Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes V (Do Not Post Current Politics Here)

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This is a revamp of the post I put out like a day ago on here. I didn't like how it had turned out, so I decided to change some things around. I also made a list of all twenty-five Presidential Triumvirates in the history of the United Empire of Columbia, with some extra blurbs of information on the side to flesh out the world. Hope you all enjoy it!

Very interesting! Going off Hillary Rodham ascending to the Triumvirate at 26, I imagine there is no age limit? Or at least a low one.
 
Very interesting! Going off Hillary Rodham ascending to the Triumvirate at 26, I imagine there is no age limit? Or at least a low one.
The age limit is the same as the voting age, both being eighteen.

I'm thinking of going further with this idea, and if anyone's at all interested on here, what would you like to see?
 
For some reason, in the election box "Whig" is hyperlinked even without the [[ ]] and the rest don't, I don't know why.

In election infoboxes, if you don't want the party hyperlinked and the color filled in, you have to put "no" after the "|party_link=" and "|party_color=" parameters, otherwise it will hyperlink to a RL party that shares the name of whatever you put in the "|party=" field.
 
After the defeat of the Communist army in October 1934, the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang led by Generallisimo Chiang Kai-shek effectively took dominant control of China for the following two-and-a-half years, until the Marco Polo bridge incident of July 1937 kicked off the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conflict, which formed a major part of the fighting in east Asia in the Second World War, saw infighting within the Kuomintang and the social fissure which still shapes Chinese politics to this day occur, as Zhang Xueliang, a dissident general from eastern China, endorsed the development of guerilla tactics against the imperial Japanese army despite Chiang’s objections.

To those in northern and eastern China (the latter for his role in helping strengthen China’s hand in their region, the former because of their previous association with the old Communists), Zhang was the greatest hero of the twentieth century; to the rest of the country, he was a defiant if successful general, being compared by some Westerners to the divide over Winston Churchill’s legacy. Regardless, most agree it was mostly due to Zhang’s efforts that China did not crumble before the Allies could shore it up and ensured the Japanese did not conquer it, while Chiang’s tactics were highly flawed.

After the war, however, Chiang sought to shore up his popularity by drawing on the nationalist traditions of China and helping industrialize the war-torn country, with some help from the US’s grants under the Marshall Plan (although compared to those granted to European nations, the grants to China were notably smaller). While many Western nations were at least partially reticent about allying with an extremely populous dictatorship given they had just conquered the Nazis, China’s economic development and role as a major capitalist power in the Far East outweighed these concerns.

The moment which effectively clinched both China’s importance as a capitalist power and secured Chiang’s until then shaky legacy was when, in 1950, it threw its considerable military weight behind the US and the UN in fighting back the communist forces in North Korea, creating a unified capitalist Korea where a stalemate might have been forced without its considerable might. With this, Chiang dispelled the impression he was an incompetent military leader to many Chinese, and the Kuomintang’s brand of nationalism and its rapid industrialization of the country made his regime broadly popular.

While China remained more steadfastly opposed to a close relationship with America and its purported values of freedom and democracy, meaning it was somewhat more maligned by Westerners than countries like Japan and West Germany (it was even nicknamed by some ‘the Spain of Asia’ due to Chiang basically being a military dictator-for-life like Franco), its sphere of influence was nonetheless extremely useful to the West in the Cold War. The US subsidized Chiang to go after communists like Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam, and it saved them face in not having to go to proxy wars with their own troops.

Things did not really start to get complicated until Chiang died in 1975. By this point, reporting on the role of the Johnson administration in utilizing China as a ‘puppet’ against the Communists was finally starting to make Americans concerned, and when President Humphrey held his first meeting with the new Chinese President Gu Zhutong (Moshan), he advised that China ‘should embrace democracy to show its solidarity against Communist oppression’. While Moshan was highly resistant to such a move, he eventually acquiesced late in the year and created a ‘democratic’ system for electing the President of China in which the Kuomintang was the only permitted organized party besides independent groupings. Since these were never stable enough to get anywhere, when China held its first presidential election in 52 years in December 1975, Moshan was elected with ease, taking 81.7% of the vote to just 7% for his strongest single rival.

While protests flared up on occasion between then and Moshan’s death in 1987, he was re-elected without fuss in 1980 and 1985. But his successor, Zhao Ziyang, faced a constitutional crisis greater than either of his forebears, which took some doing. That he received a ‘coronation’ rather than an election was a point of contention from the start, but the defining moment of his premiership was when student protests flared up in the spring of 1989 after one of the most famous reformists in China, Hu Yaobang, passed away and the state refused to allow a funeral for him, citing ‘his involvement when young with Communist subversives’, something which had ironically made him acceptable to the north and east in the first place.

The so-called Tiananmen Square Revolution nearly ended in bloodshed; Mayor of Beijing Li Peng wanted to declare martial law in the capital and bring in tanks to quell the protesters. After a meeting with Soviet President Gorbachev, however, Zhao, always more reformist than Li, overruled the Mayor and opened negotiations with the protesters. This was despite the intense opposition within the Kuomintang to what the protestors wanted, their demands including the legalization of forming other political parties, protections for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and the abolition of martial law.

With Western countries threatening boycotts of China if a violent end came of the protests, and given the positive reception to Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika reforms in Russia, Zhao relented. He announced that, by the autumn, the first election under universal suffrage to the National Congress would be held, and the formation of parties would be permitted. In practice, this was a move that benefitted the Kuomintang anyway, as this was barely enough time to get parties properly formalized or voters registered, but an election was indeed held on the 18th October 1989, and the Kuomintang won it by a landslide.

Since then, despite other parties having had time to organize and anti-Kuomintang voters becoming more organized, China has had a dominant party system. The modern-day Kuomintang has won all six quadrennial elections to the National Congress since then, and has only lost its overall majority once, in the 2009 election, while every presidential election besides the 2010 election has seen it win by more than 10 points. Its main rival to power, and the only major party to oppose it in presidential contests and achieve a sizeable amount of success, is the Progressive Party, which draws most of its support from the northern and eastern provinces which have historically been resistant to the Kuomintang, as well as the city of Beijing and Hubei in central China, home of the old Communist capital of Wuhan.

In the 2015 presidential contest, incumbent President Wang Yang was challenged by Progressive Cho Jung-tai. The contest was seen as decidedly one-sided; Wang’s administration had managed to stabilize the economy in spite of the Great Recession, and Cho’s status as a fairly little-known politician from the traditional Kuomintang stronghold of Taiwan left him at a sizeable disadvantage outside of that party’s strongholds.

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As expected, Wang won a third term easily with 59.42% of the vote to only 35.61% for Cho, and all but eight provinces and the city of Beijing backing Wang’s re-election easily. Since China does not have term limits for its presidents, critics of Wang suggest he will stay in power indefinitely, though he championed his victory as ‘the largest democratic mandate in history’.

Interestingly, with the rise in anti-globalist sentiment, the Progressives have begun since this election to court the populist appeal that the Kuomintang has long taken for granted. This paid them dividends in the 2017 National Congress election, when they used the aggressive attacks on China of President Rubio to galvanize support and gained over 100 seats (not a huge figure in a 900-strong chamber, especially against the 582 seats still held by the Kuomintang, but impressive nonetheless), but whether they can finally snatch the Presidency next year will be fascinating to see.

(I hope this doesn't seem too absurdly ASB, but I thought it'd be interesting to try a democratic China scenario since I've never done an althistory scenario with Asian politics before.)
 
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Before I post the long Pessimist's Edition of A Wilde Time, here's a quickie. Basically, I hate how Alan Turing's story ended, having been chemically castrated, stripped of his clearances, and kept a secret for decades after his death, just because he was gay, so here's an infobox with 4/5 divergences, depending on how you see it. The first divergence is that Christopher Morcom (Alan Turing's real life first love) doesn't die in 1930 of bovine tuberculosis. Secondly, either homosexuality is legalised before what would have been his gross indecency charge, or he is never charged for gross indecency in the 50s. Thirdly, Alan Turing doesn't die in the 50s (whether that was suicide or not is up for debate). Fourthly, Morcom and Turing live into their hundreds, possibly seeing the legalisation of homosexuality in 67 (or if it was before they would have anyway) enter a civil partnership in 2004 at the age of 92 and 93, and become the oldest couple to marry in 2014, at the ages of 102 and 103. Turing and Morcom both die in 2016 at the ages of 104 and 105.

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"Hey Wayne? Lets do the mega happy ending!"

:D I like this one.
 
The Melting Pot: A Vignette Series
(This is not meant to be a serious interpretation of what would realistically happen, this is meant to be fun)


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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide."
-John Adams
Maximilian Robespierre (1758-1807) needs no introduction. Tyrant, madman, purifier, radical republican, cultist, impaler, terror incarnate. All have been words used to describe the man himself. In many ways, there are no better words to describe him. Where to begin with the man who broke America asunder? Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was born in early May of 1758 in the city of Baltimore. His parents were forced to flee France due to scandal (Maximilien was conceived and born out of wedlock) and ended up in Baltimore, Maryland. The ship was intended for the French colonies, but a storm blew the ship off course and the couple ended up in the middle of British North America. On the verge of giving birth, Maximilien's father and mother claimed to be Hugenots escaping persecution (to avoid facing anti-Catholic persecution). It was a bold lie, but it worked. The couple was reluctantly accepted into Baltimore society. His father proved to be an able lawyer and after developing fluency in English (and ensuring that his son's first language was English), set up a successful law practice. Little is known about the specifics of Maximilien's (he would later change his name to the more German sounding "Maximilian" after registering for the University of Pennsylvania) childhood. Any documents about his youth seem to have been destroyed and any first hand accounts from his siblings would be impossible to find thanks to the brutal Post-Robespierre Purges of 1807-1811. This has lead to numerous psycho-historians theorizing about his youth and upbringing. Some believe he was subject to abuse as a child, others believe he was show too much love from his mother. And still others argue he had a normal childhood. Regardless, the only concrete details that first appear are in the days of the Revolution. His father was a firm patriot and when the American War of Independence began, young Maximilian would join the cause. Robespierre was no fighter, this much is certain. However even from a young age he had managed to demonstrate an uncanny ability to persuade through grand speeches and fiery pamphlets. So it was that he earned fame early in his life as a firm advocate for liberty and freedom. Upon the conclusion of the war in 1783, the famed pamphleteer and orator enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania with the backing of the famed Benjamin Franklin, whom the young Robespierre befriended. He finished his courses with high marks and received Juris Doctor degree. Shortly afterwards he moved back to Baltimore and took over his father's law practice upon his mysterious death. Many expected the young and dashing Robespierre to marry, but he never did. He always brushed the matter off as "a distraction from his work". As the years went by, Robespierre would become very influential in the state government and his numerous pamphlets describing political theory and philosophy became famed across the country and bolstered his reputation as a defender of liberty and virtue.

Upon the adoption of the Constitution in the late 1780s, young Maximilian chose to leave his local law practice and his unofficial role in the Maryland State Government to run for Congressional District that covered Baltimore. He ran as an independent (as all were in those days) and won with no significant opposition. Upon his ascension to the House, Robespierre set to work establishing his national profile. During this time, the Marylander would befriend the man that wrote the Declaration of Independence, the man that would become one of the greatest critics of the Federalists, and the man that would become his second in command during the last years of the Republic: Thomas Jefferson. The two had a great deal in common. They were both strong proponents of liberty, both were opponents of the “crypto-monarchist” Federalists, both were writers and speakers rather than fighters, and both had a strong antipathy towards religion. These two pinnacles of the Enlightenment were a match made in Hell. The period of 1789-1797 was of little consequence. Robespierre would briefly serve a turn as Speaker, but was soon forced out. It was the Adams Presidency that sent the world spinning.

John Adams was a well meaning man, all things considered. While he did a number of deeds that either stretched or violate the definition of legal and constitutional, he was not necessarily an evil man. In many ways he was simply a man that understandably hated to be insulted and was being manipulated and controlled by a man far more controlling than he, Alexander Hamilton (who was also not an evil man). But it was Adams’ Presidency that caused the ascension of Robespierre. Every action that Adams took was blasted by Robespierre as the makings of a monarch and puppet of the British. Matters came to a head when a pamphlet penned by Robespierre that insinuated that Adams was in fact a British Spy sent to proclaim himself King of all America and swear eternal allegiance to the British Empire. As that was patently untrue, it was in violation of the Sedition Act. An attempt by Adams loyalists led to Robespierre’s near expulsion and arrest. It was this moment, this event was a watershed moment for the Adams Administration. Violent protests roared across the country at the idea of one of the most popular men in the country, a famed patriot and lover of liberty being sent to prison for criticism of the President. In the end, the immense public outroar and deteriorating stability convinced Adams and Hamilton that an error had been made. All attempts to silence Robespierre ceased. By 1800, it was clear who would challenge Adams for the Presidency.

The election of 1800 was a brutal affair. Adams was desperate to remain in power while also purging the influence of Alexander Hamilton within the Federalist Party. The Democratic Republicans for the most part rallied behind Robespierre who announced his intent to seek the Presidency with Aaron Burr placed in the slot for Vice President. Some voiced concerns over Robespierre’s young age, but Jefferson silenced these concerns by his enthusiastic endorsement of “The man that terrorized the tyrant Adams” and touting him as “A man of liberty”. There were others in the party that wished for someone of good Virginian stock to run, but to no avail. The general campaign was nasty. Adams accused Robespierre of being some sort of atheistic radical that would burn America in the name of "liberty" and flood the nation with Papists. Robespierre fired back harder. Every campaign poster depicted Adams wearing a crown and whipping the American people as if they were peasants. Newspaper articles insinuated that Adams was "a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, not the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." It only got worse from there. With accusations of cuckoldry and bastardy, Washington's hopes of the republic continuing down a path of camaraderie, civility, and cooperation were dead in the water. Thanks to the complicated method of Electors having two votes and no distinctions being made between the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate, for the Democratic Republicans to truly win they needed Robespierre to have one more vote than Burr. After some fears that it would result in a tie, the final tally of the Electoral College was Robespierre 78, Burr 77, Adams 60, and Pinckney 59. Maximilian Robespierre had been elected as the Third President of the United States.

From the beginning, there were signs. John Adams in his final days in office tried to at least stack the courts in his favor. Robespierre challenged these appointments and through a highly convoluted series of legal arguments, managed to successfully have all the positions declared illegally filled. He then stacked the courts with his own cronies. With Thomas Jefferson by his side, the first two years of Robespierre's first term were devoted to two goals. The first was the enactment of universal (white) male suffrage. The main purpose of the proposal being that by and large, Robespierre was extremely popular with the common man and would be able to use his popularity to push in his supporters into Congress. This was widely considered to have been an impossible demand. With most of Congress against him, Robespierre was forced to look to different avenues for whipping up support. So he went forth and toured America whipping up support for his proposal. What this amounted to, was the President whipping up mobs of angry non-property owning white men and convincing them to storm the offices of their local politicians demanding they support the proposal. At first Robespierre claimed that it was simply an attempt to garner support, it soon evolved into the President convincing the people to harass and lynch politicians that opposed them. By the end of 1801, several states were bogged down in what amounted to a near continuous state of rioting. Over all, nearly 20 members of Congress were lynched by Robespierre's mobs. But whenever anyone tried to attack him on the matter, he managed to use a near inhuman level of charm to convince his opponents that he had nothing to do with it. The American people were simply making their voice heard. The breaking point arrived when the state militias began to join the rioters and lynch mobs. With their only form of protection gone, the states began to abolish property requirements for voting. Of course, there were many that were absolutely furious with this turn of events. One of the biggest critics of this bullying tactic was Alexander Hamilton, who had managed to rebound from his humiliating fall from grace during the 1800 election. Leading the charge against what was by an reasonable measure blatantly illegal and immoral tactics to concentrate power into the hands of one person. The irony of Alexander Hamilton criticizing someone of doing that was lost on everyone at the time. Charges of treason that were blatantly false on close glance but seemingly legitimate given a cursory glance and if one was biased were drawn up by the Attorney General against Alexander Hamilton in June of 1802. The specific charges indicated that Hamilton was in fact in charge of a monarchist British spying ring and was trying to destroy America by turning it into an aristocratic, monarchist, feudal state. It was utter nonsense, but given his reputation and lack of allies in the Government, many believed the accusations to be true. Hamilton was tipped off about his impending arrest and managed to flee the country before he could be taken to "trial". The fact that he had been tipped off triggered Robespierre's paranoia. Someone in his government had betrayed him. So he and Jefferson devised a plan. They both knew that the spy ring was fictional, but not many others did. Therefore, they could use fears of Britain and monarchism to find traitors and get rid of them. Thus with the flight of Alexander Hamilton, the Great Terror began.

Perhaps the Great Terror would merely have been legal purges had it not been for the Barbary War. It is one of histories greatest what ifs. What if Robespierre had not been pressured into going to war with the pirates? What if the Ottomans had not gotten involved? What if during negotiations for the peace treaty the Ottoman Sultan had not been so impressed by Robespierre that he gifted him that book? In the end, all one can do is go mad with speculation. The cold hard truth is all that remains. Robespierre was convinced to refuse the demands of Barbary Pirates. The Ottomans had gotten involved. And the Ottoman Sultan did gift the man who would become one of histories greatest tyrants a book that chronicled the life and times of the man that gave the Turks nightmares for centuries, Vlad Țepeș. Who knows how the world would have turned out had Robespierre simply been given a different book. Unfortunately we are stuck in the world we live in and in the world we live in, Robespierre grew to idolize Vlad the Impaler. Upon the swift conclusion of the War in 1804, the President worked on his reelection. While Jefferson handled the reelection campaign, the President focused on cementing his grasp on power. Slowly, quietly, the Sedition Act (but not the Alien Act) was reinstated. With the successful conclusion to the war over and the passage of what amounted to Universal Male Suffrage (as long as you were white and not a papist) as well as the reveal that Alexander Hamilton was a spy, the Robespierre Administration was in very good shape for reelection on paper. In practice, the Federalists were working behind the scenes to try and convince the potential electors to pick anyone but Robespierre. There was a reckoning once word was leaked to Robespierre. Absolutely livid, he nearly ordered the arrest of the conspirators then and there. Jefferson convinced him to remain calm and manage the situation in a more subtle way. So it was in October of 1804, word of Federalist attempts to rig the Electoral College was leaked to the press. The public outcry was severe. The people of America stormed a number of government buildings searching for prominent Federalists that may or may not have been part of the scheme. The coup de grace was when a number of electors were found conspiring with Federalist candidate John Jay in a tavern in rural New York. The electors were beaten with an inch of their lives and no one knew what happened to Jay until January of 1805. Robespierre and Jefferson sought to capitalize on the popular uproar by announcing that a second revolution was to take place in America.

Suffice to say, Robespierre very dubiously won the 1804 election. In January of 1805, it was announced that John Jay was a member of the British Crypto-monarchist conspiracy and had allegedly confessed to his crimes. His punishment was to be the only fitting punishment for treason: death. But before his very public execution was to take place, Vice President Aaron Burr leapt into action. Using both legitimate and illegitimate means, Burr managed to rally enough support in Congress (via various forms of appeal) to attempt an impeachment against Robespierre. In what was a stunning twist of fate, the House easily passed articles of impeachment against the President and it was down to the Senate for the conviction. The President and Jefferson were not going to take this lying down. With news spreading of Congress trying to impeach the President, the two men sought to bring the Revolution they had announced earlier to fruition. Militias were formed, most being called “The Legions of Liberty”. The Legions were commanded to overthrow the old order and to establish a new one, to bring the American Revolution to fruition. The day the Senate met to hold Robespierre’s trial, the Legions of the Loyal from the areas surrounding Washington marched upon the Capitol. The lone guard of the capitol’s name has been lost to history, but all post-Robespierre regimes consider the man to be a martyr. The story goes that the Legions marched up the steps of the Capitol only to be stopped at the door by the guard who refused to budge. The leader of the Legion begged him to move as their quarrel was with the traitors in Congress, not with a ‘Good loyal man such as yourself.’ The guard responded ‘I care not a pfennig about you, your mob, or your President. As long as I draw breath you shall not harm the men in there doing their Constitutional duty.’ Enraged, the Legion beat the guard to death before hanging him on a flag pole. The Legion marched in the Capitol and ransacked the building. Upon reaching the Senate chamber, mob the launched themselves upon the gathered Senators. Those that were lucky were simply shot, stabbed, or beaten to death. The unlucky ones were captured alive. The prisoners tortured for information on the “British Monarchist spy ring” by the President’s men, with the President sitting in to watch the torture on prominent individuals such as the Vice President and former President Adams. Upon hearing what it is they wanted to hear, the President announced that the traitors would meet the justice they deserved. So it was on February 14, 1805 that 25 prominent men were publicly executed via impalement in the Mall. The first man to be impaled was Vice President Aaron Burr. Minutes before his death his charges were read out. Apparently Aaron Burr was the one that tipped off Alexander Hamilton back in 1802. He was the one that had masterminded the attempt to remove Robespierre via the Electoral College. He was the first man to be impaled, but he was certainly not the last. On that bloody day in February, former President John Adams and former Chief Justice John Jay were among the 25 executed via public impalement.

Soon the fight against “traitors” and “crypto-monarchists” spread beyond just the political class. Both Robespierre and Jefferson had long been attacked as being atheists. In spite of the truth of the matter, the President had become convinced that the churches were plotting against him, which they were. Pushing forward with his radical Enlightenment based ideals regarding religion, Robespierre for all intents of purposes declared war on the church. Prominent church leaders were rounded up and arrested on charges of treason, crypto-monarchism, and Papism. Churches were destroyed and the materials were used for other purposes. Ministers and priests were publicly executed. Newly appointed Secretary of Public Safety Thomas Jefferson oversaw the creation of a banned materials list, including a number of books deemed to be “monarchist” and “anti-democratic” which saw mass burnings of Bibles. This was the first moment that many of the average citizens began to have second thoughts. Sure, some of the priests were obviously guilty of opposing the President, but was it really necessary to burn Bibles?

1806 saw a radical shift in policy. Thomas Jefferson had been Robespierre’s strongest ally and advocate for many years. Thomas Jefferson was a true man of the Enlightenment. He believed in the equality of man, he had weird opinions on religion, and was an immense hypocrite via his love of owning slaves while proclaiming that all men were created equal. The question of slavery caused great consternation between the two radicals. Jefferson obviously benefitted from such institutions while Robespierre was an idealist at heart and wished to liberate the blacks from the shackles of slavery. In late 1806, the President had started drafting up legislation to abolish slavery and give them the franchise. Jefferson was appalled. So, late at night after the President had fallen asleep, Jefferson snuck into Robespierre’s office and stole the document off his desk. No one is sure why he thought this scheme would work, but perhaps Jefferson had been driven to desperation. Robespierre woke up the next morning enraged that someone had stolen a document off his desk. To rectify this, he forced through another version of the bill and had anyone that had access to his office tortured for information until someone finally cracked and admitted that it was Jefferson. Whatever tethers Robespierre may have had on reality had snapped. His closest friend had betrayed him and for what? Slaves? There was only one way to deal with this in his mind. Jefferson begged Robespierre to reconsider for the sake of their friendship all the way to the Mall. Upon reaching the Mall, which was adorned with a number of spikes with the bodies of traitors. On a cold morning in late November, Thomas Jefferson gave a final speech to the American people begging forgiveness for having unleashed a madman more cruel than King George III. He was promptly impaled and left to bleed out. For the first time since the practice began, the mob did not cheer. They instead watched in horror as another founding father was brutally executed. This combined with the extreme anti-clericalism had left many alienated and fearful. Yet still, many worshipped Robespierre or at least feared the Legions of Liberty. Robespierre’s madness had just begun.

Apotheosis, noun- the highest point or culmination of something; deification

After Jefferson’s betrayal, Robespierre’s already extreme paranoia only got worse. There was no longer a single person he could trust as he felt that everyone was out to betray or sabotage him. His grip on reality shattered, he constructed an elaborate plan to maintain his grasp on the country and regain the loyalty that he seemed to be losing. His first step was moving out of Washington, which he was convinced was a den of traitors and reactionaries. He set up shop so to speak in Philadelphia, PA on December 1. After leaving Washington, many residents noted the terror they felt about the sheer number of impaled bodies on constant display. On December 24, 1806 Maximilian Robespierre outlawed all forms of worship bar one which was now the official state religion: the Cult of Liberty. On December 25 he proclaimed himself a god. This killed his popular support. Unfortunately he still held sway in enough of the country thanks to the Legions of Liberty to increase the number of those executed. The period of December 25 1806-July 4 1807 is considered to be the most violent period of the Great Terror. Robespierre would state

“If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the republic and nation.”

His policies of inducing fear to keep the angered populace in line generally speaking, backfired. Across the country the same people that once rioted in favor of Robespierre now rioted against him. Pro-Robespierre leaders were slaughtered in their beds. Entire cities fell to anti-Robespierrist forces. The entire American South had fallen under control of the once disgraced Attorney General and Federalist ex-Governor of Virginia Edmund Randolph. Once in disgrace over his utter failure as Secretary of State in the Washington years, Randolph had managed to return to prominence once more as a major opponent of Robespierre. In the chaos of the Terror, Randolph had managed to rise like a Phoenix and become the de facto leader of resistance to Robespierre in the south. Quickly a large militia was constructed consisting of men from Georgia, both Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia with future Dictator Andrew Jackson at it’s head alongside Randolph. Further north of Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton had returned from exile and set about constructing a large regional militia from New England. Soon two armies were marching on Philadelphia to depose a mad tyrant.

Records indicate that Robespierre was not truly aware of the situation until word spread of Randolph’s men capturing Washington. A sense of impending doom sent Robespierre into despair. The number of killings dramatically increased in Philadelphia. Proclamations from the “God of Enlightenment Robespierre” focused increasingly on purity and the need to wash away the old order and usher in a truly new vision of the future. On July 4, 1807, Randolph’s men entered the city of Philadelphia after having slaughtered the nearest Legion of Liberty. Randolph’s forces found Robespierre in Independence Hall screaming at subordinates to save him and the city. Upon being dragged out of the building by Randolph’s men, he screamed a now infamous phrase, one that would haunt subsequent American Regimes and successor states.

“I am a god! How can you kill a god?”

Robespierre screamed these words all the way to the nearest stake open stake. Randolph ordered Robespierre to meet the same fate that his rivals had: impalement. On July 4, 1807 the tyrant Robespierre was dead. The world would never be the same.

In spite of what seemed to be a broad post-Robespierre consensus made by Hamilton and Randolph in the 1811 Constitutional Convention, America would never heal from Robespierre. In spite of the Imperial States of America existing in some form (either democratic or not) until the modern day, the specter of Robespierre haunts the whole continent. Whether it is through Legion terror attacks and sleeper cells, regionalism ripping the Imperial States apart every so often, the extreme militarism of the Jackson years ensuring that America could only be a war loving society, or as foreign observers comment “the pendulum of American society always swings back and forth between divided and chaotic democratic government and strong authoritarian rule that sends the continent into chaos and despair.”
 
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Charles Manson was an American singer and songwriter famous for songs such as "Look At Your Game, Girl", "Helter Skelter", "Eyes Of A Dreamer", and "Eleanor Rigby". Manson is considered to be one of the best Rock N' Roll artists of the 1960's, he has worked with many famous artists like Michael Jackson and Jimi Hendrix. He was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, he died on May 3, 1999 from natural causes.

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John Lennon was a British criminal and cult leader famous for forming the cult, "The Beatles" in 1966. His followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in January and April 1969. He was sentenced to death for his crimes including the murder of upcoming musician Paul McCartney in 1967.
 
In election infoboxes, if you don't want the party hyperlinked and the color filled in, you have to put "no" after the "|party_link=" and "|party_color=" parameters, otherwise it will hyperlink to a RL party that shares the name of whatever you put in the "|party=" field.
I always put the [[ ]] around party names and it never fucks up for me
 
So, if Terminators 3, 4, & 5 hadn't been made (& if they hadn't sucked), then the new movie with both James Cameron & Linda Hamilton returning would probably be one of the most hotly anticipated movies of all time, which got me thinking...


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Terminator: Dark Fate is a 2019 American science fiction action film, and is the third installment in the Terminator film series, following 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It was produced and directed by franchise creator James Cameron, who also co-wrote it with William Wisher, and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, and Gabriel Luna.

Set 25 years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator: Dark Fate sees the machines send a new Terminator, the T-1001 (Luna), back in time to ensure the rise of machines by killing top members of the future human resistance, which will be led by John Connor (Furlong). The Human Resistance sends an enhanced soldier, Carl (Schwarzenegger), whose existence is also dependent on John's survival (and whose appearance is revealed to have been used as the body template for multiple previously-seen Terminator models), back to protect him. Carl and John's only hope for survival against the T-1001 depends on them joining forces with a reclusive Sarah Connor (Hamilton).

By the end of 1995, James Cameron intended to begin production of a third Terminator film in 1998 for a mid-1999 release but development stalled while the script underwent several revisions. Following a suggestion from his ex-wife and executive producer Gale Anne Hurd, Cameron and co-writer Wisher explored the idea of an adult John Connor being attacked by another new Terminator sent from the future. Following the cancellation of sequels to Avatar in 2017, Cameron followed the same idea while revising the script with Wisher. Filming lasted from March to August 2018 in California. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Stan Winston created the special effects, as they did for the previous film.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures in North America, Tencent Pictures in China, and 20th Century Fox in other territories, Terminator: Dark Fate was theatrically released in the United States on July 26, 2019. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the performances but tended to find it derivative of the first two films. It grossed over $1 billion worldwide, making it the first Terminator film to pass the billion-dollar mark, making it the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2019. A sequel is scheduled for release in mid-2022.​
 
The 2019 Austrian legislative election took place on 29 September and saw incumbent Prime Minister Peter Kaiser's coalition government re-elected.

The center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), which Kaiser leads, came in first once again, just barely increasing its seat count and share of the popular vote. Reinhold Mitterlehner, leader of the center-right Christian Social Party (CSP), failed to make a dent in the governing coalition's majority due to Kaiser's personal popularity and the stable four years prior to the election. The right-wing Party for Patriots of the Fatherland (PPV) was able to increase its seat count at the expense of the CSP despite Mitterlehner's repeated attempts to discredit the party as too extreme and nationalistic for the country as a whole. Kaiser's largest coalition partner, the big-tent* Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD), also saw its numbers rise following a notable uptick in regionalist activity. The Greens, the third coalition partner, were able to make an impressive showing by carrying a state, Vorarlberg, for the first time in the party's history after a campaign focusing on the global warming crisis. Irmgard Griss's Liberals for the Future of Austria (LZÖ) won two more seats while the Dalmatian Union (DU) and the Carniolan Regional Alliance (KDZ) maintained their four respective ones. The far-left Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ), which once again only ran in Styria**, lost one seat.

Following receiving a new mandate to form a government by King Charles II, Peter Kaiser decided to maintain the existing coalition.

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*The ČSSD was initially a social democratic party, yet efforts in favor of more autonomy in the 1970s led the party to absorb other pro-Czech parties and politicians. While the party still leans towards the left, it has become the federal home of Czech politicians supporting regionalism or even independence.
**Styria is the state where the KPÖ sees its greatest successes (as in our timeline), often being one of the top parties in state elections. After a long history of attacks by the government and a massive decline in support over the decades, the party had decided by the early 2000s to almost exclusively focus its efforts in Styria federally.
 
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Wang Yang's bid for re-election to the Chinese presidency in 2010 was the culmination of the impact of the Great Recession on Chinese politics. The crisis, which exacerbated the existing housing bubble in China, had seen house prices triple on average since 2005, when Wang was first elected, and as the Kuomintang started to struggle in the polls analysts posited that it might be about to lose its status as the dominant party in Chinese politics. Indeed, the 2009 election to the National Congress saw the Kuomintang lose its overall majority for the first time ever, taking just 427 of the 900 seats and having to form a minority government with support from minor groupings such as the Economic Liberal Party.

As a result of their greatly increased delegation, holding 351 seats and having the tacit support of smaller parties like the Communists and the numerous ethnic parties, the Progressives started to focus on finding their own strong nominee for the following year's presidential election, hoping that they could implement their liberalising legislative agenda. They found it in the shape of Bo Xilai, the popular Mayor of Chongqing and a vocal critic of the Kuomintang's policy of quantitative easing, intending to shore up the economy through the mass buying of government bonds. Bo had become Mayor in the 2008 local elections, and since then had managed to significantly strengthen Chongqing's economy by using economic stimuli and grants to bring business back to China's most populous city; his popularity there made him a truly formidable challenger for the Kuomintang for the first time since parties were legalized.

At first, Bo led by huge margins in the polls not only due to his popular plans for a national stimulus package but also for his perceived status as an anti-establishment figure who embodied the outrage at China's ruling class for their irresponsible neoliberal economic policies. The most famous moment in the campaign came in July of 2010, when an attack ad by the Bo campaign depicted Bo in an empty hall of the South China Mall, giving a sarcastic speech that began 'Welcome to China!' before panning out through the empty halls, too expensive for businesses to afford rent and set up shop in them. This ad went viral not only in China, but across the world, and international sympathy for Bo's campaign surged; he was featured on the cover of Time magazine internationally on July 26th, 2010.

Sensing he was on the back foot, Wang fought back by criticizing Bo for the extreme expense of his planned economic stimulus package. On top of this, over the course of the summer he enacted a series of stimulus reforms which were far cheaper to implement than Bo's proposed plan, and softened his quantitative easing plan to divert the funds to such reforms. When Bo tried to paint Wang as a flip-flopper for these moves to blunt their popularity, Wang started criticizing Bo's corruption allegations as Mayor, and tried to encourage voters who were inclined towards Bo to vote for third parties, something the Progressives desparately needed to avoid.

As a result of the eventful campaign, by the time the election came on the 3rd December, for the first time the result of the presidential contest did not seem immediately obvious. Third-party voting had shrunk from 16.2% in 2005 to just 3.1% this time, and initially Progressives were hopeful that they had pulled off the upset.

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When counting was finally finished on the 6th December, the Monday after the election, Wang had just about secured a second term with 51.70% of the vote to 45.23% for Bo. Progressives and their allies were devastated that Bo had lost despite leading by up to 17 points early in the summer, but he did represent a high watermark for the opposition in a presidential contest, and he and his party had forced Wang to move towards adopting some of their attitudes and take on a more populist approach to helping fix the impact of the housing crisis and Great Recession in China.
 
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- A Perfect Democracy -
or
The World That Huey Made

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Long Memorial

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The Long Memorial is a presidential memorial and resting place built in honor the 34th President of the United States Huey Long. Situated at the center of a large circular plaza is a 30 foot monument featuring a twelve foot bronze statue of Long. The marble pedestal features a rearing Pegasus wrapped in a banner that reads "Share Our Wealth." The reverse side features a relief depicting working class people as well as several building projects, including the new Executive Mansion built to replace the old White House, now a museum. Beneath the relief is a quote that was first featured in his book My First Days in the White House:

OTHER POLITICIANS HAD PROMISED TO REMAKE AMERICA; I HAD PROMISED TO SUSTAIN IT.
When Long had died in March of 1960, he had plans to be buried in Washington, D.C. in an impressive mausoleum, but died before he could approve of the plans. Architect Arnold Weaver drew up what would be the Long Memorial: A circular plaza evoking Jeffersonian equality with the statue at the center. Long and his wife Rose McConnell Long were to be buried at its base. Then president Harold Stassen reluctantly signed on to the plan, complaining privately that the 34th president was not content to be worshiped in life, but in death as well. Despite being built between 1962-63, several structural issues had to be resolved in order for the park to be opened. Once the memorial was completed, Long's body was moved from a plot in Baton Rouge to Washington, D.C. where he was promptly reinterred. The memorial was then opened to the public by Democratic president and Long-devotee Billy Graham in 1965.



 
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Alexander Bogdanov was a Soviet politician, revolutionary, philosopher, and physician who ruled as the first chairman of the Soviet Union. A co-founder of the Bolsheviks in 1903, Bogdanov became the movement’s dominant ideologue after the expulsion of his rival Vladimir Lenin in 1907. The Russian revolutions of 1914 saw the Bolsheviks ultimately rise to power; their leader triumphant in his position. Bogdanov’s interest in medical pseudoscience would be the strangest aspect of state policy. He strongly believed that blood transfusions would result in the eventual immortality of human beings, and so from a young age, all Soviets were instructed to receive annual procedures. This practice continued long after his death, being implemented by his successors. By the 1980s the Soviet Union was dangerously infected with HIV, the commonplace blood transfusions being the catalyst. The population rapidly fell to AIDS and society collapsed as unimaginable death swept the country, dwarfing even the Black Plague, the end times coming not through the nuclear weapons of Western Europe, but rather from an Afrotropical retrovirus.

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