armed force and enough of a lack of morals to crush a worker uprising with arbitrary amounts of killing (and if a revolution succeeds, the Germans and French will be happy to invade) but other countries also seem like something could happen in them. Especially poorer European countries like Sweden/Norway and Portugal (which probably have a lot of rural peasants getting ultra-giga-exploited by the landlords, akin to the problem Mao responded to in China.) Sweden in particular had a militant labor movement OTL which contributed significantly to pushing its elites to concede a welfare state. And who knows what will happen in the former Austria-Hungary? Not to mention India, the Philippines and Vietnam - though China seems to be foreclosed at the moment

Depends on what your definition of “go Socialist” is. Even Chile doesn’t have a fully Bolshevik future ahead of it, after all

Of course, but I'm wondering if Guatemala and Honduras ever had this level of Chaos iOTL (even at the time of the funding by the Sandanistas)
Denmark a wholly owned subsidiary of the German Crown...
I'm thinking the Germans will want it in the post-war treaties and the British just aren't comfortable with that, so they managed to put themselves in the end of CEW treaty negotiations long enough to buy it. (Though the primary effort to buy in the post war treaty will of course be Suez). This will of course led to the commonwealth of Newfoundland, Labrador, St. Pierre & Miquelon.

Guatemala from 1954 (thanks, Dulles!) to about 1990 was pretty rough; Honduras was always the most stable CentAm country OTL, which granted is a low bar to clear

Yeah, it's weird in this TL - I think we've got a situation where (somehow) I'd be even MORE of a Democrat. I'm of Irish and Polish descent, a practicing Catholic, left-center and grew up in a blue collar rural Polish community. With the ethnic communities and identities being stronger here and forming a major aspect of the Democratic Party ... I'm not so sure that my PhD would mitigate me much. Cinqo-verse me is just a dyed-in-the-wool Dem!!!!

Yeah, it’s not like a PhD magically turns you into a Lib. All we’re getting at here is that if you’re Protestant (whether white, Black, or Chinese) a college (especially a masters or whatever) degree probably suggests Liberal sympathies, and Catholics, especially more outwardly ethnic Catholics, probably lean Dem regardless of education level

 

[5000 Cows]

We've got the technocrat vs unabashed party machine politics that define the Liberals vs the Democrats, but I honestly wonder just how far into the future that will sustain itself. The US two party system stays two parties throughout its history in part by continually shifting with issues and concerns of the people over time so it's never in stasis.

IIRC we've been told that this system stays pretty rock solid at the very least through the 1960s. After that, will we see a paralell to OTL where the parties have drifted to a more "conventional" left vs right spectrum? I think that's going to seep in personally, but depending on the exact politics that transformation could take a *very* long time potentially. It's a tendency, not a rock solid divine mandate that OTL parties have drifted that way.

 

[KingSweden24]

We've got the technocrat vs unabashed party machine politics that define the Liberals vs the Democrats, but I honestly wonder just how far into the future that will sustain itself. The US two party system stays two parties throughout its history in part by continually shifting with issues and concerns of the people over time so it's never in stasis.

IIRC we've been told that this system stays pretty rock solid at the very least through the 1960s. After that, will we see a paralell to OTL where the parties have drifted to a more "conventional" left vs right spectrum? I think that's going to seep in personally, but depending on the exact politics that transformation could take a *very* long time potentially. It's a tendency, not a rock solid divine mandate that OTL parties have drifted that way.

Sorta. There’ll be that drift - like I’ve said in discussions here with @Curtain Jerker the Dems are by and large to the left of the Liberals, though with a fair bit of regional variation on the extent to which that’s the case - but you won’t see any of OTL’s extreme polarization, plus the Socialists and a future conservative splinter (mentioned in the EU) provide a release valve for the real ideologues.

Part of the reason I’m doing this is A) my aesthetic attachment to ethnic machine Dems and northeast Rockefeller Repubs and B) rather than a pure utopian US-wank sans the South, i instead want a US with a set of different and unique issues rather than those familiar to our OTL selves, most (though not all) of which flow directly from having the South and it’s unique hybrid of racial/religious mores inside the Republic

 

[Curtain Jerker]

I'm pretty sure we've talked about this but the Dems might be in for several cycles of trouble once the white immigrants who power their wins in the early 20th Century more fully assimilate into American culture. I'm reminded of a book I read at the tail end of undergrad (that apparently has a new edition) called "Working towards whiteness" which details how the same white ethnic groups (Italians, Irish, Jewish, basically all non-Protestant/Northern European) that were hated by the WASP majority in many places became Americanized and assimilated.

 

[5000 Cows]

I'm pretty sure we've talked about this but the Dems might be in for several cycles of trouble once the white immigrants who power their wins in the early 20th Century more fully assimilate into American culture. I'm reminded of a book I read at the tail end of undergrad (that apparently has a new edition) called "Working towards whiteness" which details how the same white ethnic groups (Italians, Irish, Jewish, basically all non-Protestant/Northern European) that were hated by the WASP majority in many places became Americanized and assimilated.

Yes. Thiis, because of the unique ways KingSweden has set this up with White Ethnics being an extra important part of the Democratic voting bloc, seeing the two party system drift with stuff like this in mind is what I really want to see going forward, and how both parties react to it.

Also, as a side note, I really hope that the freshly independent Texas gets its hands on the CSS Texas which has miraculously survived the war thus far iirc. Just having that being stipulated in the final treaty to rub salt into the wound.

 

[Mayukh]

I know Belgium’s ruling class has enough armed force and enough of a lack of morals to crush a worker uprising with arbitrary amounts of killing (and if a revolution succeeds, the Germans and French will be happy to invade)

KingSweden has himself said that one of the major headaches for him while planning CDM
is how to have the Revolutionary Wallonia survive.
He indicated that Revolutionary Wallonia may survive by playing France and Germany against eachother.

 

[DanMcCollum]

I'm pretty sure we've talked about this but the Dems might be in for several cycles of trouble once the white immigrants who power their wins in the early 20th Century more fully assimilate into American culture. I'm reminded of a book I read at the tail end of undergrad (that apparently has a new edition) called "Working towards whiteness" which details how the same white ethnic groups (Italians, Irish, Jewish, basically all non-Protestant/Northern European) that were hated by the WASP majority in many places became Americanized and assimilated.

We're also going to see a different kind of Americanization going on in this TL. The simplistic description is that Liberals favor the Americanization which focuses largely on cultural and linguistics (the sort scene in OTL), while the Dems support an alternative definition which focuses on civil engagement of ethnic communities but also works to maintain the more traditional communities. No, neither are going to get what they want, but by the arithmatic alone, the older ethnic communities are going to maintain a lot more cultural strength going forward (multi-generational bilingualism is probably going to be much stronger, for instance). This should all be a bit easier if we manage to avoid the worst of suburbanization we saw in OTL.

 

[Curtain Jerker]

This should all be a bit easier if we manage to avoid the worst of suburbanization we saw in OTL.

A weaker car culture with multiple companies going under before the GAW and stronger train network with the nationalizations should help prevent the exurban sprawl that we see here OTL.

 

[DanMcCollum]

A weaker car culture with multiple companies going under before the GAW and stronger train network with the nationalizations should help prevent the exurban sprawl that we see here OTL.

That's what I'm hoping to see as well. Less Suburbs are going to solve SO many issues.

 

[naraht]

A weaker car culture with multiple companies going under before the GAW and stronger train network with the nationalizations should help prevent the exurban sprawl that we see here OTL.

I'd want to see that applied to my area, but the Washington DC metropolitan is going to be *wierd*. I'm not sure OTL has any "artificial" capitals which have been abandoned.

The author has made it *quite* clear from the EU sports postings that Washington DC is not going to be a metropolis large enough to have major league sports teams.
Though the best term for that area may not be metropolis, it may be necropolis.
So the Washington DC Necropolitan area?

 

[Devoid]

We've got the technocrat vs unabashed party machine politics that define the Liberals vs the Democrats, but I honestly wonder just how far into the future that will sustain itself. The US two party system stays two parties throughout its history in part by continually shifting with issues and concerns of the people over time so it's never in stasis.

IIRC we've been told that this system stays pretty rock solid at the very least through the 1960s. After that, will we see a paralell to OTL where the parties have drifted to a more "conventional" left vs right spectrum? I think that's going to seep in personally, but depending on the exact politics that transformation could take a *very* long time potentially. It's a tendency, not a rock solid divine mandate that OTL parties have drifted that way.

This is part of the reason you won’t see as much of a Great Sort ideologically on racial, ideological or (increasingly) educational lines since this remains a major fault line of American politics, though there’ll be ideologically “pure” splinter parties on left and right if that’s your bag, especially once RCV comes into play.

I think there's lots of factors that will keep the parties from going fully into a "Great Polarization/Divide/whatever you wanna call it" type of ideological sorting ITTL. Not sure how long you can sustain a more personalist system somewhere as large as the US, but if you can have 3rd parties be stronger + RCV + no EC that is three big steps towards making that more plausible.

We're also going to see a different kind of Americanization going on in this TL. The simplistic description is that Liberals favor the Americanization which focuses largely on cultural and linguistics (the sort scene in OTL), while the Dems support an alternative definition which focuses on civil engagement of ethnic communities but also works to maintain the more traditional communities. No, neither are going to get what they want, but by the arithmatic alone, the older ethnic communities are going to maintain a lot more cultural strength going forward (multi-generational bilingualism is probably going to be much stronger, for instance). This should all be a bit easier if we manage to avoid the worst of suburbanization we saw in OTL.

With KingSweden's plans for the US transport system being what they are, OTL-style suburbanization just ain't happening. Too much going against it.