Irritating cliches of post-1900 Alternate History:

[Elfwine]

Uh... no... no you really can't blame him for the fact that the stroke accentuated certain parts of his personality but that he otherwise was mentally capable in his brief periods of coherence following the stroke. The real problem was that nobody knew precisely how to deal with the issue, where the president was somewhat incapacitated but not fully so. Wilson was the person in some ways who would be the least aware of changes to his personality that the stroke caused to happen so it really takes a strong, strong dislike of Wilson to be willing to blame him for the mental issues brought on by his stroke.

I can blame him for acting as if he was fit even if he really wasn't. Same principle as faulting someone for running a race with a torn muscle.

Saying "Oh, I've had a stroke, but that doesn't mean anything." isn't an act of particularly good judgment.

If it isn't clear if he's okay or not, then he should know that (as in, that should be something someone told him).

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Running a race with a torn muscle? You can tell something's wrong because it hurts like the fiery pits of Hell to do so much as shift. A stroke is more subtle, certainly with the knowledge of the time, is it really hard to imagine, that in a brief moment of coherence that Wilson thinks "Hmm, okay, it seems like things are a little more in order and I can make decisions and be the president again". It really isn't the same situation, let alone once you factor in how little understanding there was of strokes at the time.

 

[Elfwine]

Running a race with a torn muscle? You can tell something's wrong because it hurts like the fiery pits of Hell to do so much as shift. A stroke is more subtle, certainly with the knowledge of the time, is it really hard to imagine, that in a brief moment of coherence that Wilson thinks "Hmm, okay, it seems like things are a little more in order and I can make decisions and be the president again". It really isn't the same situation, let alone once you factor in how little understanding there was of strokes at the time.

That Wilson thinks that is very easy to imagine. Human folly usually is pretty believable.

Its humans recognizing that they're doing something foolish that's surprising. </misanthrope>

Even with limited knowledge of strokes, if there are "brief moments of coherence" (key word "moments") that ought to tell those who are aware of what happened that it might not be the best of all possible ideas to have him at the helm.

I'm picking the torn muscle thing as an example of "acting while impaired". Comparing it to acting while drunk or something would be unfair as that was deliberate and the stroke wasn't.

I know the odds of us agreeing on whether he was a good or bad person or a good or bad president are negligible, but this really is kind of worrisome on his part and his doctor/s'.

 

[SavoyTruffle]

A torn muscle doesn't have the same effect on a president as a stroke, however.

 

[Elfwine]

A torn muscle doesn't have the same effect on a president as a stroke, however.

Thus referring to running a race.

Yes, I know its an imperfect metaphor.

 

[Aelita]

It's not even just about the Stock Market Crash causing the Great Depression -- it's the Stock Market Crash happening at all. PoD in 1900? 1880? 1860? There's still a major crash in the NYSE followed by a nasty depression sometime in 1929 (or 1930 or 1928 for the more adventurous TL authors).

There are very good reasons for that bubble to form, and for a Depression to occur in that period. That said, the window is pretty wide. It could happen as early as the early 20s, or as late as the mid 30s, and I'd still consider that plausible, depending on the economic circumstances.

 

[MAlexMatt]

There are very good reasons for that bubble to form, and for a Depression to occur in that period. That said, the window is pretty wide. It could happen as early as the early 20s, or as late as the mid 30s, and I'd still consider that plausible, depending on the economic circumstances.

Go back before about 1925 and there's no reason at all a Crash and Depression have to happen in the next five years.

Yes, there was endemic financial instability on a global scale in the 1920's.

Yes, monetary policy was in its infancy and outright destructive theories like the Real Bills Doctrine still hung around the edges of the public sphere.

Yes, as long as governments continue to subordinate their management of their economies to other policy goals, there's always the chance that somebody fucks up in just the right way as happened with in OTL.

But it's also possible that things don't aline in quite the right way, that we experience some recessions, the occasional stock market bubble and break, but otherwise the economy powers on.

And this is with a PoD in the mid-20's. In the cases I cited in my post, of PoD's before World War I (undoubtedly the primary source of the vast majority of international financial instability IOTL), it gets even more ridiculous.

 

[machine3589]

Wow, this is like the... 135 978th "cliche" thread on AH.com? Frankly, threads like these should be put as an irritating cliche.

 

[Cecil]

Wow, this is like the... 135 978th "cliche" thread on AH.com? Frankly, threads like these should be put as an irritating cliche.

Yep, especially since they always degenerate into "I dont like this or that therefore its a cliché".

And OT my personal dislikes are ofc "Endless Russian manpower is so endless that the mongols ran out of arrows trying to subjugate it" and "NEVAH SURRENDAH".

 

[Elfwine]

It is "irritating" cliches, not just "things done too often".

So it being a list of pet peeves is...sort of the point.

 

[Snake Featherston]

If nuclear weapons show up in a world war, they will be seen as per OTL. The problems with this are many but at the most basic there is no means to guarantee an ATL with a POD before say, WWI will see nuclear weapons the way ours does or that they will come into use in the same fashion.

Logistics schmogistics-in its post-1900 variant this is the idea behind the fantastic Axis victory scenarios, as well as the USSR goes to war with the allies in 1946 scenario. Logistics in most ATL World Wars are completely ignored, the limitations posed by the need in modern armies for a large logistic train on combat troops are almost entirely ignored.

Jet packs and flying cars if adopted are a success-we've had them both for decades IOTL and it's done nothing.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

Wow, this is like the... 135 978th "cliche" thread on AH.com? Frankly, threads like these should be put as an irritating cliche.

And yet people continue to keep making the mistakes these threads list.

 

[TyranicusMaximus]

And yet people continue to keep making the mistakes these threads list.

Because many people have their own plausible researched reasons to put them in, just as an idiot can chance upon making everything right.

These threads are perfect for people to grind axes. I think it'd be much better to spend a thread debating on a particular issue.

 

[Orsino]

Go back before about 1925 and there's no reason at all a Crash and Depression have to happen in the next five years.

Yes, there was endemic financial instability on a global scale in the 1920's.

Yes, monetary policy was in its infancy and outright destructive theories like the Real Bills Doctrine still hung around the edges of the public sphere.

Yes, as long as governments continue to subordinate their management of their economies to other policy goals, there's always the chance that somebody fucks up in just the right way as happened with in OTL.

But it's also possible that things don't aline in quite the right way, that we experience some recessions, the occasional stock market bubble and break, but otherwise the economy powers on.

And this is with a PoD in the mid-20's. In the cases I cited in my post, of PoD's before World War I (undoubtedly the primary source of the vast majority of international financial instability IOTL), it gets even more ridiculous.

The problem is that in too many timelines the Crash plays out exactly as OTL, to the very day. Even with a POD some twenty or thirty years previously, people treat the Wall Street Crash like an act of god, that must occur, and occur in the same time frame regardless of any other sweeping changes.

To be honest, I think the reason for this is probably that some writers aren't terribly interested in economics and have only the vaguest notion of why the depression happened. So they don't feel very confident writing alternate economic events and just copy and paste that part of OTL in order to get back to more interesting things like war.

 

[wolf_brother]

The problem is that in too many timelines the Crash plays out exactly as OTL, to the very day. Even with a POD some twenty or thirty years previously, people treat the Wall Street Crash like an act of god, that must occur, and occur in the same time frame regardless of any other sweeping changes.

To be honest, I think the reason for this is probably that some writers aren't terribly interested in economics and have only the vaguest notion of why the depression happened. So they don't feel very confident writing alternate economic events and just copy and paste that part of OTL in order to get back to more interesting things like war.

Its not just economics though. Many authors seem to assume that certain events, or their analogues, simply must happen regardless of the POD or butterflies. Your POD is during the Civil War and involves a successful Confederacy? There must be a WWI, Great Depression, WWII, Cold War, Space Race, 'fall of communism,' and 9/11.

 

[David S Poepoe]

The Schlieffen Plan will work.
More and more recent research is showing that what we believe to have been the Schlieffen Plan was actually worked out by Moltke the Younger. The concept of the Schlieffen Plan developed later in the war as a means to explain away why the German Army didn't succeed in its knockout blow against France.


British battlecruisers blow up as easily as firecrackers because of their thin armour.
British and German capital ships had similar anti-flash capability in the turrets and magazines. The British battlecruiser crews removed several anti-flash safties, not to mention had too many ready to fire cordite rounds, in order to achieve rapid fire. One reason for the concentration on rapidity of fire was that the battlecruiser force had been shifted to Rosyth and it couldn't carry out extensive gun practice there because population density there.

 

[teg]

There MUST be a World War of some sorts no matter what the POD is.

To be honest given how interconnected the world was becoming by the late 19th century, some sort of global war was very likely after that point. It is irritating however when said global war is exactly the same as or very similar to the OTL First or Second World Wars... (note Turtledove)

 

[strangeland]

Bill Clinton is always president. Always.

REAGAN is always president, even if the PoD is in the Middle Ages.

 

[Snake Featherston]

To be honest given how interconnected the world was becoming by the late 19th century, some sort of global war was very likely after that point. It is irritating however when said global war is exactly the same as or very similar to the OTL First or Second World Wars... (note Turtledove)

It is even more irritating to have WWI shown as a static trench war and WWII as the rapid maneuver war. WWI had plenty of maneuver campaigns in it, the three Austrian invasions of Serbia, the British invasions of Palestine and Mesopotamia, the conquests of Serbia and Romania and the Austro-Russo-German fighting for everyone. The part of WWI most approaching its depictions in Hollywood was the Isonzo Front.

WWII in itself consisted of multiple rapid initial campaigns but the victories of the Allies included plenty of protracted attrition battles heavy on the firepower and the casualties and rather fewer on lightning maneuvers and brilliant campaigning. WWII armies were also rather less technologically advanced than they are commonly seen as, the most advanced armies were the late war US and Soviet armies.

 

[Sumeragi]

Korea will always be a Japanese colony until liberated by someone else.