Not ideal, but any look-up of Dropshot says the strategy was not to intentionally go nuclear. Notice I only had one bomb hit a sparsely populated part of the US. I did not give a detailed scenario, but as NATO efforts broke the command chain, the Soviets would have serious organizational trouble. After weeks of chaos, the event would culminate in a desperate Soviet last resort that would have minimal damage to NATO. Consider the allied dominance in nuclear power in those years. The upside is that well less than a million people would die and the Vietnam war that killed at least two million would have been avoided. My point was that to preserve the finesse of the forties into the late sixties, the counter-culture would have to be butterflied away. To do that, there is no Vietnam war. Better yet, no Soviet threat would bring a nineties-style sense of international cooperation, sort of the "End of History" book mindset.
Could a modern "traditional" society survives on the aesthetic sense?
You have to look at the root causes of the counterculture and the fall of traditional etiquette and formality in the sixties. A big one was the non-reconciliation of the Nuremburg Trials with the American aversion to ex post facto laws from its earlier history. If young German lieutenants can be imprisoned for following orders that violated the Geneva convention, then young American men should be able to do likewise and refuse the draft because Vietnam was “somebody else’s” war.
Yesterday, I posted about a Dropshot war in 1957 to end the Soviet Union. The response was that such a scenario was too severe and destructive. So, let’s back it up about four years. Say Stalin lives several months longer and mobilizes a strike force aimed at West Berlin and West Germany. The US engages a Dropshot response with conventional bombings and Soviet forces are stymied without reliable communication. Stalin might send a nuke and the bomber is shot down over a less populated area. No major cities are nuked and the USSR falls. The Soviet satellite countries become free of control and return to their pre-WW2 governance. Admittedly, the scenario is simplistic, but the importance is it ends the Cold War. Korea ends in a stalemate and US troops take a side trip to Vietnam to assure the same happens there. Without Soviet Support, the Viet Cong are willing to stay put, indefinitely if possible.
We must remember the old standards of etiquette remained intact into the beginning of the sixties. Take away Vietnam and the counterculture, and it could remain. The problem might be the pressure for civil rights, voting rights, new music, birth control, openness, etc. might not allow that order to stand. But remember, the jazz age and resistance to prohibition was a departure from earlier values as well, and some old formality remained.
Yesterday, I posted about a Dropshot war in 1957 to end the Soviet Union. The response was that such a scenario was too severe and destructive. So, let’s back it up about four years. Say Stalin lives several months longer and mobilizes a strike force aimed at West Berlin and West Germany. The US engages a Dropshot response with conventional bombings and Soviet forces are stymied without reliable communication. Stalin might send a nuke and the bomber is shot down over a less populated area. No major cities are nuked and the USSR falls. The Soviet satellite countries become free of control and return to their pre-WW2 governance. Admittedly, the scenario is simplistic, but the importance is it ends the Cold War. Korea ends in a stalemate and US troops take a side trip to Vietnam to assure the same happens there. Without Soviet Support, the Viet Cong are willing to stay put, indefinitely if possible.
We must remember the old standards of etiquette remained intact into the beginning of the sixties. Take away Vietnam and the counterculture, and it could remain. The problem might be the pressure for civil rights, voting rights, new music, birth control, openness, etc. might not allow that order to stand. But remember, the jazz age and resistance to prohibition was a departure from earlier values as well, and some old formality remained.
That’s actually something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time myself. I think it’s unarguable that the last century has seen a historically unprecedented entropy of cultural and social norms across all western societies. I’ve been wondering if this is just the result of inevitable historical forces and overall ‘progress’, or if there’s something else going on.
I actually think the main reason for this kind of cultural entropy/degeneration (or whatever else one might call it) is capitalism, at least in its contemporary ‘neoliberal’ form (i recognize that’s kind of a vague bogeyman term). Many on the right blame ‘Cultural Marxism’ and the infiltration of cultural institutions by leftists, but I think it makes more sense to put the blame on ‘Cultural Capitalism’, for lack of a better term. If you separate the production of cultural goods (movies, music, fashion etc.) from the profit motive, then it’s likely that you won’t see the kind of rapid aesthetic changes we have witnessed during the last few decades.
I actually have an old east-German encyclopedia from the 70s, which explicitly criticizes the fashion industry in capitalist countries for just manufacturing arbitrary ‘trends’ to make money. Obviously, the source is quite biased to say the least, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
It could also be argued that many of the other cultural and social shifts we’ve seen during the last fifty years (immigration, anti-discrimination and women in the workforce, for example) were merely measures to expand the reach of labor- and consumer markets.
A housewife for example isn’t ‘useful’ in our modern world, since she does things like housework, rearing of children etc. by herself, and thus outside of the capitalist economy – not to mention that she doesn’t pay taxes. However, a woman who works full time not only pays taxes, but is also an additional consumer (since she has her own income). She also has to pay others to take care of her children or even her home (nannys, daycare workers, housekeepers etc.), thus creating even more consumers and taxpayers. The same is true for immigration, since it expands a country’s consumer and labor base (not to mention its effect on wages).
So to have a world that retains the cultural, social and aesthetic norms of the first half of the 20th century you would likely need some kind of different economic system, at least in regard to the production of cultural goods.
I actually think the main reason for this kind of cultural entropy/degeneration (or whatever else one might call it) is capitalism, at least in its contemporary ‘neoliberal’ form (i recognize that’s kind of a vague bogeyman term). Many on the right blame ‘Cultural Marxism’ and the infiltration of cultural institutions by leftists, but I think it makes more sense to put the blame on ‘Cultural Capitalism’, for lack of a better term. If you separate the production of cultural goods (movies, music, fashion etc.) from the profit motive, then it’s likely that you won’t see the kind of rapid aesthetic changes we have witnessed during the last few decades.
I actually have an old east-German encyclopedia from the 70s, which explicitly criticizes the fashion industry in capitalist countries for just manufacturing arbitrary ‘trends’ to make money. Obviously, the source is quite biased to say the least, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
It could also be argued that many of the other cultural and social shifts we’ve seen during the last fifty years (immigration, anti-discrimination and women in the workforce, for example) were merely measures to expand the reach of labor- and consumer markets.
A housewife for example isn’t ‘useful’ in our modern world, since she does things like housework, rearing of children etc. by herself, and thus outside of the capitalist economy – not to mention that she doesn’t pay taxes. However, a woman who works full time not only pays taxes, but is also an additional consumer (since she has her own income). She also has to pay others to take care of her children or even her home (nannys, daycare workers, housekeepers etc.), thus creating even more consumers and taxpayers. The same is true for immigration, since it expands a country’s consumer and labor base (not to mention its effect on wages).
So to have a world that retains the cultural, social and aesthetic norms of the first half of the 20th century you would likely need some kind of different economic system, at least in regard to the production of cultural goods.
USSR rolls all sixes, takes eurasia and africa in WW2, takes the americas and australia in the 1950s leading to a hydraulic despotism centered in moscow ruling the planet.
Wait a few generations and you've got the de facto return of nobility, caste society, serfdom and absolute monarchy. North Korea on a planetary scale more or less.
Wait a few generations and you've got the de facto return of nobility, caste society, serfdom and absolute monarchy. North Korea on a planetary scale more or less.
One path: The allied D-day invasion of 1944 fails. Hitler holds France. Stalin’s Red Army takes full control of France, Germany and the Low Countries the following year. Information about the Holocaust is confined to that provided by British intelligence and can not be fully verified as so much of Europe is totally under Soviet control. Much of Europe becomes the Orwellian Eurasia. Oh yes, they have all of the German rocket science.
That does not necessarily mean the Anglosphere becomes Orwell’s Oceania. Without a European theater, the US defeats Japan before the Bomb is ready. The Bomb remains a military secret indefinitely. What kind of Cold War unfolds is speculative. But we can imagine industrial progress similar to OTL, with the US and Britain working to build Pacific Rim productivity. I will not speculate over the fate of Mao and China. In any case, the forces that created the counterculture of the sixties should be gone, preserving traditional conduct and order.
It could, but that would take naval and air power that the Russians did not have in the forties. Even Hitler couldn't invade Britain. The Soviets could take Europe with ground forces and it would be more than a decade before they could build a navy the size Khrushchev commanded. By then, we would have a stockpile of nukes the world has no idea exists.
Why a decade? With forced labor and a willingness to do vlad tepes-tier atrocities 5 year plans can mean just 5 year plans. That's with the industrial resourcex of europe, nevermind even just 5 years of order+time to start building heavy industry in china/africa/india.
The Soviet system was mired in inefficiencies. They were highly reliant on East German and Czech technology when those countries became satellites. With all of Germany, France and the lands in between, the Soviets will have an early lead and might move in to French West Africa for the mineral resources. Russians in India? Keep in mind you have the British and American navies, fresh out of a decisive Pacific war, and the ship yards will not be idle with a Soviet cold war settling in so soon. You are setting the stage for a war in the fifties where one side has newly-developed rockets and the other has nukes.
Right, the successful USSR nuclear program with it's one bomb every two weeks production rate while the US would be scrambling to try building copies of the V-2 rocket while budgetary constraints mean any talk of nukes is shelved.
You could have suits as the norm survive, if you somehow completely stamp out the counterculture of the 60s, but the aesthetic is going to change. Like you may wear a suit to dinner, college classes, movies, parties, white collar work, etc.... but I expect that fashion trends are still going to occur, because, as someone else said, capitalism. So suits probably look much much different than IOTL considering men’s formal wear hasn’t really changed significantly in the last sixty years. And as in the 40s/50s, there is still going to be what we’d call “preppy” “informal” wear for picnics, going to the beach, playing sports, working out, relaxing within your own home, etc. You could probably keep dresses as the main wear for women, but again, they will change, but we may just see the same trends as otl, because women’s formal fashion has changes quite a bit. Sadly subcultures will be suppressed and minority groups in the US would be forced to conform to the rest of society with respectability politics dominating civil rights, racial, and immigration if we want to keep the aesthetic going. Art Deco is going to be much more difficult, considering architecture is something that can’t just be forced though cultural suppression. You could have jazz stay as a more mainstream part of music, but rock n roll is really a evolution of jazz, I guess you could make rock n roll less rock n roll and more like jazz, but it isn’t really going to look or sound the same.
Honestly you’d probably just end up in a society that probably resembles a modern version of ths 50s or the early 60s more than anything. You could make things vaguely similar and much more formal, but that’s the extent of it.
Honestly you’d probably just end up in a society that probably resembles a modern version of ths 50s or the early 60s more than anything. You could make things vaguely similar and much more formal, but that’s the extent of it.
Rum and Coca Cola was a Calypso song. It was originally sang by a Trinidadian singer named Lord Invader. Also it’s quite baffling to me why it was so popular in the USA. It was explicitly Anti-American and is about Trini women romancing and having relations with American soldiers
(it was really just varying levels of disguised or blatant prostitution) and the anger from the locals towards the US troops because of it.
The Andrews Sisters/Their Studio pretty much butchered the song and most of it’s original meaning.
Keep in mind the US moved into the early sixties with significant changes in entertainment: television and rock-and-roll. The evolution of music would follow the rapid progress or recording technology. Television depicted the effects of racial segregation with game shows and commercials that featured gleaming new appliances with no minority participation. Elements of the rest of the sixties are already in place, but one game changer might be possible. Yet the dress codes remained intact until after 1964 or 1965.
I posted that statement months ago. Few realize how critical the Nuremburg trials were in the shaping of the younger Americans’ attitude against the draft and the Vietnam War. How do you get rid of those trials, or keep America completely out of the justice against Nazi officers? Maybe changes at Yalta and Potsdam could put the matter entirely in the hands of the victorious Soviets.
Is it possible to stop the Cold War? Maybe Stalin gets big-headed and around 1949, provokes the Americans to invoke a Dropshot assault without Nukes, organizationally severing the Soviet infrastructure. No massive World War III. It might bring the world of 1995 decades earlier. No Cold War, no Red Scare. Society develops without the nuclear holocaust model. Space probes are ways to forecast weather and enhance communication, not launch nukes. In such a world, you don't have a young generation openly protesting an obligation (military service) that their parents considered honorable. The need for military staffing is much less in terms of numbers and risk, and might not develop the negative stigma of the late sixties. It no longer has one today.
I posted that statement months ago. Few realize how critical the Nuremburg trials were in the shaping of the younger Americans’ attitude against the draft and the Vietnam War. How do you get rid of those trials, or keep America completely out of the justice against Nazi officers? Maybe changes at Yalta and Potsdam could put the matter entirely in the hands of the victorious Soviets.
Is it possible to stop the Cold War? Maybe Stalin gets big-headed and around 1949, provokes the Americans to invoke a Dropshot assault without Nukes, organizationally severing the Soviet infrastructure. No massive World War III. It might bring the world of 1995 decades earlier. No Cold War, no Red Scare. Society develops without the nuclear holocaust model. Space probes are ways to forecast weather and enhance communication, not launch nukes. In such a world, you don't have a young generation openly protesting an obligation (military service) that their parents considered honorable. The need for military staffing is much less in terms of numbers and risk, and might not develop the negative stigma of the late sixties. It no longer has one today.
Optical_Illusion
Banned
No cultural change at all is difficult.
I suspect if you want to avoid the particular sorts of mass change we saw, rapidly, though, you can "just" avert both the US Baby Boom and huge growth in higher education, and the associated correlate of huge rise in crime and drug use due to affluence and large youthful population.
If you can avoid a block of young persons who can "march through institutions" quickly through strength in numbers and an educational shortcut to the higher ranks and impose their preferences, you can probably keep the place of change a bit slower and less disruptive and keep the old inertia going a bit longer.
As well, higher educational institutions were probably breaking to tradition, since you had more young people socialized by peers and by schoolteachers who were rather eccentric to society and more mentoring by slightly older role models in work.
Probably slowing the roll out of contraception and more inertia in changes to divorce helps as well.
Finally, smoothing out the Great Depression and following high growth rates before that probably helps as well.
I suspect if you want to avoid the particular sorts of mass change we saw, rapidly, though, you can "just" avert both the US Baby Boom and huge growth in higher education, and the associated correlate of huge rise in crime and drug use due to affluence and large youthful population.
If you can avoid a block of young persons who can "march through institutions" quickly through strength in numbers and an educational shortcut to the higher ranks and impose their preferences, you can probably keep the place of change a bit slower and less disruptive and keep the old inertia going a bit longer.
As well, higher educational institutions were probably breaking to tradition, since you had more young people socialized by peers and by schoolteachers who were rather eccentric to society and more mentoring by slightly older role models in work.
Probably slowing the roll out of contraception and more inertia in changes to divorce helps as well.
Finally, smoothing out the Great Depression and following high growth rates before that probably helps as well.
The idea is not to avert the Baby Boom, progress of entertainment technology or the expansion of education. The issue I see is the great generation gap that separated anybody born before 1935 from anybody born after 1940. It was defined in 1967 when Mark Rudd said “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” No such gap has repeated itself since the fifties. The Baby Boom blends into Generation X which blends into the Millennial generation. You have overlap periods like Generation Jones and X-ennials. But the current generations blend into each other and are apparent when the age differences emerge. By the same token, the WW2 vets shared similar values with their parents.
The one-time gap schism that was defined in the sixties never healed. The old school simply had to retire away. Now, I was mentioning means to prevent the great gap from emerging. The progress in the fifties and sixties was inevitable. The Baby Boom resulted when Depression era couples and young WW2 vets started families at the same time and continued into the early sixties. To avoid the gap, I can think of three issues. First, avoid the fear of nuclear holocaust by eliminating the Soviet threat. Second, avoid the war protests by eliminating the conflict between the Nuremburg trials and ex post facto laws. Third, avoid the Vietnam War.
The one-time gap schism that was defined in the sixties never healed. The old school simply had to retire away. Now, I was mentioning means to prevent the great gap from emerging. The progress in the fifties and sixties was inevitable. The Baby Boom resulted when Depression era couples and young WW2 vets started families at the same time and continued into the early sixties. To avoid the gap, I can think of three issues. First, avoid the fear of nuclear holocaust by eliminating the Soviet threat. Second, avoid the war protests by eliminating the conflict between the Nuremburg trials and ex post facto laws. Third, avoid the Vietnam War.
Darzin
Banned
I think you could for sure keep some of this aesthetic there are places it has, people mentioned Japan but in ex-soviet places a lot of people will wear much more formal stuff then in the US the dress code at university is basically a suit. Most Tajiks will dress much more formally then people in the US. I'm not really sure how you keep that in the US but is absolutely possible to keep a more formal aesthetic.
I think you are underestimating the effect of technological change. It is not just the direct effects but also more subtle ones. Why did wearing hats go out of fashion? I suggest the spread of central heating and air conditioning combined with the difficulties of mass production of hats. Why did suits go? Again central heating and air conditioning at home work and while travelling combined with other clothes becoming cheaper so for the price of a suit you could have 4 or 5 outfits.
It is neither obvious or quick but it does have effects.
It is neither obvious or quick but it does have effects.
I consider political/cultural factors more significant than changes in technology. In the nineties, at an international summit, aptly-dressed Chinese leaders were offended by the way Mikhail Gorbachev wore brown loafers with a gray suit. Though quite different from changes in western dress codes, the Russians had generations of de-emphasis of Czarist formality. As they participated more in international business, Russians were given dress and etiquette lessons. While Americans abandoned much of the daily suit-and-tie, they retained a sense of when those traditional standards were appropriate.
Look at civil rights history and look at pictures of Rosa Parks on the bus. Look at the way people are dressed, in the hot climate of Alabama. Quite a few suits and ties, and it’s not just for a photo session. People dressed up for travel, even just on the bus. You have two conflicting schools of thought. One is that as civil rights continued to progress, the incentive to “dress up” might increase. The other is that racial segregation was in fact a dress code. Many hotels and restaurants had racial dress codes that said the waiters and porters had to be black while the customers had to be white. The logic might be that if you throw out one code, the others also lose their importance.
Look at men’s hair styles. Through the fifties and most of the sixties, the only proper cut for business was the “soldier short” look. Yet duck tails and “greasy kid stuff” accompanied longer styles in the fifties. The Beatniks stretched the styles with more casual dress and even beards, but their more reclusive nature made them less of a spectacle. Then, in 1964, the Beatles became a sensation with hair styles that were, for the time, irregularly long. Three years earlier, President Kennedy went without a hat, causing a loss in hat sales. Three years later, the generation gap would become established for reasons I described earlier.
Look at civil rights history and look at pictures of Rosa Parks on the bus. Look at the way people are dressed, in the hot climate of Alabama. Quite a few suits and ties, and it’s not just for a photo session. People dressed up for travel, even just on the bus. You have two conflicting schools of thought. One is that as civil rights continued to progress, the incentive to “dress up” might increase. The other is that racial segregation was in fact a dress code. Many hotels and restaurants had racial dress codes that said the waiters and porters had to be black while the customers had to be white. The logic might be that if you throw out one code, the others also lose their importance.
Look at men’s hair styles. Through the fifties and most of the sixties, the only proper cut for business was the “soldier short” look. Yet duck tails and “greasy kid stuff” accompanied longer styles in the fifties. The Beatniks stretched the styles with more casual dress and even beards, but their more reclusive nature made them less of a spectacle. Then, in 1964, the Beatles became a sensation with hair styles that were, for the time, irregularly long. Three years earlier, President Kennedy went without a hat, causing a loss in hat sales. Three years later, the generation gap would become established for reasons I described earlier.
Hat sales were already on the decline through the 1950s, driven (pardon the pun) in large part due to car culture.
Look at the roofline of this 1936 Ford Deluxe:
Now, look at the roofline of this 1957 Ford Fairlane 500:
With the '36, a man of average height could get in it with a hat on- with the '57, that's not happening. Sure, he could put it on the front seat, but not if his wife is there. The dashboard? It will probably fall off, and get in the way unless this gent specified the three-speed Cruise-O-Matic. The hat is most likely to get tossed in the back seat.
In my hometown of Toronto, the police force switched their headgear from the Custodian (Bobby) Helmet to forage caps in 1947, largely because the old headgear wouldn't fit in the new cars that were being ordered. There were actually public complaints about the shift, with some people saying that it made the police look less recognizable and too "Americanized"!
As for suiting, scare materials during WWII definitely percipitated a shift towards less formal clothing. For much of the early 20th century, for the upper middle class and up, there were several dress codes for men- and womenswear was even more complicated. The setting of the event was important, as was the time: an event that commenced before 6pm was considered "daytime", and commencing at or after 6pm "evening".A man of society would be expected to have the following:
Formal/Full Formal:
-Daytime: Morning Suit. A long, single-button tailcoat with a curved cutaway forward, in black. Trousers were striped, grey, and held up with suspenders. A white or cream-coloured vest would be worn, along with a long necktie, commonly black/grey striped. Shirting would be white and wing-collared. Shoes were to be highly polished Balmorals. A top hat would also be worn.
-Evening: "White Tie". This was probably the most restrictive order of dress. It required a black or midnight blue double-breasted, peak-lapel tailcoat, worn open-fronted. Lapels were finished in silk or grosgrain. Trousers in matching colour, held up with braces. A white vest, shawl-collared vest, fastened with studs worn regardless of weather, although it could be backless in summer. Shirting was invariably a crisp white cotton shirt with a solid or bib front, fastened with studs rather than buttons, and a fixed or detachable high wing collar, with a self-tied white bowtie. Shoes were highly-polished never patent leather Balmorals or opera pumps. A black silk top hat and white gloves were worn when outside; in winter, a white silk scarf and Chesterfield overcoat were also worn.
The next step down was Semi-Formal
-Daytime: Stroller. Essentially a shortened version of the morning suit, with a thigh-length, 3-button coat worn in place of the morning coat, and a bowler in place of the top hat.
-Evening: Tuxedo/Dinner Jacket. Similar to what exists today, but with more rules. It required a black or midnight blue jacket, fastened with a single button, with peak or shawl lapels finished in satin or grosgrain. In tropical climates, the jacket could be white or off-white. Polished or patent leather black shoes. Shirting was white with a pleated or bib front and wing collar, with self-tied black bowtie. A black vest or cummerbund was also worn.
Below that was Informal; the business/lounge suit. Even then, there were still rules. Black suits were exclusively for funerals or the help. Pinstripes were for business only; chalk stripes for entertainers and gangsters.
Then came Casual, which permitted sport coats and odd trousers.
At the bottom were workwear, athleticwear and loungewear, task-specific clothing that one would change out of when not engaging in a particular activity.
Even postwar, the shape of the suit evolved. The typical 1940s American suit had high-waisted, pleated and cuffed trousers with wide legs, a long jacket with low gorge and soft shoulders, and typically featured a short, broad necktie. The most exaggerated form of this style of tailoring was the "Zoot Suit". Postwar, most suiting is some expression of the three most common cuts. There is the American cut, which features generously-cut trousers, and a longer jacket with natural shoulders and minimal waist suppression. The "Italian" or "Continental" cut features closer-cut trousers, and a shorter jacket with highly-structured , heavily padded shoulders and a highly suppressed waist. The "English" cut fits between the two, with trousers that are neither tight nor baggy, and a jacket cut closer to the American style but more form-fitting and with more structured shoulders. The American jacket will usually have a single vent, the Continental none or two, and the English usually two.
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I graduated from college and entered the business world in 1975. Proper business dress was the shirt, tie and suit or sport coat. The more formal requirements were already gone. In the Midwest, the blue or gray requirements were very relaxed to accept green and brown patterns. But the big change was in school dress. We went to class (college) in shorts. I saw pictures of groups taken ten years earlier. I couldn't believe how many relatively formal-looking shirts and ties I saw. In high school, 1970 was the first year girls were allowed to wear slacks or pant dresses as opposed to skirts. If a girl was caught wearing a nonwhite slip, she was sent home for dress code violation.
By the eighties, I could see dress based highly on age difference. People born before 1940 dressed in one way; those born after 1950 dressed in another. Nowadays, everybody is more casual, with tattoos, body piercings and torn clothes on the younger. People stopped spending on suits and dresses, but clothing still racks up the bills. The hippies may be long gone, but the trend to casual dress never seems to have stopped. A person who was 20 when Woodstock happened is now 70. Many never entered the dress-up business world and those who did are back to casual.
By the eighties, I could see dress based highly on age difference. People born before 1940 dressed in one way; those born after 1950 dressed in another. Nowadays, everybody is more casual, with tattoos, body piercings and torn clothes on the younger. People stopped spending on suits and dresses, but clothing still racks up the bills. The hippies may be long gone, but the trend to casual dress never seems to have stopped. A person who was 20 when Woodstock happened is now 70. Many never entered the dress-up business world and those who did are back to casual.