New Deal Coalition Retained: A Sixth Party System Wikibox Timeline
So, Clinton/Gore was the first successful unbalanced ticket in recent history.
Yeah. Balancing was a bit of a myth for sure, but it was a quite strong myth.
And I doubt he'd pick Helms, anyways.
Connally or Baker would have been good choices. I saw another Southerner, Ambassador Anne Armstrong was under consideration-what if there had been a Ford/Armstrong ticket?
Baker strikes me as a good choice for that, as he's a moderate-ish candidate.
But on the other hand, I don't see how Carter could lose the South in any scenario.
If Ford won just Mississippi and Texas, or Mississippi plus another northern state like Ohio, he would have won. Plus without Dole's performance at the VP debate Ford may do slightly better nationwide.
Ghosts of the Tawantinsuyu
"Some think him a myth. Others think him a prophet. I wish it were that simple."
-Cesar Mendoza-
No one knew who he had been, where he came from. For someone who would end in being one of the world's most infamous and well-known men (beloved in some circles and loathed in others) this was a rather strange development, but try as they might modern-day historians could never decipher his enigma. Countless expeditions to the mountains and jungles of Peru came up with nothing. Nearly a decade of this simply convinced many that there was no evidence left of his origins. The man himself never provided any clues."Some think him a myth. Others think him a prophet. I wish it were that simple."
-Cesar Mendoza-
The first recorded mention of him came in 1970. In the slums of Cuzco, Peru, a group of friars from a local monastery found a starving teenager in a dank alleyway. Covered in dirt and mud, skin matted with knife and animal scars, and completely emaciated, the monks took him back to their home and nursed him back to health. He wouldn't give his name, and the local doctor pronounced him "shell-shocked." Not a word passed from his lips about the past, so the monks would simply give up. He was given the name Francisco, and was soon discovered to be very smart - genius level even (later IQ tests would put his IQ at nearly 171). He would go on to the Seminary and the University of Lima, the monks pooling their meager funds to get him an education at such an early age.
Upon graduating at seventeen, he had blossomed into a charismatic - if guarded - and popular man among the Amerindian and Mestizo majority in the University (though far less than the national average). A distinguished scholar, he majored in history while minoring in religious studies. It was then he began having his religious visions. Visions of both the Christian God of those that raised him and the gods of his people, the Amerindian Inca civilization long defeated and its people enslaved by the European invaders. A new light began to dawn on Francisco, a true vision combining the two religions into one. The great sun of the Inca was God, the various gods his angels - at least in his mind. Speaking with his classmates and the poor of Lima, his charisma and willpower assembled a small following.
In his newfound religious zeal, Francisco changed his name to Pachacuti Tupaq (mostly shortened to Pachacuti) after two great Inca rulers. And the visions began to lead the 18 year-old to a new venture. One that would begin his legend - the defeat of the communist insurgency that was gripping his beloved Tawantinsuyu.
Pachacuti's determination came at a trying time for Peru (all of South America since the Focoist coups of 1975-1976 in fact). Sandwiched within the proxy fight between the US and the USSR, the benign right-wing dictatorship controlling the nation found itself in the middle of a tug of war between Capitalist Chile and Communist Argentina and Brazil (the communist senior partner in Jao Goulart's government gaining more and more power as the years passed). Organized with Soviet, Brazilian, Argentinian, and West Cuban (until reunification) assistance, the Focoist guerrilla group Shining Path proliferated rapidly. Government control of the rural regions was destabilized, only American aid and Chilean advisers keeping it from falling in the Summer of 1977, the two sides descending into a combination of raids, search and destroy missions, and brutal assaults on civilians.
In this plunged Pachacuti and his collection of about three hundred followers. Unlike the maze of other anti-communist militia organizations largely focused around traditional mores, the Defenders of Inti - or the Tawantinsuyu as it was more commonly known for its adoption of Inca imagery in its propaganda and messaging - was grouped around Pachacuti's ideals of the resurrection of the Inca religion and combination with Catholicism. The "Sun Faith." The communists were the destroyers of all that the Incan people represented, tools of an evil ideological cabal from the depths of Europe. With this, they plunged into the brutal insurgency with a wild abandon.
After a raid into Brazil itself, in which Pachacuti and his most trusted forces advanced deep into the jungle and wiped out an entire military outpost and escaped, his legend grew to be famous all throughout Peru. Brazil and Argintena declared him an outlaw to be summarily killed on sight, while poor Peruvians would wave Inti flags all over the nation in their adoration. It drew the attention of the Chilean National Intelligence Service. Director Cesar Mendoza (the organization formed by a combination of the national police and the previous intelligence organization) saw potential in the organization to stop the spread of communism and began shipping funds and weapons - Chile was the point man in which the Reagan Administration directed anti-communist efforts in the lower half of South America, President Pinochet secure in his position and leading the most advanced economy on the continent outside of the European colonies.
Director Mendoza would receive reports from his agents in Peru upon their one meeting with the Pachacuti. They stated there was a strange air about him, one that implied an unstable mind. Mendoza would dismiss the concerns, feeling that if anything problematic happened the Peruvian Army would wipe him out.
He would later come to rue that decision.
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Bulldoggus
Banned
What if there were a global movement, primarily in Latin America but elsewhere also, towards merging Catholicism with traditional religion?
I've made the the ITTL analogue for Radical Islam (because there is no Islamist government in Iran and the Grand Mosque Siege is butterflied away causing Saudi Arabia to reject Wahabism, no Radical Islamic movement really develops). Because of Focoism, South America has become very fractured, balkanized, and fought over so religious extremes such as this can only fill the void. Chile is rapidly becoming a sort of Israel in that regard
My first post-divergence original character (Roy Cohn Jr. is still a baby and his time hasn't yet come)
