A Cliche That Needs Curtailing

[Emphasis added.]

To be sure, there is great truth in this. Still, I don't think we in 2016 truly appreciate how dire the situation was in the United States circa 1931-32 politically and economically. Part of that is that those who lived through it are all now dead. My grandparents were all born around 1910, so they were young adults when the Depression hit and before they died, I did discuss the period with them. As they told it, the world truly seemed to have fallen apart. And this is from people who weren't particularly political or unusual in their views; they were all middle of the road Midwesterners who tended to vote Republican. As the Depression dragged on, people were looking for answers and as their situations grew increasingly desperate, they became less concerned where those answers came from. Some looked left, some right, but it was an unusual period in which the conventional wisdom was discredited and it was widely believed that a novel approach was needed. So, in that sense, the 1930s were unusual. Imagine if the 2008 financial crisis was still ongoing with no end in sight. If you think 2016 politics are weird, think through how things might be even weirder if unemployment was north of 15%. Unemployment at the height of the Depression was over 25%! So, no, people were not satisfied with the current order in 1931/32. They wanted change and FDR gave it to them. And even with FDR, there was still violence and there were still demagogic figures cropping up on the political scene.

While it may be an overused cliché of sorts here, it is not difficult to imagine the US spinning in a strange direction if FDR had not come around in 1932. More to the point, it is impossible to imagine the US continuing along on the 1920s laissez-faire course it had been on. Even my grandparents conceded that much of the FDR program was necessary and even they never really questioned its key assumptions.

I don't put much stock in scenarios where the US balkanizes, but I can easily see a situation where the US stagnates for a much longer period and where politics gets very ugly. I can also see a scenario developing where the US is so stuck in a bad economic situation such that its production capacity is much less than it was in OTL 1939 and the mood of the nation regarding Europe is one of indifference as people focus on fixing things at home.
Good point. You do realize that this thread is about a potential collapse in the 1900-1910 era, right?
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Good point. You do realize that this thread is about a potential collapse in the 1900-1910 era, right?

In which case I really have to admit I have no idea what you're talking about but good on you for feeling the need to curtail that cliché. If the problem is in the map threads, perhaps the concern should've been directed there?

Are there threads in Post-1900 who have relied on this cliché?
 
To be fair, those TLs don't have the US falling into Marxist revolution the second the POD happens: instead they usually have America simmering for years before revolution breaks out.
 
Reds, a few other ones. But it has been getting more common as of late.

To be fair to Reds, there are many other PoDs and factors at play beyond preventing Teddy from ascending to the Presidency. You have a unified socialist movement that (arguably magically) avoids all of the schisms that the OTL socialist movement experienced, the ascendency of radicals within organised labour who support the socialists, conservatives in both the Democratic and Republican parties being able to effectively sideline the progressives for an extended period of time, and the US getting roped into WW1 from the get-go, to name a few key examples. Roosevelt, I think, tends to be overemphasised because it happens right at the beginning of the TL and is seen as the PoD that brings about Communist America.
 
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This is fine. I agree that it is the motivation. However, people need to be aware that it is a rather implausible option. It isn't ASB-level impossible, but the authors of such scenarios should realize that it's not the natural course of events.

I mean, is it any different from the fact that 99 timelines out of 100 that cover the American Civil War end with a Confederate victory, despite the odds of such quite possibly being in the single digits?
 
Good points, but that's not the matter at hand.

Well, my point was that if the New Deal had failed politically, the most likely alternative for America would not be revolution or civil war, fascism or communism, or even Huey Long or Upton Sinclair. It would probably be Arthur Vandenberg or Alf Landon. I once joked that this was the most boring fact in alternate history...
 
....so? Don't read the posts or TLs? I mean I loathe modern American political TLs with "x president wins this election" because I find them really boring. I therefore don't read/ignore them but I don't have a problem with them cropping up. Who cares if it's a trend people can write what they want. :/
 
I think part of it is that people want to imagine another American Civil War with cooler technology. It's a fun idea for people who are into war stories, and I've wondered about how to make a 20th century civil war myself, but I think a plausible one requires a 19th century POD.
 
I just think that people want their history to be as alternate as possible; having the side that lost a gigantic war win makes for a extremely powerful pivot point, same for economic damage leading to political realignment. People don't really want to read about the same broad outline of events happening slightly differently. A world with a surviving Confederacy could be radically different than the one we recognize; it could revitalize slavery in the Western Hemisphere, and usher in a radical modernity, wedding ancient slavery to modern technology to create an economic powerhouse, carving out a slave empire in the Caribbean, and butterflies out the wazoo. Ditto the CP victory threads: you get to write about the German empire as a true superpower. People often forget that the world wars were really intended as Phase Ones for the final bid for world dominance; people want to write about Phase Two.
 
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