DBWI: The United States wasn't an oppressive dictatorship.

I know this sounds dumb, but what if the United States hadn't been a single party, autocratic, vicious, pariah state. Could it have become a democracy at any time during its long, bloody history?
 
I know this sounds dumb, but what if the United States hadn't been a single party, autocratic, vicious, pariah state. Could it have become a democracy at any time during its long, bloody history?
I think you'd need Washington to not establish the autocratic precedent. Who knows, if Washington drops dead during or before the Newburgh Rebellion, maybe the Continental Congress can triumph?
 
Washington wasn't the problem; he was a bit authoritarian, but he still stepped down from power after his two terms.

It was the SOB Jackson who set up the American Empire that really undermined democracy and created the conditions that allowed authoritarians to rise up.
 
Washington wasn't the problem; he was a bit authoritarian, but he still stepped down from power after his two terms.

It was the SOB Jackson who set up the American Empire that really undermined democracy and created the conditions that allowed authoritarians to rise up.
It is rather interesting how, (with the Virginians, except for Madison, associated with Gates and the Congress and expunged from political life), Jackson,arrayed as he was against the "Federalist" Adams-Hamilton clique, didn't champion increased democracy, at least initially, instead of charismatic dictatorship.
 
I know this sounds dumb, but what if the United States hadn't been a single party, autocratic, vicious, pariah state. Could it have become a democracy at any time during its long, bloody history?

Prevent the 1827 assassination of James Monroe and you'd be good to go-it was that event that basically made Jackson the paranoid man that he was(or, failing that, have a scandal destroy his chances against John Q. Adams), leading to the "American Empire", and, eventually, the secession of the Federal States of America in 1847(after John Calhoun was assassinated for trying to institute the proposed Fugitive Slave Act via executive order), etc.

Of course, this probably butterflies the existence of the United Socialist States of America(for it's problems with tragic government incompetence, it sure as hell was a far better place than the country it preceded), but maybe we get a much better *American state in return, without the country breaking in two or the bloodiness of a violent Second Revolution.
 
Prevent the 1827 assassination of James Monroe and you'd be good to go-it was that event that basically made Jackson the paranoid man that he was(or, failing that, have a scandal destroy his chances against John Q. Adams), leading to the "American Empire", and, eventually, the secession of the Federal States of America in 1847(after John Calhoun was assassinated for trying to institute the proposed Fugitive Slave Act via executive order), etc.

Of course, this probably butterflies the existence of the United Socialist States of America(for it's problems with tragic government incompetence, it sure as hell was a far better place than the country it preceded), but maybe we get a much better *American state in return, without the country breaking in two or the bloodiness of a violent Second Revolution.

A a citizen of the Free Republic of Superior (OOC: The Upper Midwest), I can assure you that the USSA had its problems; no free thinking Superioran would claim differently. But, at the very least, we were spared the horrors of the Slavocracy and its 'Empire' that destroyed the economy of the United States and lead it to such moral degradation. We are now a fully functioning democracy, as is the Republic of New England, as still stand avowed in our belief in human rights and the inherent worth of all men and women, no matter their skin color. We stand full in accord with the Empire of Germany in its call, back in 2000, for the end of the barbaric practices of the Second American Empire!
 
At least the Canadian-American border wouldn't be the longest militarised frontier in the world.

Mexico and the Central American states would probably be independent, rather than either eaten or puppetised.
 
Americans have had no experience with "democracy" whatsoever, so its hard to see how its compatible with American culture.

However, I did read an obscure but interesting book that argued that things might have been different if the chartered companies that the English Parliament had set up to settle and exploit North America had allowed the settlers to elect assemblies. You did get these in New England, but they were cover for the theocracies being set up there and anyway did not last beyond the seventeenth century.
 
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