DBWI: "Decades of Light" TL Discussion

Decades of Light is a very detailed TL in which Thomas Jefferson lives longer, resulting in the Embargo Act being repealed, and the US eventually abolishing slavery.

OOC: This is set in the world of Decades of Darkness.
 
Decades of Light is a very detailed TL in which Thomas Jefferson lives longer, resulting in the Embargo Act being repealed, and the US eventually abolishing slavery.

OOC: This is set in the world of Decades of Darkness.

How do they abolish slavery? It was part of the constitution and even with New England I just don´t see the free states getting a 3/4 majority.
 
Jefferson was an old man. I haven't read the TL myself, but I can't help feeling its childishly utopian, and when I see maps I notice that America still took land from Mexico, yet didn't digest the whole country. Its pretty much an either/or choice. And why would *America waste energy on fighting Mexico, only to not conquer it (I heard they don't do it for racial reasons. Can the author decide what this America is like please), when they have a whole avenue for expansion in British North America?
 
Also, I feel as though the over the top evil of one of the villains was stupid, moronic, and unrealistic. Take that Hitler guy, for example. I can't see an entire nation signing on to his plan. Stalin, Pol Pot, and that Mao guy were dumb as well; they killed their own people just because they felt like it. It was borderline ASB how Russia fell to "Communism" (such a stupid name); it never got a constitution because it had an unrealistically reactionary Tsar, which was also. fucking. stupid. Then there was Europe. Hoo boy, Europe. It was a MESS. The author apparently couldn't decide if it would be a Prussia wank or not; Prussia has hegemony over lesser Germany, but then loses the Great War (also unrealistic). Speaking as a German, we would NEVER do anything as bad as the Nazis. I could see the Jackals doing it, but not us Germans. Honestly, this timeline seemed to rest on a bunch of people being complete morons; why the FUCK did Hitler invade Russia for no reason whatsoever? That was just DUMB. We didn't invade Russia after the fall of France in OTL. Finally, and I know this is a long rant, that Mullins equivalent, Mussolini, started out as this big threat, but was more of a stooge than a dictator. I just don't get it.
 
Ah, the 'Southern Secession' timeline. That's a great one! I think it was a generally good TL—it's one of my favourites—though there are a few things that aren't quite perfect.

For the alternate USA, I don't really agree with the criticisms presented here. Anti-slavery doesn't mean anti-racist. Just look at New England; the Yankees weren't exactly eager to admit the Dominicans into the Republic, even though they liked the idea of having more land for themselves. The way the good-USA's own racism prevented it from expanding—when there's not really anything else that could have done—was excellently done. In any case, the good-USA isn't just New England; there are still racists in it, so it makes sense for there to be racist attitudes even though slavery is abolished there.

There is one thing about the good-USA that I did find unrealistic, though, and that was its good relationship with Britain. Manifest destiny might only have been talked about by Jefferson Davis, but the ideas behind it were around since before the foundation of the United States. The USA broke away from Britain in the first place to a great extent because of the Proclamation Line limiting American expansion. That ideology—of opposition to Britain and of the American people's right to expand—is hard to get rid of. I think the way the Second American Revolution ended in Decades of Light wasn't enough of an incentive to prevent the Americans from expanding into Canada, though there was a good reason provided for why they didn't annex Mexico. I don't think there was ever a good reason presented as to why the good-USA didn't conquer Canada: lots of available land right there, and without the strong British power, allied with New England, that prevented such a takeover in OTL. It would have been more sensible for the author to have the good-USA take over Canada in that war, and then they would be able to plausibly have stable relations with Britain.

I'd have to vehemently disagree with the suggestion that Decades of Light Germany is implausible, though. Germany losing the First World War sounded perfectly reasonable, and so did its reaction afterwards; it was a situation very similar to post-North American War New England, so it's entirely sensible that a vitalist-esque regime could emerge. And for vitalist regimes to start wars for no good reason is entirely in character—just look at OTL. It's not as if New England's national interests were threatened by the possibility of Germany winning the Great War; Mullins went in purely for glory, power and ideology (in OTL, New England's long solidarity with Britain), just like the fictional Hitler went in for glory, power and ideology!

Sure, the nastiness of the 'National Socialists' was exaggeratedly cartoonish—the way they deprived people of the races they didn't like of all public status and humiliated them was realistic and Mullins-esque, and the way they confined them to ghettoes was a reasonable extrapolation of that, but the outright industrialised mass-murder was stretching plausibility, there's never been anything like that—but the key point is absolutely right.The author was making the point that "it can't happen here" is an attitude both dangerous and wrong. Germans might like to think of themselves as "inherently more civilised" (or some such nonsense) than Yankees but it simply isn't true. No country is inherently morally superior to any other.

The idea of having socialism actually succeed in taking over a country was a fascinating experiment, and I disagree with the suggestion that it just couldn't have happened. The author went to ridiculously great effort to make Russia ripe for revolution. I have to say, the assassination of Alexander II just at the right time to give people a taste of reform and then cut it off with the rise of Alexander III, and its effect on Nicholas II to make him reactionary too, was a masterstroke in how to shape the legitimate Russian government's behaviour to make it more vulnerable to revolution. But what I disagree with is how it fell.

Having gone to such effort to create this lovely, non-evil USA, the author seemed to grow a bit too fond of it, and wanted to make it win all the time. I mean, sure, the socialist Russia wasn't very nice, but the way it suddenly fell apart didn't make any sense. It's as if the author wrote himself into a corner; he created a bipolar world when he wanted the good-USA to win, so he had to hastily get rid of authoritarian socialist Russia at the end. I mean, how did a man like Gorbachev, who basically dismantled the authoritarian state structure that kept socialist Russia around, possibly get into power in the first place? Surely such a democratic idealist could never have risen so high in a cruel authoritarian regime.

So I think Decades of Light really was a genuinely realistic and really good TL, up until the authoritarian socialist regime in Russia fell apart. I think it would have been a better ending in terms of plausibility—though, I suppose, less thematically appropriate for such a utopian TL—for the Warsaw Pact to still survive, facing off against the good-USA and its Western European allies indefinitely, at the end of the story.
 
The author wrote one of the most extensive timelines we have, and all you want to do is complain, you negative nellies.

What do you expect from Jackals, they are great at disagreeing with people who undermine their precious "peculiar institution" and the idea of absolute white dominance. :rolleyes:
 
Well, I wasn't talking about Germany going Vitalist, but did Mullins ever herd Jews into concentration camps? The Holocaust was kind of Germany's key point in DoL. I just don't see it ever being that evil. Neither do I see anything as evil as North Korea springing up; I can't see anyone being brainwashed like that. Honestly, the TL overall is plausible;my main problem is that the villains were too over the top. Also, the author seemed to be pushing people as heroes without giving any good reason for it. I mean, that Woodrow Wilson guy was lauded as a saint, but I myself think he would be right at home with OTL's Jackals! I was a bit too harsh the first time around,I suppose. The TL was good until WWII; then it started getting implausible.
 
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