Bill Clinton watches Babylon 5 and pushes for more aggressive military intervention

What would you think of a TL where a piece of art or pop culture entertainment influences a world leader in their decision making?

I noticed the first season of Babylon 5 aired in 1994 during the troubles in Rwanda and the Balkans.

What would you think of having Babylon 5 shown during a government conference to the president and Congress people? The show leads to a massive deployment of US troops to Rwanda. US armored troops prevent the Srebrenica massacre. Both deployments end in minimal US and civilian casualties.

And to top it all off Osama Bin Laden is taken out in 1996.

What would you think of that?

Without 9/11 how would Firefly and Battlestar Galactica be affected? Mass Effect?
 
Last edited:
It's pretty unlikely that watching pop-culture products would seriously influence high-level decision making, beyond a superficial aesthetic level. But no moreso than most "Great Man" scenarios, and it's pretty fun to speculate.

- influential congressmen view early episodes of Welcome Back Kotter during New York Bankruptcy Crisis. Bailout canceled.

- Ronald Reagan watches The Empire Strikes Back, goes into a panic, asks the CIA to get a DNA sample from one of Stalin's relatives.
 
But is there any evidence that it actually influenced the decisions he made?

Only from the people who worked with him. Certainly not statistical analysis of numerical data. Not every person holding a leadership position is a well educated & experienced Washington or Eisenhower. A great many are flaky, uneven in experience & knowledge, and influenced by shiny things passing by. Nixon was a intelligent & 'complex' individual. That last is usually a euphemism for emotional. About all i can say is read the hundreds of pages of testimony from the folks who were in frequent contact & present when decisions were being made.
 
Reagan was at least influenced into making arms control a higher priority because of WarGames, so it's not outside of the realm of possibility.
 
No it wasn't. That was a term coined by the washington post after a quote by ted kennedy. Project was called Strategic Defense Initiative.

And the nickname was meant to mock it, as in a "reckless Star Wars scheme", as the original Kennedy quote goes.

If anything Kennedy was most likely comparing it to the Death Star, but that was lost in translation.
 
Top