TL-191: After the End

[David bar Elias]

Is there anything similar to our world's Radical Reconstruction?

In some respects US reconstruction efforts in the former CSA were more radical than Reconstruction IOTL. For one, there was a self-conscious effort by both the US government and US military authorities in the region to prevent the reemergence of the prewar, and pre-Freedom Party political institutions of the former CSA.

 

[AK47Productions]

In some respects US reconstruction efforts in the former CSA were more radical than Reconstruction IOTL. For one, there was a self-conscious effort by both the US government and US military authorities in the region to prevent the reemergence of the prewar, and pre-Freedom Party political institutions of the former CSA.

Does that mean the OSS got their hands dirty by disposing of RadLibs and Whigs that were able to survive the SGW that could've made noise about restoring the pre-Freedomite CSA?

 

[David bar Elias]

Does that mean the OSS got their hands dirty by disposing of RadLibs and Whigs that were able to survive the SGW that could've made noise about restoring the pre-Freedomite CSA?

The OSS, Bureau of Investigation, and US military never went in that direction. Unreconstructed members of the Freedom Party were viewed as the primary threat to US rule in the former CSA, along with any surviving CS military leaders.

By the 1944, the Whigs and Radical Liberals, in any case, had already been destroyed by Featherston and the Freedom Party.

 

[DeltaEnterprise252]

Does that mean the OSS got their hands dirty by disposing of RadLibs and Whigs that were able to survive the SGW that could've made noise about restoring the pre-Freedomite CSA?

I think @David bar Elias mentioned that political prisoners were released to go home.

 

[jycee]

In some respects US reconstruction efforts in the former CSA were more radical than Reconstruction IOTL. For one, there was a self-conscious effort by both the US government and US military authorities in the region to prevent the reemergence of the prewar, and pre-Freedom Party political institutions of the former CSA.

Does that mean the OSS got their hands dirty by disposing of RadLibs and Whigs that were able to survive the SGW that could've made noise about restoring the pre-Freedomite CSA?

I assume we'd also have to consider the fact that the CSA states suffered a massive population collapse, both by the "Reductions" and the war itself. As such there was really a need to start from the ground up (very much like Germany in OTL), which likely made things easier to "reconstruct". I imagine new immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe were likely encouraged to settle these areas. While the largest of the plantations were auctioned off to Northern agro-industrial conglomerates.

On the other hand, the timeline does imply that most former CSA states remain impoverished, probably to a degree we don't see anywhere in OTL's US.

 

[Burnsie]

Since Jimmy Carter was alive ITTL, what happened to the other Carter siblings who were too young to fight the SGW?

 

[MaxGerke01]

Since Jimmy Carter was alive ITTL, what happened to the other Carter siblings who were too young to fight the SGW?

So he wasnt killed in the US raid on Plains Georgia ?What happened to him ?

 

[MaxGerke01]

In 2021, the US housing market as a whole still hasn’t recovered from the Great Housing Crash of 2019. This has resulted in large numbers of homeowners defaulting on mortgage payments, as well as evictions; evictions have been especially prominent in the new exurbs (TTL’s equivalent to OTL suburbs), and many former homeowners have been forced to move into major cities as renters.

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Housing, and US government policies related to housing, took a different path in comparison to our world, which was also shaped by wider economic conditions. During the first generation after the end of the Second Great War, there was not an equivalent in most of the US to the OTL post-WWII suburbanization, although there were some areas where new exurbs were constructed, such as southern California. Exurbs, during the first generation after the war, were more likely to be constructed around US cities that did not have extensive public transportation, at least in comparison to the major cities in the Northeast and Midatlantic states.

After the end of the SGW, the trend in most major US cities, especially in the Northeast, Midatlantic, and Midwest, was for investment in housing within the major cities themselves, and to improve on already existing housing infrastructure. The ideal that developed in many areas of the US during the first postwar generation was to gain admission, so to speak, to the new, modern high rise apartments going up in the major cities. The tendency in most US cities during the postwar years was to address housing needs by building up, instead of out.

One effect of this trend in housing and high rise construction in US cities in TTL was that Federally-funded highways were not as a rule built through major cities.

During the postwar period, housing trends in the new Canadian states, the Midsouth, and the Caribbean also tended to copy trends in other regions, such as the emphasis on building new high rises and improving existing housing and transportation infrastructure. However, housing projects in the Midsouth were also affected in the long run by a relative lack of demand for new housing caused by the region’s longstanding demographic and economic problems.

The Humphrey administration (1961-1973) left a lasting mark on the housing landscape in most US cities with its heavy investment in public housing. Urban renewal was an issue of personal interest for President Humphrey, and his administration focused heavily, especially before the Fourth Pacific War, in improving the quality of life for big city residents. Public housing projects built during the Humphrey administration were generally praised, by residents and later historians alike, for reflecting both high levels of Federal investment and for the emphasis placed on trying to ensure a “neighborhood” quality. The popularity of the Humphrey-era public housing projects was such that succeeding administrations that did not place a similar emphasis on these kinds of urban renewal and housing projects, such as the Blackford and Reynolds administrations, did not dramatically reduce Federal support for such projects.

Trends in housing and urban development shifted in most of the US during the late Twentieth Century due to two larger trends: high levels of foreign immigration, and a large wave of internal migration from the Midsouth to other regions of the country. This contributed, beginning in the 1980s, to increased demands for new housing.

One of the new government agencies created during the Reynolds administration was the Bureau of Housing and Home Ownership (BHHO). The BHHO was the first US government agency to encourage private home ownership, and was instrumental in encouraging private investment both into a new generation of urban high rise apartments and into new exurban (suburban) housing outside of the major cities. Although the demand for new housing in the US temporarily declined in the early 1990s due to the Tech Recession, demand had surged again in most of the country by the late 1990s.

The Reynolds administration (1981-1989) was the first administration to publicly emphasize and push for greater private home ownership, though without reducing funding for popular Humphrey-era public housing projects. The 1980s also saw the emergence of a powerful Congressional Business and Prosperity Caucus, an alliance of pro-business politicians on Capitol Hill from all three parties. The Business and Prosperity Caucus would play an important role over the next several decades in promoting greater private home ownership. This Caucus would successfully engage with the DeFrancis (1993-1997), Gutierrez (1997-2005), Hernandez (2005-2013), and Astaire (2013-2021) administrations to enact policies meant to encourage greater private home ownership.

The Astaire administration in particular made private home ownership a core element of its government programs. For President Astaire, encouraging greater private ownership was part of a wider effort to support private enterprise. The Astaire administration, through the BHHO, engaged in higher levels of lending to would-be home owners than in previous administrations. In 2013, with the support of the Business and Prosperity Caucus in Congress, the Astaire administration also succeeded in eliminating regulations, enacted in the 1930s in response to the Business Collapse, which was intended to separate investment banking.

The Astaire administration’s policies in regards to encouraging greater private home ownership and private investment in home ownership, were echoed in similar policies that were enacted in the 2000s and 2010s in other countries, including in all of the other great powers (Austria-Hungary, Bharat, Brazil, China, Germany, Russia). The 2000s and 2010s also saw a significant increase in private lending and investment by major banks and private companies, from multiple countries, into different national housing markets. This ultimately led to the creation of real estate bubbles in many local housing markets, including in all of the great powers.

The Great Housing Crash of 2019 was the result of the simultaneous bankruptcies of several private firms, in several countries, that had been heavily engaged in speculative lending in multiple housing markets. As with the Great Recession in our world, the Great Housing Crash in TTL would be exacerbated by the temporary freeze in the now extensive system of private credit.

The United States, as well as other countries affected by the Great Housing Cash, including all of the great powers, were somewhat better equipped to respond to the emergency, due to the wide ranging powers available to governments around the world to intervene to support their respective vital industries or businesses, in the name of national security. However, the US government response to the Great Housing Crash would be hampered by the policy failures of the administration of President George Novak (2021-2025), as well as the unmitigated disaster that was the Charles Holst administration (2025-2027). The USA would not recover economically from the Great Housing Crash until the end of the 2020s.

So ITTL most cities didnt junk their trolley car systems like say Denver Colorado did in OTL in 1950 ? Also it would seem that downtown skylines are much more extensive ITTL in 2021-not Coruscant levels but still ?

 

[David bar Elias]

So ITTL most cities didnt junk their trolley car systems like say Denver Colorado did in OTL in 1950 ? Also it would seem that downtown skylines are much more extensive ITTL in 2021-not Coruscant levels but still ?

Yes, that is an accurate description of what happened in most major US cities in TTL during the postwar period, in terms of urban planning.

 

[David bar Elias]

Since Jimmy Carter was alive ITTL, what happened to the other Carter siblings who were too young to fight the SGW?

The Carter family left Georgia for Texas after the end of the Second Great War. By 2021, most of the Carter family still lives in Texas.

 

[Burnsie]

So he wasnt killed in the US raid on Plains Georgia ?What happened to him ?

Oh, Jimmy died during the raid but it never mentioned the fate of his mother, father or siblings who would’ve been alive at that time

 

[Batguy01]

Charles Holst, whatever else he was, definitely was on the far-left. He came from a family of loyal Socialist Party activists and union members.

Where he diverged from the vast majority of Socialist Party activists from his generation was in his embrace of political radicalism. He was, to the very end, a firm believer in the need for a Revolution to overturn the US political and economic system, in order to usher in a utopian future of rule of, by, and for the working class. Holst, had he lived in our world, would have eagerly embraced both the October Revolution and the eventual development of the USSR under Josef Stalin. As it was, Holst, as a youthful activist, celebrated the emergence of the Japanese Workers Republic, and was often heard to remark throughout his political career that the defeat of the Communist revolutionaries in the First Russian Civil War had been a seminal tragedy.

Holst was a marginal figure in the House of Representatives throughout most of his political career. His over-the-top, profanity-laden rhetoric promoting a revolution, The Revolution, made him a constant source of mockery from his House colleagues, including from almost all of his fellow Socialist Party representatives. Holst developed a somewhat buffoonish public image, but was consistently re-elected due to his ability to bring large amounts of Federal money to his New York City district.

While no one in US political circles took Holst seriously during his time in the House, the buffoonish image that he cultivated concealed a man of boundless ambition and cruelty, and with a myriad of personal hatreds. Holst also had a lifelong contempt for the US political system of checks and balances derived from the Constitution. The utopia that he imagined throughout his political career had no room for either of these hallmarks of the US government.

Throughout his political career, Holst was dogged by allegations of having connections to the world of organized crime. Although subject to at least two major judicial probes by the Bureau of Investigation while in the House, not enough evidence was gathered during either of these probes for an arrest to be made. Several US government agencies were investigating President Holst in relation to allegations of Holst accepting multiple bribes from a known New York City associate of the Norfolk Outfit (a Dixie Mafia gang) when evidence was uncovered that would lead to the Dixie Mafia Scandal.

Holst wasn’t without skills as a politician. He was one of the first US politicians to recognize, in the late 2010s, the potential of the many OptyTalk sites on the ComboNet to grant him a national audience unfiltered by “respectable” media. Holst’s rise to the presidency, however, would not have occurred without the following unlikely series of events:

-The Great Housing Crash of 2019, which caused widespread economic devastation across the United States.

-The election of Senator George Novak (S-OH) in the 2020 elections on the “National Fusion” ticket with Governor Philip Wakefield (R-NJ). Many Socialist Party activists and politicians, baffled by Novak’s obsession with creating a utopian-sounding “non-partisan” government, became opponents of President Novak when he appeared to embrace an agenda of economic austerity proposed by the congressional Business and Prosperity caucus, instead of proposals by his own Socialist Party for an ambitious agenda of public relief and public works. Charles Holst, in making himself the loudest and angriest opponent of President Novak, suddenly gained a measure of acceptance from a Socialist Party feeling betrayed by their own president, and a general public alienated by the president’s seeming monomaniacal obsession with “non-partisanship” at the expense of addressing the Great Housing Crash.

Holst, in 2024, was able to ride a wave of popular anger within Socialist Party to an unprecedented victory in the party’s nomination battle over the incumbent president. Holst won the general elections of 2024 in no small part due to the unpopularity of the Democratic Party (widely blamed for the Great Housing Crash), and due to the fragmentation within the Republican Party caused by Philip Wakefield’s defection to the now-doomed National Fusion ticket.

President Holst quickly ran into obstacles in proposing his radical and sweeping economic agenda to Congress. Both Houses by this time were narrowly held by the Republican Party, and the Speaker of the House, Representative James Davies, was a staunch political opponent of Holst. Holst, however, did not intend to govern like a traditional US president. His rhetoric, upon the expected congressional rejection of his initial legislative proposals, became more and more unhinged and violent. President Holst now openly called for his supporters/the working class (one and the same in his mind) to help in overthrowing the “class enemies” in the name of The Revolution.

It was during this stage of President Holst’s brief administration that he also started to openly use antisemitic rhetoric. Holst blamed the Jews for the Great Housing Crash, and reserved particular vitriol for Jewish lawmakers in Congress, including Senator Eleanor Lehrer (D-CA) a future president in her own right.

Historians and political observers would initially debate the nature of President Holst’s antisemitism; after all, he had never utilized this rhetoric before becoming president. Following the fall of the Holst administration, in the late 2020s and early 2030s, a number of his former confidants and associates would state for the public record that Holst had been just as bigoted while in the House of Representatives.

President Holst was already facing the prospect of impeachment in early 2027, before the shattering revelations that accompanied the Dixie Mafia Scandal. Too much of the president’s rhetoric by that point brought to mind memories of Jake Featherston. The Dixie Mafia Scandal caused Holst’s few remaining political allies to abandon him. Within a short period of time, Holst’s own Vice President was arrested in association with the Dixie Mafia Scandal, followed by the rapid and successful impeachment of President Holst on a long list of charges. Holst, at this stage, refused to accept his removal from office. He now called for his imagined supporters to come to Washington to begin The Revolution. On the morning of what proved to be his last day in the White House, in 2027, he was briefly heartened by the appearance of a huge crowd outside of the Executive Mansion. Too late, he realized that this crowd was actually here to call for his arrest. This crowd cheered loudly when the Bureau of Investigation and the local police did just that.

After an acrimonious federal trial, former president Charles Holst was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with charges stemming from the Dixie Mafia Scandal. Holst would spend the rest of his life at the federal penitentiary located in Fort McSweeney, Oregon. The fact that he was in a prison where former Confederate government officials had once been held was not lost on Holst, who continued, for the rest of his life, to claim that he had been a victim of an international “Jewish-Capitalist” conspiracy.

For a brief period of time following the fall of the Holst administration, the Socialist Party faced the possibility of electoral oblivion, in the face of the disastrous twin administrations of George Novak and Charles Holst. It’s a testament to the skill and dedication to a number of Socialist Party politicians and activists, especially one Dennis Beckford of Jamaica, that the party was able to rebuild itself and successfully elect a presidential candidate by 2044.

One long-term legacy of the Holst administration was that the sizable Jewish-American community completely deserted the Socialist Party, to the eager embrace of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Even by 2162, the Jewish community in the United States, according to most surveys, almost entirely refused to support the Socialist Party.

Rereading this post and to me, Holst reminds me of Trump, if Trump was far-left. Sorry if I'm being political.

Speaking of which, what was the international reaction to the Dixie Mafia Scandal and Holst's arrest, mainly within the ISC permanent council and the CDS?

 

[Burnsie]

What is the Dixie Mafia and what was the Dixie Mafia Scandal? Was it like OTL’s Watergate?

 

[BigAbeRangel]

What is the Dixie Mafia and what was the Dixie Mafia Scandal? Was it like OTL’s Watergate?

As David answered to me when I asked the same:

The Dixie Mafia Scandal was worse than that. To make a long story short, it involved President Holst attempting to hire contract killers from major criminal outfits associated with the Dixie Mafia in order to target his opponents in Congress, the Federal judiciary, and the media.

Holst, according to investigators, attempted to carry out this murderous action in response to the Congressional rejection of his proposed initiative to nationalize major sectors of the economy, as well as in response to the Congressional rejection of his proposal to confiscate the private property of anyone labeled as an “enemy of the people.”

The plot by Holst, which was embraced by his Vice President, utterly failed, as the Holst administration was already under investigation by several US government agency over allegations that the president had maintained ties to organized crime (these kinds of allegations had dogged Holst throughout his political career). Holst would become the first to be impeached, removed from office, and ultimately sentenced to life in prison after a long and acrimonious trial in Federal court.

As late as 2162, Charles Holst is viewed both by the US public and US presidential historians as the worst president in US history.

 

[David bar Elias]

Rereading this post and to me, Holst reminds me of Trump, if Trump was far-left. Sorry if I'm being political.

Speaking of which, what was the international reaction to the Dixie Mafia Scandal and Holst's arrest, mainly within the ISC permanent council and the CDS?

The reaction by foreign governments to the Dixie Mafia Scandal, particularly from CDS member states, was one of horror and disgust. There was widespread relief from foreign governments when Holst was peacefully and legally removed from office.

The administrations that followed the fall of the Holst administration, including those of James Davies (2027-2029), Arnold Burroughs (2029-2037), Eleanor Lehrer (2037-2045) and Dennis Beckford (2045-2053), would each attempt, in their own ways, to stabilize and enhance the USA’s existing alliances and international prestige after the instability and chaos that marked US government in the early 2020s.

 

[David bar Elias]

What is the Dixie Mafia and what was the Dixie Mafia Scandal? Was it like OTL’s Watergate?

This is what I wrote earlier about the Dixie Mafia and the Roundhead gangs present in the USA by 2021.

In 2021, the most dangerous prison gangs in the US are affiliated with the Dixie Mafia. The term “Dixie Mafia” is not applicable to a single outfit; The term “Dixie Mafia” is used in TTL to describe an array of large criminal groups in the Midsouth engaged in the same kinds of criminal activities, such as extortion, racketeering, drug trafficking, hijackings, and contract killings. The term “Dixie Mafia” also reflects the presence of Confederate and Freedom Party iconography among these kinds of criminal groups; several Midsouth criminal outfits associated with the Dixie Mafia are actually descended from anti-US militant groups that emerged in the former CSA after the end of the SGW.

Aside from groups affiliated with the Dixie Mafia, there are a number of Roundhead gangs present in major US cities in 2021. The term “Roundhead” is synonymous with the OTL term “skinhead.” Roundhead gangs originated in the enclaves in major Northern US cities settled by migrants from the Midsouth beginning in the 1980s. It did not take long for a number of these gangs to begin engaging in criminal activity. A number of these groups also engaged in racist violence against minority groups. Roundhead gangs were subject to a major US government crackdown following their role in instigating the West Philadelphia Riots in 2007.

 

[MaxGerke01]

So do any non Freedomite Confederate monuments or memorial remain in 2021 ? Assuming that some do what would be the reaction to an American president or politican saying there are good people on both sides about a protest to remove them ?

 

[David bar Elias]

So do any non Freedomite Confederate monuments or memorial remain in 2021 ? Assuming that some do what would be the reaction to an American president or politican saying there are good people on both sides about a protest to remove them ?

By 2021, there are no Confederate monuments left in the former CSA. The only Confederate government buildings preserved by the US authorities were at the sites of the Destruction.

I’m afraid that cannot go into the second half of this question in greater detail, as that pertains to current OTL US politics.

 

[MaxGerke01]

By 2021, there are no Confederate monuments left in the former CSA. The only Confederate government buildings preserved by the US authorities were at the sites of the Destruction.

I’m afraid that cannot go into the second half of this question in greater detail, as that pertains to current OTL US politics.

Well I understand what you are saying but this would have required quite a sustained campaign by the US government because we are talking about around 80 years of stuff and a substantial amount thats not directly tied to the Freedomites.I think that most Americans would not see much of a distinction but the existence of the Dixie Mafia and Roundheads after everything says that there is probably a significant portion of the white Southern population who does not see the pre Freedomite Confederacy as that bad assuming they see the Freedomite Confederacy as that bad. I know there was an attempt to re-educate most white Southerners as it were BUT when you consider the attitudes of most OTL white Southerners in the 1960s and later almost 100 years after the Civil War but here in a world where most of the black population was eliminated and there was a sustained period where large numbers of white Southerners were being killed as revenge actions from time to time it just seems hard to believe they were brought back into the Union as soon as they were.You do a good job of doing so but still....

 

[Batguy01]

Is there any equivalent of "The Twilight Zone" in TTL?

Also what of TTL version of Rod Serling? If he exists in TTL at all.