The Star-Spangled Expanded Universe of "What Madness Is This?"
- Thread starter Napoleon53
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The Coreans in Carolina are going to get a focus at home and abroad. I need to write up the rooftop story soon.
It's more ironic when you know she suffered from hunger under nazi occupation of Holland and did some jobs for the resistance. Makes this TL Hepburn treatment of workers and slaves more painful.
Until what point alt-Hepburn considers herself a Pinnacle Woman/Steel Magnolia? It would be interesting (in a utterly morbid and nasty way) to see her talking about her inherent superiority.
Well, she'll never say she's a Pinnacle Woman. Talk like that is anathema down south way, in my opinion. She'd probably classify it more as being a natural born aristocrat
Oh, okay. I suppose I will have to wait to read her explanation of her "natural aristocracy".
But she really considers herself to be of the best "racial stock" or a "real southern belle"? Oh, well, the answers will come in the interview.
My understanding is that she is likely to consider herself as a Southern Belle, due to the aristocratic upbringing and how she embraces such title very well. Take this with a grain of salt though, since I also recall the Dutch in TTL are much more racist than OTL Dutch.
Wait a minute, if you add everything we know about what the RU and Caroline consider "special people" to be...
...does Carolina more or less have the same image in RU pop-culture as Britain does in ours?
...does Carolina more or less have the same image in RU pop-culture as Britain does in ours?
All "ideal men" in the Free World seem to have some kind of racial background. In the case of the Carolinians they like to think of themselves as somehow descendants of the anglo-saxon Arturian nobility and they compare medieval feudalism and peasants with southron style plantations and blacks.
Speaking about naziesque ideals of how people should be, what is the CoCorean ideal? An what kind of ideal would have the nipponese under MacArthur government? It´s sad we haven´t seen Douglas MacArthur Holy Nippon yet. I hope Napo will do something with it in the late years of Steele´s period.
For my part I would like to see more about Illuminist Russia. What I imagine them is that they would be:
A more efficient version of USSR, with capitalism and science being the main goal of development
Strong industrial base, built on a combination of experts and forced labor.
Pro-natalism? For the spread of Illuminism worldwide!!
If I could get green light from these ideas, I will write about IPRR.
A more efficient version of USSR, with capitalism and science being the main goal of development
Strong industrial base, built on a combination of experts and forced labor.
Pro-natalism? For the spread of Illuminism worldwide!!
If I could get green light from these ideas, I will write about IPRR.
If we see the Iluminist bloc in some update (either of Napoleon or the EU) I would like to see the idea Lostinnewdehli put some time ago about Iluminist pop culture being as experimental and eccentric as the NUSA, of course with appropiate enlightened content free of internalized reactionary superstitions.
I imagine Illuminism is less science and more Scientology-- taking scientific things like electricity, the atom bomb, and pop psychology but linking them together in ways that are more consistent with a particular pre-written narrative than to evolving understandings of empirical findings or the scholarly consensus on such. Hence Scientology's claim to understand the mind like no other discipline and its intense condemnation of psychologists and psychiatrists, life forms lower even than journalists 
Such secrecy also serves to discourage independent investigation and encourage relying on whatever info the higher-ups in the organization provides, which allows said higher-ups to build a hierarchy of varying access to secret information one needs to be "initiated" into. As a secret society that has only recently become a governing force, the Illuminist leadership should be well aware of this.
Illuminism maybe wouldn't be staking out an exclusive claim to scientific truth, but it would claim philosophical truth or logic itself as its unique preserve given the Enlightenment heritage. But when it comes to the mind, the line between literature, philosophy, and science is not always easy to draw. I'm sure can expect plenty of horrifying experiments on the brain, or really offensive statements about the mental fitness of people the Illuminists don't like.
Such secrecy also serves to discourage independent investigation and encourage relying on whatever info the higher-ups in the organization provides, which allows said higher-ups to build a hierarchy of varying access to secret information one needs to be "initiated" into. As a secret society that has only recently become a governing force, the Illuminist leadership should be well aware of this.Illuminism maybe wouldn't be staking out an exclusive claim to scientific truth, but it would claim philosophical truth or logic itself as its unique preserve given the Enlightenment heritage. But when it comes to the mind, the line between literature, philosophy, and science is not always easy to draw. I'm sure can expect plenty of horrifying experiments on the brain, or really offensive statements about the mental fitness of people the Illuminists don't like.
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You say that as if that hasn't been the bread and butter of every Great Power for the last couple of centuries....
True, but it hurts more with the Illuminists because they were supposed to change all that. *insert SW Ep 3 memes*
I do think the Illuminists can still put a unique spin on it in that while AFC is a church on the outside and a secret society on the inside, the Illuminist orgs just are secret societies throughout-- while a church could have a division of marginally-involved laity and very-involved priesthood, the society just has "members" of varying importance (but even the lowest level has "bought in", whether with real money or not). Their version of the party-state probably puts more emphasis on "party" (the Illuminist club as the prime mover of society), while I'd argue the RU puts more emphasis on "state" (the Manifest Destiny Party has no identity except as the state's preferred party, so other affiliations like ORRA membership are more important).
The practical consequence of this is that in the RU figures already important to the state (military and ORRA men) dominate the party, while Illuminism might have a more communist-like emphasis on the primacy of the civilian political party over the military (communist framed civilian supremacy as a means to prevent "Bonapartism", and the Illuminists would definitely think of Bonaparte in the same way).
But since everyone's crazy this has no impact on day-to-day policy or the sanity of such, instead weighing more heavily on things like annual budgeting or succession of power.
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Clearly we need to pin all our hopes on the Chinese Egoists
Like when in the Soviet Union people who disagreed with the ideology or the system was diagnosed as mentally ill since you had to be mad to not wanting to live in the most enlightened and advanced society in history?I imagine Illuminism is less science and more Scientology-- taking scientific things like electricity, the atom bomb, and pop psychology but linking them together in ways that are more consistent with a particular pre-written narrative than to evolving understandings of empirical findings or the scholarly consensus on such. Hence Scientology's claim to understand the mind like no other discipline and its intense condemnation of psychologists and psychiatrists, life forms lower even than journalists
Illuminism maybe wouldn't be staking out an exclusive claim to scientific truth, but it would claim philosophical truth or logic itself as its unique preserve given the Enlightenment heritage. But when it comes to the mind, the line between literature, philosophy, and science is not always easy to draw. I'm sure can expect plenty of horrifying experiments on the brain, or really offensive statements about the mental fitness of people the Illuminists don't like.