I could see Robocop being warped into a pro-police state film, with the titular character being an upgraded Liberty Battallion member who ruthlessly stomps out criminals and parasites.
Rumsfeldia: Fear and Loathing in the Decade of Tears
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They’d probably be portrayed as good guys (or at least the guys you’re SUPPOSED to think are good). Or maybe they’d be portrayed as traitors for not going along 110% with privatization (think TRW). Maybe Jones is working with Cali secessionists or something.
Bookmark1995
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I can imagine when people rewatch a lot of Rumsfeldian and CV movies (at least the ones that are well-acted), they will look at them from an angle that their creators never expected them too.
The characters intended to be "villains" might well be considered heroes to a modern audience, because they are seen as opponents of Rumsfeldia.
Birth of a Nation tried to demonize the carpetbaggers and the Reconstruction Republicans, but I'm inclined to think of the heroes in that movie as vile human beings. It shows you how messed up Lost Cause historiography was that DW Griffith genuinely believed he was telling the truth about Southern history.
One ITTL movie tried to demonize Nat fuckin' Turner, and portray him as a savage who was violating order and property rights-you know, FREEDOM. Most people who watch the movie (at least anyone who isn't a vile racist) will likely see Turner as the hero.
Another movie tried to portray
TRW’s CEO in one bit basically told Rummy he was going a bit overboard with deregulation and when Rummy didn’t listen, the company backed a coup. It’s not a matter of TRW being good but more they’re pragmatic and that rubs the ideologues the wrong way.
Hughes is I think worse overall.
I imagine they'd only do it for really, really prominent opposition figures. As you say, they wouldn't care about the average Joe fleeing - hell, in some cases they might like it that they're leaving. If, as an example, LGBT people fled the CVs, then...well, the CVs want to get rid of them, and if they flee it's getting rid of them just the same as if they're arrested.
I could only see either regime doing this for people who are very, very prominent...and as @Knightmare says, the logistics make it damn hard. It'd be far easier just to send assassins.
Because they have so far gone all-out in doing propaganda for both Rumsfeld and Christian Values and don’t even have any moments of “maybe this isn’t practical.” They’ll go all in on any vaguely right-wing ideology and back all sorts of horrors in the name of profit and winning the backing of the people in power.
It’s one thing to back a dictatorship purely out of a desire for profit-you’ll endorse plenty of horrors for financial gain, but you’ll want to avoid going too far and losing your gains. Hughes is happy to endorse the most self-destructive policies imaginable for short-term profit and the prestige of being the American Pravda.
Bookmark1995
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Oh, that is 100 percent true.
I mean, they just turned on Spiro, their former ringmaster, all because he said that the Constitution ought to be preserved.
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I wonder if Rumsfeld would still be alive in 2018 ITTL. If he did survive the Second American Civil War, could we even be treated to a version of Known and Unknown written from inside a prison cell?
Assuming he is still alive ITTL, I think I can see him writing a memoir of his time as President (and likely his time in politics before that, quite likely even his time under Agnew in 1973, as that ITTL was his career's turning point as he felt burned by Agnew), though most likely it would be really, really slanted and biased and it probably wouldn't be much in factual value. Assuming the drugs he likely was given after his "nervous breakdown" that removed him from office in 1988 do not cripple him mentally. Or that he isn't beaten to a pulp/executed by an angry mob sometime during the Second American Civil War.
Is it wrong that imagine him escaping and going all ‘Handsome Jack’, full blown megalomaniacal sociopath, and becoming a ‘warlord’ in the chaotic Mid-West?
Rumsfeld: You can’t even begin to understand my intentions. You think I haven’t had to make sacrifices? I brought order to this failure of a country.
Powell: Too many people died Don.
Rumsfeld: THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE DO!
Well they are about to experience America’s Lesser Mao. I mean if Nixon can be redeemed as a wartime leader, then anything is possible.
Nixon/Agnew: If we fight the soldiers of God, then we better ally with the Devil.
Then fast forward to the 2000's, where things have gotten even worse, and the American Nazi Party has taken over, led by Steve Bannon, David Duke, and some mysterious guy who welded metal onto his face so he could look like the Red Skull, since he believes himself to be the reincarnation of him. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Trent Lott lead the resistance, and are forced to team up with Douglas Coe to fight back.
Man, I dunno. Probably the trend gets subverted, when some radical ecoterrorists or something crop up, and Red Skull gets let out of jail to help deal with them, only for it to turn out that the ecoterrorists weren't quite as bad as Rumsfeld, and nowhere near as bad as Coe or the Nazis. And then everyone goes home confused or something.
The USSR finally puts the US out of its misery. The ensuing apocalyptic wasteland is better to live in than the last few regimes.
Also the idea of American Nazis coming to power brings up a possibility: will white nationalists carve out an ethnostate during this civil war?
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A long time lurker here, have been following this TL for a while. It's a fascinating read, really chilling watching the world slowly descend into pandemonium.
While obviously the world ITTL is dogged with fanaticism almost everywhere you look, it must be particularly unsettling to imagine what the outside world would make of America's fate. The notion that the world's most recognisable and seemingly impregnable democracy could be taken down from the inside and then be (quite literally) blown apart in the fashion that is portrayed here would definitely heighten people's pessimism towards democratic politics. Especially seeing as, only a generation beforehand, the United States was regarded as the guardian of democracy, particularly by many Europeans.
That's not to say that America wasn't subverting democracy around the world beforehand, or that apparently stable democracies haven't been subverted, but in this case it is a nation that for over a century sold itself as birthplace of modern democracy, with liberty and political freedom inscribed into its very creed. That fundamental tenets of the country itself were subverted would really come home to haunt not only Americans, but democrats everywhere, IMO. There certainly wouldn't be room for much complacency after all this has sunk in.
Also this is a nation that, within 20 years of putting human beings on the Moon, gets taken over by religious fundamentalists. A staggering reversal in such a short timeframe. I imagine there would be a decidedly left-ward shift in most Western countries after this, not to mention atheism in the wake of the CSA's atrocities.
While obviously the world ITTL is dogged with fanaticism almost everywhere you look, it must be particularly unsettling to imagine what the outside world would make of America's fate. The notion that the world's most recognisable and seemingly impregnable democracy could be taken down from the inside and then be (quite literally) blown apart in the fashion that is portrayed here would definitely heighten people's pessimism towards democratic politics. Especially seeing as, only a generation beforehand, the United States was regarded as the guardian of democracy, particularly by many Europeans.
That's not to say that America wasn't subverting democracy around the world beforehand, or that apparently stable democracies haven't been subverted, but in this case it is a nation that for over a century sold itself as birthplace of modern democracy, with liberty and political freedom inscribed into its very creed. That fundamental tenets of the country itself were subverted would really come home to haunt not only Americans, but democrats everywhere, IMO. There certainly wouldn't be room for much complacency after all this has sunk in.
Also this is a nation that, within 20 years of putting human beings on the Moon, gets taken over by religious fundamentalists. A staggering reversal in such a short timeframe. I imagine there would be a decidedly left-ward shift in most Western countries after this, not to mention atheism in the wake of the CSA's atrocities.
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