McGoverning

Deleted member 81475

I know some have already been made way back when, and I've never quite gotten the hang of tacking a map on at the end, but I love this timeline and threw this together. I wasn't quite sure on the turnout numbers, but at least I found a picture of Dick with appropriately empty eyes!

iTTO6BN.png
 
With all the changes in the TL, we don’t even know if “That 70’s Show” will be created.

On its own terms, fair: many of the specific younger cast members will be butterflied like pretty much OTL!anybody born after about late 1973 at the very latest for people whose birth families' lives were among the least-preturbated by the POD and related events. (Though, it should be said, there will probably be some people especially within a few years' proximity of POD who may essentially be "clones" of OTL, that is to say they have the same name because their parents liked it so much, and they're a variation on broadly the same genetic themes as the OTL person with that name, but still in meaningful ways different, plus their "nurture" situation may vary from a-little to a-lot.)

But, in conformity with the Mark Twain Principle ("History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme"), it's quite likely that at some point by, yeah, about the millennium or so (based on typical cycles of nostalgia in modern-media-permeated societies) people will try to make nostalgic hay of the Seventies in cultural forms both dramatic and comic. So a show that serves the same broad thematic and cultural ends as OTL's That '70s Show could very well crop up. What they, and more drama-focused shows, choose to make of this decade, is interesting food for thought.
 
I know some have already been made way back when, and I've never quite gotten the hang of tacking a map on at the end, but I love this timeline and threw this together. I wasn't quite sure on the turnout numbers, but at least I found a picture of Dick with appropriately empty eyes!

iTTO6BN.png

Yay! Thanks so much. @Wolfram has done some really sterling "hard" statistical work on the turnout numbers and voting proportions based on my frankly back-of-a-napkin approach to '72. I've gotten much more granular as things move on from there, but you guys are doing great work in support. Very kind of you.
 
I've just started reading this.

I decided to put on a 1970s playlist as I read Chapter 2.

Would you believe 'War' by Edwin Starr kicked in as the McGovern-Johnson meeting happened.
 
On its own terms, fair: many of the specific younger cast members will be butterflied like pretty much OTL!anybody born after about late 1973 at the very latest for people whose birth families' lives were among the least-preturbated by the POD and related events. (Though, it should be said, there will probably be some people especially within a few years' proximity of POD who may essentially be "clones" of OTL, that is to say they have the same name because their parents liked it so much, and they're a variation on broadly the same genetic themes as the OTL person with that name, but still in meaningful ways different, plus their "nurture" situation may vary from a-little to a-lot.)

But, in conformity with the Mark Twain Principle ("History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme"), it's quite likely that at some point by, yeah, about the millennium or so (based on typical cycles of nostalgia in modern-media-permeated societies) people will try to make nostalgic hay of the Seventies in cultural forms both dramatic and comic. So a show that serves the same broad thematic and cultural ends as OTL's That '70s Show could very well crop up. What they, and more drama-focused shows, choose to make of this decade, is interesting food for thought.

I don't know if changes to the timeline could be covered in extensive detail after 1/20/1977 or 1/20/1981. Perhaps in broad strokes in an epilogue post, but this is a TL about a McGovern Administration. Still, it is your call.
 
It’s possible I just missed this, but what’s happened with regard to the “right to be different” plank of the Democratic platform? Has it foundered on the rocks of cultural-conservative opposition in the face of more concrete priorities like MECA, or has it led to actual policy outcomes? Or is it somewhere in between?
 
You know @Yes , we talked in this thread earlier about things we might get to see later regarding South Africa, and I just realized - the little experiment of Rhodesia is also very likely to be altered as well; given just how complicated the Bush War could get at times, should we expect changes here as well?
 
You know @Yes , we talked in this thread earlier about things we might get to see later regarding South Africa, and I just realized - the little experiment of Rhodesia is also very likely to be altered as well; given just how complicated the Bush War could get at times, should we expect changes here as well?

Perhaps it can be tied into the fate of Jeremy Thorpe. Did you know that he advocated bombing Rhodesia to cut off its oil supplies? With him as Foreign Secretary, that may likely occur.
 
Last edited:
I've just started reading this.

I decided to put on a 1970s playlist as I read Chapter 2.

Would you believe 'War' by Edwin Starr kicked in as the McGovern-Johnson meeting happened.

Kismet.

I don't know if changes to the timeline could be covered in extensive detail after 1/20/1977 or 1/20/1981. Perhaps in broad strokes in an epilogue post, but this is a TL about a McGovern Administration. Still, it is your call.
FWIW, I would read the hell out of a sequel thread (say one focusing on TTL's 1980's).

It's interesting that the two of you bring up these particular points. McGoverning, that is to say McGoverning qua McGoverning, is very much the front end of a broader, longer exercise in universe-building. There are probably other analogies I could make in other genres (maybe scifi, even alternate history itself) but the ones that come to my mind immediately (as a geek of my particular culture and generation) are over in fantasy. This is not in any way to compare myself to titans of the field like this, just the conceptual circumstances: the most famous works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire) were/are, for their authors, really just very-thoroughly-written codas to a much larger exercise in worldbuilding where a lot of the authors' own interests (most especially Tolkien's) lay with the earlier material. In my own case, McGoverning really kicks off, rather than closes, a much broader and more lasting (up close to the present day) TLverse where a lot of stuff has already been storyboarded, some stuff falls under the heading of Divers Other Projects within the legendarium (to borrow a Tolkien word - "allohistorium" would probably be better here) and there's just acres and acres of space for the author - hi! That'd be me - to play in. Some of that's already going on in a few niche areas, y'all might even get the occasional contemporaneous glimpse of that stuff (i.e. things that are going on in the deep background space/wider world of McGoverning offstage from the main narrative, or crop up once in a while as mentions by the characters. We'll see more of that as we go along.

And as to All That Later Stuff, well Lord-willin'-and-the-creeks-don't-rise as my mother's people used to say (it's the hillbilly insh'allah - hi nice readers from the NSA who just data-mined the fact I used Arabic there!) I will get to it. So there may be opportunities to enjoy that stuff, I just can't guarantee it'll be in any closer proximity of time to McGoverning than, say, recent GRRM stuff is for readers who picked up the first book back in the Nineties... :p:cool:

By far, this is the most educational T/L on here. I'm now a member and checked it out!

It's great stuff, isn't it, that archive? As for "most educational," I mean I try, but it really is the Careful Readers who elevate this thread. And, as always, thanks, friend.

It’s possible I just missed this, but what’s happened with regard to the “right to be different” plank of the Democratic platform? Has it foundered on the rocks of cultural-conservative opposition in the face of more concrete priorities like MECA, or has it led to actual policy outcomes? Or is it somewhere in between?

This is a very good question. Very apt question. We haven't seen a whole lot of that yet, and yes the McGoverners have concentrated much of their energy on matters where they can play the double-bill of getting things done that matter to them, themselves, and things that also matter to a broader constituency, both "loyal Democrats" constituencies and "for the good of the country" constituencies. But. They have not forgotten that stuff, and when the narrative gets over the hump of the midterms we're gonna visit some of those issues a good bit more closely.

You know @Yes , we talked in this thread earlier about things we might get to see later regarding South Africa, and I just realized - the little experiment of Rhodesia is also very likely to be altered as well; given just how complicated the Bush War could get at times, should we expect changes here as well?
Perhaps it can be tied into the fate of Jeremy Thorpe. Did you know that he advocated bombing Rhodesia to cut off its oil supplies? With him as Foreign Secretary, that may likely occur.
Anything's better than sending ships to one port and doing fuck-all else.

Another excellent topic! And, yes, as we get into Puttin' on the Brits a little bit down the way here, those issues very much will crop up. On one hand it's a live issue given the McGovern administration's antipathy to the white-settler regimes at the southern end of Africa, on another it's one of those things where Oor 'Arold would like to avoid distraction from the kind of lunch-pail issues that Oor 'Arold believes affect his personal electoral fortunes - and on yet another hand it's exactly the kind of issue where Oor 'Arold can set his Cabinet ministers to fighting amongst themselves thereby yet again keeping any of the more ambitious among them from eyeing his job...
 
While our questions are being answered, I seem to recall that at some point we discussed what was going on with NASA, did that go anywhere? My memory's a little hazy...
 
So, I take it from @Yes' reply that we are reading a grand historical epic, a tour de force that is, in its own inverse way, a mirror to one Tricky Dick Nixon. Nixon was rather well known for his almost frightening ability to speak to the geopolitics of nearly every nation, without notes, and be both engaging and dead accurate. Our intrepid author, meanwhile, takes us from India to Britain to the USSR to Israel and beyond, with a narrative style par excellence. Hence the comparison and eagerly awaiting the next installment.
 
So, I take it from @Yes' reply that we are reading a grand historical epic, a tour de force that is, in its own inverse way, a mirror to one Tricky Dick Nixon. Nixon was rather well known for his almost frightening ability to speak to the geopolitics of nearly every nation, without notes, and be both engaging and dead accurate. Our intrepid author, meanwhile, takes us from India to Britain to the USSR to Israel and beyond, with a narrative style par excellence. Hence the comparison and eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Once this is completed, it should be published as a book.
 
@Yes You’ve already noted that Spain will “democratize” later TTL; have you already decided whether it’s going to be Juan Carlos making a constitutional monarchy as OTL, or whether Spain gets a Third Republic?

If you are planning the latter, might I make a suggestion for a very small change? Have Prince Haakon or Norway (1973) be born a girl TTL. It would likely have literally no effect in TTL’s 1970’s but could pave the way for some thematically appropriate changes later.
 
Last edited:
Random thought: might any flapping butterflies find their way to a college campus in Ayacucho and change the fortunes of one Abimael Guzman?
 
Top