plausibility of Rumsfeldia

Plausibility of Rumsfeldia

  • It is plausibie

    Votes: 9 11.5%
  • Incredibly unlikely but theoretically possible with enough bad luck

    Votes: 43 55.1%
  • About as plausible as Sealion Succeeding

    Votes: 26 33.3%

  • Total voters
    78
How plausible/implausible do you think the Rumsfeldia was, to depict America turning into a right wing dictatorship followed by civil war? IMO, the timeline, while a great read, seem to have gone completely off the deep end and rivals Sealion in terms of plausibility.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
This is something that should be bought up in the TL thread itself; making an entirely new thread for it seems rather mean-spirited, considering we don't have users also making threads for other timelines they find implausible.
 
At one point in the thread - I think it was the part where the US under Rumsfeld invaded and occupied part of Canada - there were quite a few people commenting about the plausibility/implausibility of it. But said people have by and large stopped posting in it. Which I find to be a fairly common phenomenon in AH.com TL threads in general.
 
This is something that should be bought up in the TL thread itself; making an entirely new thread for it seems rather mean-spirited, considering we don't have users also making threads for other timelines they find implausible.

The reason I did so for Rumsfeldia is that it has a reputation outside of AH.com as utterly implausible, and I just wanted to see how AH.commers view it.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
The reason I did so for Rumsfeldia is that it has a reputation outside of AH.com as utterly implausible, and I just wanted to see how AH.commers view it.
Right, but that doesn't make it any less mean-spirited, especially as you've put this here of all places, when it's a discussion topic for books and media or non-pol chat.

But for my two cents, it's a Timeline in which each update builds upon the last, and eventually diverges to the point where it becomes implausible. There are certain breakages in plausibility, particularity Rummyhorror, but generally @Drew has done a good job of showing how things get there.

To paraphrase CalBear, however, it's one of those cases where the further it's drifted from the PoD, the more it's become creative writing. Which isn't bad, cause it's well written, but there are points where, to be honest, plausibility is skewed for the narrative.
 
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Minty_Fresh

Banned
I think the character evaluation of Donald Rumsfeld was of course not realistic. Aside from that, the notion of a centralized dictatorship taking over the US in the 80s strikes me as a stretch.

That being said, the parts about China's slip into madness wasn't exactly in my view likely but it was possible, as the Maoist urges in the party had not been fully suppressed I think until the 90s.
 
I agree that the quality of writing on Rumsfeldia is what affected the changes in the plot to make the story go into heavy ASB territory. When Gumbo ended it set up a very plausible decade of darkness and return to the Agnew days, but somewhere along the line the author decided to abandon any outline he had for the story to make Rumsfeldia stray away from what Gumbo had been setting up; and what that was we'll never really know. So its hard to say whether the Rumsfeldia scenario is even plausible since we readers never knew the true direction of what Gumbo was building up to in Rumsfeldia.

btw I stopped reading that thread many months ago so idk where it even is in terms of the plot and whether any more revisions were made.
 
Is this necessary of a thread of its own? If you have issues with the timeline then bring them up with Drew in the Rumsfeldia thread.
 
Is this necessary of a thread of its own? If you have issues with the timeline then bring them up with Drew in the Rumsfeldia thread.
No I just wanted to see what others here think about it. Most people who find Rumsfeldia implausible stopped reading the original TL long ago so posting this question in that thread may not be the most accurate way to find out. I'm truly sorry if I came across as offensive but I made a separate thread to get more accurate opinions. In retrospect I should've posted this in non political chat
 
No I just wanted to see what others here think about it. Most people who find Rumsfeldia implausible stopped reading the original TL long ago so posting this question in that thread may not be the most accurate way to find out. In retrospect I should've posted this in non political chat

But it just sounds like you're almost looking for a fight or flame. Ganging up on a TL like this just doesn't feel right.
 
I agree that the quality of writing on Rumsfeldia is what affected the changes in the plot to make the story go into heavy ASB territory. When Gumbo ended it set up a very plausible decade of darkness and return to the Agnew days, but somewhere along the line the author decided to abandon any outline he had for the story to make Rumsfeldia stray away from what Gumbo had been setting up; and what that was we'll never really know. So its hard to say whether the Rumsfeldia scenario is even plausible since we readers never knew the true direction of what Gumbo was building up to in Rumsfeldia.

btw I stopped reading that thread many months ago so idk where it even is in terms of the plot and whether any more revisions were made.
I'd hate to contribute to this thread, given that it is superfluous, but I wanted to respond to this in particular. Apparently Drew had planned to have Reagan win the 1980 election, as OTL.
 
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