"We may have won, but the fact that a mouse has torn our eagle to shreds means it was not worth it."
Democratic candidate
Richard M. Sroka as part of his 1976 POTUS campaign after the grueling and attrition-causing Congo Civil War (1963-1980) led mainly by Barry Goldwater (1965-1969) and the more infamous Frank Church (1969-1977), where the US could not prevent division of the DRC, but had until 1976 prevented communism from arising in the Congo. The main - and hardest - part of the Congo Civil War was the Lingala Civil War where the communist guerillas in the deep rainforests of Lingala near the Uele River were still not extinguished in the fourteenth year of the civil war and GOP supporters, at least the hawkish and radical ones, feared - which would in the end even prove to be correct - that the planned "Localisation Measures" (=Congoisation) of the war that the Democratic Candidate Richard M. Sroka proposed would lead to Communism in the Free Lingala Republic.
But as so many GIs had perished and the economy had been strained so much and the common population didn't see quite why millions of soldiers had to die in Central Africa (for what? for
stability only? because some Africans shouldn't become commies?), Sroka won the 1976 POTUS election. Indeed, he Congoised the war and, although Katanga and Kasai and the remnant DRC could be "protected", the armies and remaining (South) African and European (mainly Spanish and Portuguese) supporters were unable (and in the end unwilling) to expend more and more troops and material to prevent Lingala and North Kivu from falling to communism.
The People's Republic of Lingala today is one of the most obscure, but in a positive sense, communist states. Natives in the region don't really notice that their ideology is "communist" - they are very much used to dictatorships (kings, tribal leaders), and the General Secretary leaves his citizens alone most of the time. Of course, this leads to rather abject poverty and sometimes stone-age tech levels, but even Western citizens sometimes adore Lingalese leadership and "Lingalese way of life" as a good example of radical sustainablity and "living with nature". The beginnings of the Green and environmental movements that suddenly arose after a true "Silent Spring" overcame the USA in 1982 - very few birds had survived all that DDT - and then the Surry Nuclear Power Plant blocks 2, 3 and 4 were damaged and suffered nuclear meltdown Fukushima-way after Hurricane Richard in the autumn of 1982, even sometimes cited Lingala as "the way to do it" and "how we should live", well, at least the really radical fundamentalist ones...
And such fundamentalist Greens, calling themselves "Protectionists" but being called "Greenies" or, more extreme, "Naturers" by opponents and sometimes - not without base - being accused of "valuing nature more than the human being", celebrated electoral successes mainly in Germany, but also in the UK, France, and notably in several US states (1994 Oregon gubernatorial election!). Germany, where their successes were most pronounced, under Chancellors Rainer Trampert (1987-1992) and Jutta Ditfurth (1992-2002), followed up by Bernhard Kray (2002-2007), a short term of Karl Rottmaier (CSU, 2007-2010) and then radicals like Elisabeth Vennebörger (2010-2015), Karin Süßmilch (2015-2023), Ana Borisov (2023-2028) and Christina Falchi (2028-2033), turned from a vibrant industrial first-world democracy into a strange Deep Ecology "democracy" with little industry left and a very simple, if not poor, standard of living. Elements of authoritarianism and even of totalitarianism are undisputably there as a lot of activities are banned that nobody would give a damn about in other countries. And no, it's not only about pesticide-spraying or the application of Lindane, but activities like drinking alcohol are a criminal offence (=prohibition!) and there are numerous age and other restrictions on digital media commonplace in other countries. Computer use is age-restricted, but especially, "useless" applications are mostly forbidden. Vegetarianism is quite commonly enforced as meat is only allowed to come from highly restricted ultra-organic farms, if at all available, and disputable up to and including esoteric teaching elements and methods (anything from yoga over alternative medicines to fundamentalist anthroposophy) have found a deep root in Germany's education system.
However, on a positive note, a "Factual" populist youth movement is beginning to arise in the early 2030s of Germany which wants to disprove the spurious to outright outrageous (tinfoil hat) claims of the Vennebörger, Süßmilch, Borisov and Falchi Chancellorships by facts, want to catch up on tech and generally are just as 'unruly' and 'restless' as OTL 68ers. And they have recently won the Chancellorship under Jonas Roggausch!
"Really? What on earth is so admirable about this 'democracy"? To me, this seems like tyranny of the masses! Why should anyone want to bring 'democracy' to everybody?"