Bears, Dragons, Eagles, Lions: an In Media Res timeline

Author's note: there's no time like the present. In the spirit of this sentiment, we begin our timeline not at the POD, which will be revealed in time, but near the present. This timeline is as much a worldbuilding exercise as it is a history.

We begin our timeline on the 26th of September, 2016.

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Excerpt from the transcript of the 1st Presidential Debate at Hofstra University, on 26, September, 2016.


TRUMP: The world -- let me tell you. Let me tell you. Mitt has experience, but it's bad experience. We have made so many just awful, awful deals during the last -- so he's got experience, that I agree.

(APPLAUSE)

But it's bad, bad experience. Whether it's the arms reduction treaty where we're handing over our nuclear arsenal to the Nazarbayev regime- which is a nasty, nasty regime, just an awful hateful regime-, whether it's the many bad, very bad trade deals with India, whether it's anything you can name -- you almost can't name a good deal. I agree. He's got experience, but it's bad experience. And this country can't afford to have another four years of that kind of experience.

HOLT: We are at -- we are at the final question.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Well, one thing. One thing, Lester.

HOLT: Very quickly, because we're at the final question now.

ROMNEY: You know, he tried to switch from ethics to experience. But whenever confronted about his views on women, he ducks the question. This is a man who said in 2008 that President Warren didn’t have the ‘stamina’ to be President. this is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers, who has said...

TRUMP: I never said that.

ROMNEY: .... women don't deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men.

TRUMP: I didn't say that.

ROMNEY: And some of the worst things he's said has been about our Commander-in-Chief. He has called President Warren ‘Pocahontas,’ and ‘Loser Liz.’ This is a man who said that the President looked ‘frumpy’ at the State of the Union and that she ‘didn’t have the look of a President.’

TRUMP: Where did you find this? Where did you find this?

ROMNEY: He doesn’t respect anyone other than himself, and he doesn’t respect the office of the Presidency...

TRUMP: Oh, really? ROMNEY: ...quite honestly he doesn’t seem to take the office he’s running for at all seriously

TRUMP: OK, good. Let me just tell you...

(APPLAUSE)

HOLT: Mr. Trump, could we just take a few seconds and then we ask the final question...

TRUMP: You know, Mitt is hitting me with tremendous commercials. Some of it's said in entertainment. Some of it's sad -- just very sad -- trying to defend a failed administration that's made some very wrong decisions, essentially handed our jobs to India and our security to the Soviets

But you want to know the truth? I was going to say something...

HOLT: Please very quickly.

TRUMP: ... extremely rough to Mitt, to his family, and I said to myself, "I can't do it. I just can't do it. It's terrible. It's not nice." But he spent so much time attacking and attacking me-- a lot of it's absolutely untrue. They're untrue. And they're misrepresentations.

And I will tell you this, Lester: It's not nice. And I don't deserve that.

But it's certainly not a nice thing that he's done. It's months of attacks without any ideas-- no ideas...

ROMNEY: That's not true at all..


TRUMP: ...And the only gratifying thing is, I saw the polls come in today, and with all of that money...

ROMNEY:...My campaign's website tells you all about what I have planned...

HOLT: We have to move on to the final question.

TRUMP: ... $200 million is spent, and I'm either winning or tied, and I've spent practically nothing.

(APPLAUSE)


ROMNEY: Lester I think I should be able to address his false statements...

HOLT: One of you will not win this election. So my final question to you tonight, are you willing to accept the outcome as the will of the voters? Mr. Vice President?

ROMNEY: Well, I support our democracy. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But I certainly will support the outcome of this election.

And I know Donald's trying very hard to plant doubts about it, as his ridiculous claims that Chairman Nazarbayev is planting misinformation shows, but I hope the people out there understand: This election's really up to you. It's not about us so much as it is about you and your families and the kind of country and future you want. So I sure hope you will get out and vote as though your future depended on it, because I think it does.

HOLT: Mr. Trump, very quickly, same question. Will you accept the outcome as the will of the voters? TRUMP: I want to make America great again. We are a nation that is seriously troubled. We're losing our jobs. People are pouring into our country.

The other day, we gave back Sergei Yarunikov-- big Russian spy-- very bad guy. We gave him back, and he gave Russia the plans to the F-35-- we gave him back, we gave five other Soviet spies back, and we got two of our guys back in return. Two-- this Admninistration-- they just don't know what's what. We're getting creamed by these guys-- we're getting creamed by China, we're getting taken to the bank by India-- we're losing jobs to India, Mexico-- who's sending their worst people over here, by the way-- we need a leader with his head on straight.

HOLT: Will you accept the outcome of the election?

TRUMP: Look, here's the story. I want to make America great again. I'm going to be able to do it. I don't believe Mitt will. The answer is, if he wins, I don't think we're in for a good time.

(APPLAUSE)

HOLT: All right. Well, that is going to do it for us. That concludes our debate for this evening, a spirit one. We covered a lot of ground, not everything as I suspected we would.

The next presidential debates are scheduled for October 9th at Washington University in St. Louis and October 19th at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The conversation will continue.

A reminder. The vice presidential debate is scheduled for October 4th at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. My thanks to Mitt Romney and to Donald Trump and to Hofstra University for hosting us tonight. Good night, everyone.

---

Thoughts?
 
I got excited when I thought this would be a NFL TL.;)
So, is Mitt Romney a Democrat now, or is Warren a Republican?
I'm gonna guess Warren is a Republican, in a TL where Democrats stayed on a Populist message and kept the South. So New England may be a Republican stronghold.
 
I got excited when I thought this would be a NFL TL.;)

I'm gonna guess Warren is a Republican, in a TL where Democrats stayed on a Populist message and kept the South. So New England may be a Republican stronghold.
She was a republican OTL until the '90s and the Contract with America.... so for a freebie the POD is before 1994
 
She was a republican OTL until the '90s and the Contract with America.... so for a freebie the POD is before 1994

I mean, the reference to the USSR still being around made that obvious. India replaces China ITTL's political discussion, although China also got an offhand mention, so I'm guessing some significant shifts happen in India in the 80's or so.
 
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Image: An artist's impression of the proposed Space Shuttle docking with the space station Independence (1993)

Excerpt from the 1990 State of the Union, by Pres. Donald Rumsfeld


"America is as it always has been built upon the spirit of the pioneer. For this reason a priority of the coming years will be the development of new frontiers. A sparkling economy spurs initiatives, sunrise industries, and makes older ones more competitive.

Nowhere is this more important than humanity's next frontier: space. Nowhere do we so effectively demonstrate our technological leadership and ability to make life better on Earth. The Space Age is barely thirty years old. But already we've pushed the limits of our knowledge and our innovation forward with our advances in science and technology. Jobs and opportunities endlessly multiply as we cross new thresholds of knowledge and reach deeper into the unknown.

Our progress in space—taking giant steps for all mankind—is a tribute to American teamwork and excellence. Our finest minds in government, industry, and academia have all pulled together. And we can be proud to say: We are first; we are the best; and we are so because we're free.

America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a reusable manned space shuttle by the end of the decade.

A space shuttle will permit quantum leaps in the transport of supplies and personnel to our twin space stations, Liberty and Independence. The cost of transporting goods and people into space will fall far below what it is today, and space travel will become routine. Furthermore, a space shuttle will enable us finally to return to the moon after a generation's absence, and from there further expand the boundaries of human exploration and knowledge. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals."


Author's note: a great many people working in the Reagan administration, including much of the speechwriting staff, got their start in the Nixon White House. ITTL Donald Rumsfeld, as it so happened, pursued a similar policy.
 
October 17, 1998. 8:30 AM, GMT

In Westminster yesterday, Tory backbencher and former Secretary of State for Education Margaret Thatcher decried the most recent round of 2+4 talks in Berlin, as the prospect of German reunification grows ever closer. The longtime opponent of the Conservative establishment said in Parliament yesterday that-

The newsreader's quote was cut off as Mary Potts shut off the TV on the kitchen counter and placed a sandwich in a pink Disney's Rapunzel lunchbox. Zipping it up, she took it over to the stairs and called up.

"Cassidy, it's time for you to go to school," she called. She received no answer. She walked over to the sitting room and looked in. The room was empty apart from the usual clutter. Next to the couch facing the TV was an armchair that as of late had become a dumping ground for various bits of detritus that nobody felt like putting in its proper place. Prominent amongst that detritus was a purple backpack. Picking it up, Mary placed the lunchbox inside and zipped it up along with Cassidy's school things. "Cassidy I'm not going to tell you again. Mummy has to go to work so it's time for you to go to school," she called again from the other side of the house.

Still no answer. She walked up the stairs carrying the backpack by one strap. "Cassidy, I'm not going to tell you again. It's time for school." She strode irritably down the hall and looked in her daughter's room. The widow was open and Cassidy was nowhere to be seen.

Her blood froze. "Cassidy?" she called again. She received no answer and bent down to look under the bed. Still nothing. She threw open the closet and was greeted by nothing but clothes. "Cassidy this is not funny- you come out this instant!" she called around the house.

She looked in her own bedroom and saw that it was empty. In the center was a queen bed that was unmade on the left side and immaculate on the right. Now trying very hard to stop herself from running, she looked in her own closet to find it empty.

Looking out the window she saw as well that the back garden was devoid of child. Now near panic, she turned the house upside down in search of Cassidy.

An hour later, near despair, she picked up the phone and dialed 999

October 18, 1998. 6:13 PM

Parliament today gave first reading to a bill that would provide funding for the construction of mid-rise housing in crowded urban areas. The controversial legislation is opposed by a number of groups, including environmental advocates and local property owners. Proponents of the bill say that it will ease overcrowding, reduce rents, and make homeownership a possibility for millions of Britons.

In other news, Chiswick residents are advised to be on the look-out for 8-year-old Cassidy Halpern. Cassidy was reported missing yesterday morning by her mother, Mary Potts. She was last seen wearing a lavender jumper and blue jeans. We now go live to Chiswick, where search efforts are underway.


Author's note: By around October 20th everyone in Britain will know of the Halpern case. ITTL the Halpern affair becomes basically the textbook example of a missing child case that turns into a media circus.
 
In Westminster yesterday, Tory backbencher and former Secretary of State for Education Margaret Thatcher decried the most recent round of 2+4 talks in Berlin, as the prospect of German reunification grows ever closer.
Okay, I think this narrows down the POD to being sometime during the Cold War...
 
The Nixon Presidential Library presents an excerpt of the personal audio recordings of President Richard Nixon

PRESIDENT NIXON: You wanted to see me, John?

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: Yes sir. There have been some developments that I find concerning regarding George Liddy.

PRESIDENT NIXON: How so?

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: A few months ago we discussed the possibility of some more strenuous means to swing the election our way. It was decided that the idea that George proposed was both impractical and politically dangerous, and the issue was dropped.

PRESIDENT NIXON: When you say "more strenuous," you mean?

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: George proposed we break in and wiretap the DNC headquarters.

PRESIDENT NIXON: [indistinct, possibly "oh, for Christ's sake"] I assume you told him what a dumb fucking idea that was, especially given recent events.

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: I tried to clip his wings a little, yes. However he came to me about this again a month ago-

PRESIDENT NIXON (interrupting): You should have brought this to me then. Better yet you should have told me in January when this sonofabitching stupidity was getting started. For Christ's sake, John, we lose Spiro to bribery charges and George thinks now is a good idea to commit a felony?

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: My thoughts exactly, sir.

PRESIDENT NIXON: [sighs] So why bring this too me now?

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: Sir I have reason to believe that George and a few other individuals in this administration didn't get the message. I believe they plan to go ahead with-

PRESIDENT NIXON: For FUCK'S SAKE, John! Jesus Christ. Not only do have to deal with a bitchy press and a Vice President resigning, but I have to deal with a a staff who can't find their own ass with a fucking map. [shouts] Rose Mary! Call George Liddy and tell him that if he's not in my office in twenty minutes he can kiss his job goodbye! [mutters] Goddamn incompetents, that's the problem. How the hell did nobody come to me before it got this bad?

ATTY GENERAL MITCHELL: I don't know sir.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Goddamn circus, that's what it is. If the press got hold of that God have mercy. John, I have a Vice President to confirm, and because the sons of bitches in the Senate Democrats won't let me have Connally the best they offer is George fucking Bush- as if that's not a ploy to give Ralph Yarlborough his seat back-

[END EXCERPT]

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Image: a bumper sticker on sale for $14.99 on the website FratCastle.us in 2017

 
Excerpt from City of Blood, the Story of the Peruvian War, on the History Channel

By the summer of 1990 the situation had gotten completely out of control. President Alanda and his government fled the capital and the Shining Path swarmed in. With the capital under their control, they began a bloody campaign of violence against those they saw as enemies of the revolution. Margarita Aranda was six years old when the capital fell.


ARANDA (through a translator): I remember everyone was running and shouting and there were men shooting their guns up in the air. My father had a stand in the market- I don't remember where. I remember they came to our home and shot him in the doorway. I remember they came into our home and took both of my brothers. The elder one, Andres, I met again after the war ended, but the younger, Samuel, I never saw again. I remember they held my mother down and took turns with her, over and over and over again. Eventually they grew tired of their game and the smashed her head in with the butt of their rifle and left. All the while I hid in a cupboard just like Mami told me.

The situation deteriorated as mass-executions took place. The city's inhabitants were marched at gunpoint out into the countryside and forced to toil in the fields, often working on the same coca plantations that supplied the world's thirst for cocaine. Any boy over the age of nine was taken into the army, while the Shining Path took control of the equipment the fleeing Peruvian army.

In Washington, members of the Preuvian government and civilians who fled the carnage testified before Congress on behalf of President Rumsfeld, who was building a case for war. This would be the first large-scale military intervention since the Vietnam War.

In the UN, President Alanda gave a speech begging for international aid. He was backed by the Presidents of Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, and Chile. In Colombia in particular, FARC was bolstered by news of the Shining Path's victory, and engaged in a vicious campaign of terror against the Colombian government, including a truck bomb that destroyed the
Capitolio Nacional.

FMR SECY. OF STATE JEANNE KIRKPATRICK: President Rumsfeld understood that the greatest threat in Latin America was the disorder that could spread from Peru. A failed communist state in South America could embolden leftist guerrilla movements in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and in Central America. This wasn't even about stopping Communism anymore: it was about preventing a region from sliding into anarchy.

The victory of leftist militias in the 1991 Venezuelan Coup only emboldened these movements. With the overthrow of President Luciano Valera the Venezuelan military fell into line and made no attempt to reverse the coup. The beginning of the regime of General Francisco Arias Cardenas frightened Washington diplomats even more. Throughout 1992 Venezuela gave aid to both Shining Path and to FARC in Colombia.

The fall of the last government strongholds in Peru wasn't the end of the disorder. Almost as soon as Shining Path took over rebellions against their rule, many led by army units that defected following the fall of Lima, erupted in urban areas. Bombings in La Paz and Sucre complicated matters further and sparking fears that the whole of the Andes region could be engulfed in conflict. Vicious fighting between local militias and Shining Path prevented them from ever gaining total control over the countryside, even as support from Venezuela funneled tens of thousands of guns into the country. Lima, Peru had become the most dangerous city on Earth, with a murder rate unprecedented in recent memory.

The 1992 Presidential Election centered around the chaos in Latin America. The ad-hoc alliance between leftist militias and the drug cartels made for a dangerous alliance, and fears of the violence spreading to the United States seemed well-founded as gangs in Los Angeles were caught using soviet and Chinese-made weapons following a sting performed by the LAPD.

FMR. VICE PRESIDENT BOB DOLE: The 1992 election was essentially a referendum on whether or not to intervene in South America. Presidents Nixon and Bush in the '70s had already set the precedent by sending aid and weapons to prop up the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and that was another fear because they were teetering on the verge of collapse, too. The President was already drawing up contingency plans because he was afraid we'd have to intervene there, too. It really was Domino Theory in action- Peru and Venezuela fell, and we were afraid the whole region was gonna o up in flames as a result.

The 1992 Presidential Election led to the reelection of President Rumsfeld by a landslide. The president took that to mean the public wanted him to step in. On February 3rd, 1993, President Rumsfeld announced the beginning of Operation Rainstorm, as the Pacific fleet stationed itself off the coast of Peru and the Marines set up a beachhead north of Lima. At the same time the Air Force, without the input of the Colombian government, began bombing FARC position in that country's interior. Venezuelan President Cardenas decried the act in the United Nations that spring, knowing full well that should the President get funding from Congress, he would be next on the Rumsfeld Administration's list.

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Image: the 1992 Electoral Map (Blue: Rumsfeld, Red: Cuomo)
 
Wall Street Journal: Infrastructure, the key to the Chamatkaar, proves to be a two-edged sword in India. (12, October, 2016)

Mumbai—Growth has become a staple of the Indian Economic Miracle, ever since the reforms of the 1970s following the downfall of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. Most recently, the Chief Minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh announced the construction of a 30 billion dollar subway system from scratch, in an attempt to draw business to the state capital of Lucknow

By comparison, America has practically given up. Every four years, The American Society of Civil Engineers reviews the condition of the country’s crumbling schools, chronically congested major airports, potholed roads and decrepit transit systems and offers an overall grade. Its latest, in 2013: C+.

Meanwhile, India can’t build fast enough. Having recently finished the fourth ring road around New Delhi, construction crews are now working on a fifth—100 miles out in some places—part of plans to merge the capital with surrounding municipalities to create a “supercity” of 70 million people, slightly larger than the population of West Germany. The national high-speed rail network, nonexistent two decades ago, is now more extensive than the European Community's—and expanding rapidly. New dams, bridges, tunnels and subways are all in a day’s work for state planners.

But at what cost? A report by four academics at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Management Studies has created a stir by arguing that what outside observers often hail as a towering strength of the Indian system has instead led to colossal waste. All this construction, they say, has produced cost overruns equal to one-third of India's $22.4 trillion debt pile in 2014, and unless India scales back it is “headed for an infrastructure-led national financial and economic crisis” with global ramifications.

Examining data on 95 road and rail projects, the authors say cost overruns are typically about the same as in the West, and although India handily wins on speed it comes at the expense of quality, safety and the environment.

Most of the finished routes carry paltry traffic; a few are clogged. Either way, the outcome is grossly inefficient.

If these failures are representative across the board, they not only suggest a Indian financial blowup but challenge a conventional belief that the more you build the more you lower costs for businesses and households and add to economic growth. In India’s case, infrastructure may be the road to ruin.

Few dispute that debt has become the Achilles’ heel of the Indian economy as local governments build frantically to boost growth at all costs, even as it seeks to rebalance the economy toward services and consumption. McKinsey calculates that between 2000 and 2014 India added $22.1 trillion to its debt, a figure greater than the GDP of the U.S., Japan and West Germany combined.

And debt is concentrated in local government-owned enterprises, which build much of the infrastructure. Karnataka Railway Corp., the railway operator in that state, is groaning under almost as much debt as Hungary. Still, Indian state governments have budgeted $120 billion for more railway construction this year.

Indian leaders are well aware of the dangers. “Trees cannot grow to the sky. High leverage inevitably will create high risks,” the Times of India earlier this year quoted an “authoritative person”—likely a proxy for Prime Minister Siddharta Abishek—as saying.

Skeptics have argued with the findings of the Oxford study. Andrew Batson, the India research director of the mundocapitalist International Enterprise Institute, writes in a blog post that the paper makes “grand macro claims about India based on rather equivocal micro data.” To wit: It shows that India botches individual infrastructure projects like everybody else, but doesn’t demonstrate that it does so on such a scale that it threatens a financial crisis.

Barry Naughton, a professor of India’s economy at the University of California, San Diego, has argued in the past that an advantage of the Indian model is that it builds infrastructure ahead of demand, rather than waiting for bottlenecks to emerge, like the West. Asked about the Oxford paper, he responded: “Building low-return infrastructure is not the most disastrous thing” an economy can do.

Hand-in-hand with this policy for the resource-poor subcontinent has been investment in resource extraction abroad. "The Soviet Union has managed to maintain its standard of living largely by being the primary source of natural resources for the Chinese since the reforms that followed the death of Hua Guofeng in 1997," says Peter Miller, head of the US Agency for International Development, "Western Europe and the United States both subsist on resource extraction both in the US, in Latin America, and in Africa. India has similarly invested heavily in Africa."

To supplement falling demand for infrastructure at home, India has invested in development abroad. With Somalia and Mozambique both alligned with the Soviet Union, and Ethiopia playing host to a People's Liberation Army Air Force Base for China, Kenya and Tanzania have benefited the most from investment across the Arabian Sea. The mining conglomerate Bahratiya Khanij recently built a six-lane highway from Mombasa to the capital of Uganda, Kigali. Elsewhere, billions have been invested in countries like Sudan, Botswana, Rhodesia, Zambia, and the East Congo Republic, and the Indian Office for International Investment recently began construction on the largest airport in sub-Saharan Africa in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam.

Still, there’s a widespread consensus that in recent years the Indian infrastructure build-out has gotten out of hand. Local governments have run out of worthwhile projects and are getting downright frivolous in their spending habits, while companies are getting gimmicky. Rajasthan built the world's largest indoor ski park in the capital of Jaipur. A Varnasi firm threw up a 57-story building in 19 days.

Scott Kennedy, an expert on Indian industrial policy at the Center for Strategic and International studies in Washington, says India should keep spending on infrastructure, but in different ways. He says the country needs more investment in rural areas to narrow regional wealth disparities, along with well-designed hospitals and schools.

Michel Toussaint, a Professor at Pantheon-Sorbonne University School of Economics, paints a similar picture. "The entire subcontinent is already undergoing a transition towards a services-based economy," he says, "the middle class desires something more than a factory job. As it is, the current model has done a fantastic job of lifting nearly half a billion people out of poverty."

Of course, these are choices that America can only dream about. Both leading presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, have pledged to invest more in infrastructure to promote growth and generate jobs, although it’s not clear how they would break through the political gridlock that prevents funds from being raised and spent.

What is indisputably clear is that in the realm of infrastructure, India has far too much of a good thing, while America and other Western nations don’t have nearly enough. Both extremes threaten long-term growth, human well-being and financial fragility.
 
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