"Power Without Knowledge...": President Haig and the Era of Bad Feelings

[Born in the USSA]

Considered something of a meme mod among "serious" uchronians, Edelweiss, like The End of History, is a total conversion mod for 2016's Blood and Iron IV, though the former takes a far more sweeping approach to its core concept than the latter does. With a POD centered on the failure to pass the 1832 Reform Act, the acceleration of the Chartist movement in Britain bolsters the success of the Revolutions of 1848, in turn depriving the United States of a massive wave of pro-Union immigrants during the Civil War. The main focus of the mod is on the aftermath of this chain of events, with the game beginning in 1910 and rapidly building to an exotic Great War. Broadly speaking, the playable countries in Edelweiss can be divided into three factions:

1. The Grand Alliance serves as a bastion of reactionary conservatism, bringing together the United States, the Russian Empire, the British Empire* and the Great Qing along with a smattering of vassals and lesser empires. Without the influx of immigrants to inflame the Know-Nothings and ultimately tip the balance of the Southern Rebellion, America remains divided between the overwhelmingly dominant and business-minded Whigs and the fringe Liberty Party, a single-issue number focused on abolition in the border states. Russia and the Qing have their own problems, with the former under siege from a recurring bout of Nihilist insurgencies and the latter still bitter about the loss of its own civil war, all the while Britain fumes about "reclaiming the birthright", whatever that means.
2. The Second International is the leading light of popular government, with leadership in the organization fiercely contested between the Republican Federation** and the Volksrepublic, though membership ranges from semi-constitutional monarchies like the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom all the way to Communard experiments like the French Republic. The People's Confederacy gets a lot of side eye for the whole "used-to own people" thing, but the Populists and Readjusters are united on pushing back on that hopelessly outdated stereotype. The dominant position in the Second International is a Georgist strain of social democracy by the start of the mod, though Communards are still adamant their breakthrough will come any day now.
3. Less an alliance than an endemic social disease, Nihilist Anarchism rages throughout the underbelly of the Russian Empire and is particularly common in an India chafing under the Russo-American yoke and in the parts of Africa squeezed between American West Africa and the Dominion of South Africa. At the start of the game the only Nihilist power is the Commoner's Shogunate, with the entire Pacific Rim living in terror of the black flags of the veritable pirate armada that calls itself the Commoner's Free Navy.

Although the outbreak of the Great War is inevitable, the mod has a list of instigating incidents from conflict in the Caribbean to a Russian crackdown on Hungary to infighting in the Second International, one of which will trigger automatically regardless of player action. Edelweiss also contains a joke country, Neutral Moresnet, with the incredibly difficult task of realigning the International around a strain of militant esperantism called Finvenkismo. Although the mod has a relatively small fan base it has proven unusually influential in modern American politics, with many young Citizens, Subversives and America Firsters citing the portrayals of Georgism, Nihilism and American conservatism, respectively.


*Centered on Canada but retaining New Zealand, South Africa and possessions in the Caribbean. They're in pretty dire straights and there's an opinion in the halls of power that the US and Russia basically strongarmed them into selling India well below market price.

**An alliance of equals between the British, Irish, and Australian republics. The shared tendency of annual elections makes predicting the actions of the Federation as a whole somewhat difficult to anticipate.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I'll do a politics update after work tomorrow and one with the ARC roundel and military ranks on Friday and then decamp to The King in Yellow for a week to do that TL's Act VI while I let my creative batteries recharge on this one! I'll be happy to answer any setting questions in the meantime!

 

[Born in the USSA]

I'll do both updates tomorrow, today took a lot out of me

 

[Born in the USSA]

While I'm busy working on my rank insignia I went back to alter that combo platter of Cosmintern member flags, since the one I had done for India has been bugging me.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Trying to get my limited paint program to properly render my military insignia not only went nowhere but also ate up a huge chunk of my day so I'll have to settle for describing them unfortunately.

The ARC air roundel is used not only as a marking on the aircraft of the air wings of the Antarctic Revolutionary Army/Navy but also as a patch to differentiate pilots and support staff from the other members of their branch.

The ARA, ARN and Corps of Discovery use a modified version of the True South flag as their insignia, with the branches differentiated by the color used- feldgrau for the ARA, the above dark blue for the ARN and black for the COD. Recruits have no insignia and officer ranks below flag officers are identical between branches, while the ranks for each service branch are separated into 16 levels. I borrowed the Army/Navy ranks from Reds! and titles are divided "ARA/ARN/COD"

1. Trooper/Seaman/Specialist- A downward arrow in the branch color in a white rectangle
2. Corporal/Leading Rate/Advanced Specialist- The True South diamond in a bisected rectangle
3. Sergeant/Petty Officer/Bosun- The above, with the addition of one gold band on the upper right and lower left edges of the diamond.
4. Staff Sergeant/Chief Petty Officer/Chief Bosun- The above, with two gold bands likewise.
5. Sergeant Major/Adjutant/Navigator- The above, with three gold bands likewise.
6. Sublieutenant- The above, with four gold bands likewise.
7. Lieutenant- The above, with five gold bands likewise.
8. Chief Lieutenant- The above, with one gold band added to the upper left and lower right of the diamond.
9. Major- The above, with two gold bands likewise.
10. Lieutenant Commander- The above, with three gold bands likewise.
11. Commander- The above, with four gold bands likewise.
12. Brigadier/Commodore/Helmsman- The above, with five gold bands likewise.
13. Major General/Rear Admiral/Rear Marshal- The above, with one gold star in the white portion of the diamond.
14. Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral/Lieutenant Marshal- The above, with two gold stars likewise.
15. General/Admiral/Marshal- The above, with three gold stars likewise.
16. General of the Army/Fleet Admiral/Sky Marshal- The above, with four gold stars in the shape of the Southern Cross.

 

[Balkanized U.S.A]

Originally released in 2002 by Antinomy Interactive*, Blood and Iron is a grand strategy game series revolving around steering a nation through the Second World War. Though the original game in the series received average reviews, Antinomy has received praise for several of the sequels and has actively cultivated an engaged community of fan-created mods, the most notable of which is The End of History, a uchronic full conversion mod for Blood and Iron IV. Taking place in the modern day, TEH takes as its point of divergence the failure of the the Soviet Restoration and stillbirth of the tide of changes most commonly referred to in the West as "the Calamity".

In a world... where the USS is only a bitter remnant confined to Central Asia, South Africa remains an apartheid state, and Communism is finally in terminal decline around the globe, your task is to take control of a nation at the turn of the new millennium and guide it through the tumultuous early decades of the second American Century. Are you up to the challenge?

At the start of the game there are three major powers, each with the greatest potential to reshape the broader balance of power that shape the end of history:

• Verging on a hyperpower, the United States of America has grown arrogant swollen with victory even as political extremism and soaring inequality begin to erode the foundations of the city on a hill. The Republicans have grown large enough to practically absorb the core of the Democratic Party in the long overdue fulfillment of the Reagan Revolution, with the hawkish and interventionist National Union squaring off in the court of public opinion against a Reform Party even more fractious than the real one**. An unavoidable early event in the American tree plunges the nation into what is billed as a quick and easy war to topple Castro that quickly devolves into a quagmire threatening to sink the superpower's grand ambitions like the USS Maine.
• The Paneuropean Community has expanded recklessly since the fall of the Soviet Union, absorbing the entirety of the former Warsaw Pact (plus Turkey) while a revanchist Russia fumes. While Russian rearmament is perhaps the most obvious danger in the long run, the majority of the early tree is spent dealing with a now united Germany that still retains Austria and is loudly complaining about the balance of power within the PEC, creating historical echoes that have everyone in the bloc's leadership sweating bullets even as they try and force through a new common currency.
• In Asia, the Republic of China is racing to supercharge its economy to catch up to the Americans and the Europeans, the better for them to finally reap the whirlwind of the century of humiliation. The Chinese tree allows for the suborning of Japan and the newly reunified Korea right under Washington's nose, though attempts to enforce a zone of control in the South China Sea can quickly escalate into conflict with Australia and Vietnam and a focus on militarism has the chance to trigger an invasion of Tibet sure to bring in the US and the PEC with anything from harsh sanctions to illicit arms supplied to the Tibetans.

Although many players choose to start as one of the "big three", TEH offers a wide range of choices for unconventional play styles even outside of the smaller countries forced to act around the bellicosity of the superpowers, with the Union of Sovereign States tree culminating in an attempted coup in Russia to bring it back to the fold, American distraction offering the potential of a Regressive United Arab States spreading from a minor insurgency to an entrenched regional power, and a particularly challenging playthrough as Cuba facing down the beast of America. For those who like to play long odds, The End of History also offers an extremely difficult joke country, Virgin Bellinsgauzenia***, where players are tasked with uniting an unlikely alliance of Regressives and Soviet and South African exiles into a force to be reckoned with in the harshest environment on Earth.


*Their logo is a black swan.

**Basically the Republican-Democratic/NPP divide from TNO.

***Kaiserredux's Antarctic Commune lives, only with no Trotsky and only a slim chance of a penguin army!

 

[Born in the USSA]

I've been away from this for awhile out of a combination of distractions from work stuff and other projects but I'm still thinking it over and had a neat idea for a revolutionary calendar! Aside from the fact I find them interesting, a new calendar would actually make sense in the Antarctic context given that A.) the new nation was essentially cut from whole cloth rather than made up of a preexisting country or group of regions or whatever and B.) the extreme day/night cycle makes the northern season/calendar system less than ideal.

1. The Holocene Era (HE) was adopted as the Cosmintern dating standard because it satisfied the twin extremes of ideology (because it factors in the start of the Volksgeist stage of Cosmicist historical development) and practicality (since the only change to the Gregorian numbering system is the addition of an even 10,000 years).
2. A modified form of the International Fixed Calendar was adopted to rationalize the system of months and dates while preserving the seven day week. The use of a system of thirteen 28 day months (with the addition of the month of Sol between June and July and one to two noncalendar days, depending on whether it's a leap year) ensured regularity in the system, since every date will always fall on the same day of the week— among other things each month always begins on a Monday and ends on a Sunday, while the school/work week is typically four days long. Here's my earlier list of ARC holidays, adjusted for comparison:
   1. New Year's Day- January 1 (M), unchanged.
      • Cosmicist Exhibition (Festival years)- January 8 (M)-21 (Su) CFC.
   2. Discovery Day- January 28 (Su), unchanged.
      • Spartakiad (Festival years)- February 8 (M)-21(Su) CFC.
      • Flower War (Festival years)- March 1 (M)-14 (Su) CFC.
   3. Complin*- March ~20 Gregorian (floating) => March ~23 CFC (floating).
   4. May Day- May 1 Gregorian => May 9 (T) CFC.
      • Start of the Constitutional Convention (Referendum years).
   5. Midwinter- June 6-~21 Gregorian (floating) => June 17 (W)-Sol ~4 CFC (floating). Schools are typically out the entire month of June and the first week of Sol.
      • Fugue Day**- "June 29" CFC (only on leap years), outside of the week.
      • End of the Constitutional Convention (Referendum years)- Sol 4 (Th) CFC.
      • Constitutional Referendum (Referendum years)- Sol 22 (M)-28 (Su) CFC.
      • Start of the primary campaign season (non-Festival years)- August 1 (M) CFC.
   6. Tierce- September ~21 Gregorian (floating) => September ~12 CFC (floating).
      • Start of the weeklong primary voting period and the general campaign season (non-Festival years).
   7. Memorial Days- October 31-November 6 Gregorian => October 24 (W)-November 2 (T) CFC.
   8. Yule- December 5-~21 Gregorian (floating) => December 3 (W)-~19 CFC (floating). Schools are out the entire month.
      • Seating of the new Congress (non-Festival years)- December 19 (F) CFC.
   9. New Year's Eve- December 31 Gregorian => "December 29" CFC, outside of the week.
      • Leadership elections in the new Congress (non-Festival years).
3. The seasonal cycle is also different, given that the major divide between summer/winter is the day/night cycle. Although the calendar is standardized between Cosmintern nations the seasonal cycle is not. The Antarctic year is still split into four seasons, though they are pegged to the solstices and the equinoxes. As such:
   1. Dawn begins at the end of Midwinter (the Sol Solstice) and lasts until Tierce (the September Equinox).
   2. Noon begins at Tierce and lasts until the end of Yule (the December Solstice).
   3. Dusk begins at the end of Yule and lasts until Complin (the March Equinox).
   4. Night begins at Complin and lasts until the end of Midwinter.

*Complin is the Antarctic tax day and marks the end of the previous fiscal year.

**Somewhat similar to April Fool's crossed with a bacchanal, a day of much-needed levity where social proprieties are relaxed. Unlike the similarly named and themed Fugue Feast in Dishonored the laws are still enforced, though you might get a pass on petty crimes depending on the jurisdiction.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Special points to anyone who can guess the year the future history portion of my novel will be set in!

 

[Born in the USSA]

I went through and updated my list to include civic events along with the more traditional social holidays, along with some info on the work week and the school year. It's pretty refreshing that the entire Antarctic election season is less than three Gregorian months IMO 😂 Let me know if it raises any questions.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Here's one inspired by my recent reread of Green Antarctica for an unrelated flag series 😂

One of the most popular and intriguing series in the uchronia genre, Green Antarctica is a series of novels written by S.M. Stirling that posits a modern Antarctica if it had never glaciated, exploring both the wildly divergent ecosystem that would rise up and the strange natives of the harshest continent. With the great ice sheets never forming, the continent develops a bizarre and deadly ecosystem descended from the sloths, birds, and marsupials that inhabited the continent before being driven to extinction OTL, resulting in a hellish biosphere of venomous platypi the size of crocodiles, ravenous pack hunter kangaroos, sloths large enough to decapitate an elephant, giant acid spewing birds, and many other terrors.

This hostile environment evolved in almost complete isolation until an initial settlement by the Yaghan people roughly 9000 years ago. This initial population, cut off by the circumpolar current, would eventually evolve into the Yag people that would over the following centuries successfully expand over the entire continent. They would call it Hili-li, a name cribbed by the author from unofficial Arthur Gordon Pym sequel A Strange Discovery, with the first novel devoted to the historical advancement of the Yag people before their 1774 contact with the rest of the world and the later ones devoted to an increasingly divergent modern world. Intended partially as a deconstruction of the nostalgic love of classicism, the Yag (or Hili-li, as they became known in the north) represented a very unromantic look at Rome and China at their imperial height by presenting a civilization that carried forward the age old imperial values of those nations well into the present day.

Aside from the frequency of genocides and human sacrifice and the widespread practices of slavery, torture and and sexual debauchery, the Hili-li are also characterized by an unconventional pattern of technological advancement, with a long history of rockets, steam engines, and advanced medicine arising as a byproduct of their unusual environmental and resource constraints. While these advances prevent the European colonization of the continent, they also ultimately pave the way for a brutal and genocidal campaign of Hili-li expansion that carries on from the late 19th century into the far future.

Green Antarctica cultivated an active fanbase for decades, inspiring numerous fan continuations and other explorations or refutations of the concept, while also generating controversy for its portrayal of the brutal decadent Yag and the alleged racism baked into the War of Civilization. It was notably compared with The Domination, a Morton's Fork timeline revolving around an expansionist South African slaver empire, as much for the horrific nature of the two empires involved as for their supposedly unrealistic starting premises. There is also speculation that the series' treatment of the Tsalal, transforming a group created by Edgar Allan Poe into the Yag term for the "barbarians" at the fringes of their continental empire, may have eventually inspired the name of the dissident group of the same name currently active in the Antarctic Revolutionary Commonwealths.

The series consists of four novels:

1. Green Antarctica- A nonchronological anthology revolving around the Yaghan colonization of the continent, advances in Yag civilization, and First Contact.
2. Heart of Darkness: a Novel of Black Antarctica- Set in 1885, this more standard entry revolves around the genocidal expansion of the Empire of Hili-li into South America, Africa and Australia.
3. The War of Civilizations: a Novel of Red Antarctica- Set in 1920, this installment explores the titular War of Civilizations, with a massive industrialized war breaking out between an Anglo-American alliance and a pact between Hili-li and Japan.
4. Under the Yoke: a Novel of White Antarctica- Set in 2085, Under the Yoke catalogues the increasingly fantastical conflict between the two power blocs of the previous installment, with the Co-Prosperity Sphere spreading Antarctic fauna and diseases as a form of biological warfare and NATO contemplating the use of environmental engineering to glaciate Hili-li.

 

[ZeSteel]

Well now that I've caught up I can definitely say that this was an interesting read. I've loved the worldbuilding you've done with the Cosmicist revolution and Antarctica in general (although that map was a bit worrying, how does Antarctica conquer the Southern Hemisphere?)

I have also really enjoyed the development of the 7th party system in America (even though we haven't actually gotten to that yet! Come on 2020 election!)

I will say that one thing that had previously prevented me from fully understanding this TL is the dual focus - the Antarctic stuff doesn't initially seem to have much to do with the 80s to 2000s political stuff you started with so I found it a bit hard to follow along post to post.

I think this issue isn't as strong on a re-read though because there is just more information on both parts of the TL so it doesn't seem so disjointed.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Well now that I've caught up I can definitely say that this was an interesting read.

Always glad when people enjoy my weird stuff!

I've loved the worldbuilding you've done with the Cosmicist revolution and Antarctica in general (although that map was a bit worrying, how does Antarctica conquer the Southern Hemisphere?)

They don't conquer it as such, I sampled the "Doctrine of the Last Throw" concept from LTTW so the expansion of the Cosmintern was predicated on A.) never being the one to actually start a fight and B.) supporting partisans everywhere but only committing in a sustained way opportunistically. The reactionaries were naturally more entrenched in the global north so Antarctica just stuck its oar in when resource shortages, plagues and extreme weather pushed the global south into a revolutionary mood. The inherently adhoc nature of the global Kyriarchy worked to the ARC's advantage, since by the time they got their act together the Presidium of the Cosmintern had four new members and a populace completely unwilling to go back.

I have also really enjoyed the development of the 7th party system in America (even though we haven't actually gotten to that yet! Come on 2020 election!)

I promise I'll get to it when I have time 😂 My ideas tend to come in fits and starts. I probably won't cover the actual general election here since that's for the nascent book and full of current politics shenanigans regardless but there'll definitely be posts at least to the midterms, since that's when the three parties will fracture for good.

I will say that one thing that had previously prevented me from fully understanding this TL is the dual focus - the Antarctic stuff doesn't initially seem to have much to do with the 80s to 2000s political stuff you started with so I found it a bit hard to follow along post to post.

I think this issue isn't as strong on a re-read though because there is just more information on both parts of the TL so it doesn't seem so disjointed.

The disjointed feeling is partially the result of mashing together two initially unrelated story concepts and partially due to a personal preference for those sorts of slightly unnerving fractured narratives. As a compromise I might do a post set between the unseen 2020 election and the Hochsprung fiasco about an American Cosmicist party since Sutter's experiences during that election crystallize Cosmicism in the first place— the party is doomed by the needs of the narrative to fail but I still think it could be an interesting idea to work out.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I've been thinking over the Seventh Party System since yesterday and even though I love the 5+ parties I have no faith that the American governing class would stomach reforming the system enough for it to possibly remain stable 🤔 In an ironic mirror image to the start of the Seventh Party System it'll end up naturally gravitating back to three parties, with an unreconstructed lumpen America First Party on the right flank, a swollen and complacent New Federalist Party straddling the degenerate middle and winning the most votes by default, and a version of my Commonwealth Party idea on the left (obviously with a different color given the nature of the other parties). It won't be a Cosmicist party as such but there will be a large and particularly militant Cosmicist faction, and it'll definitely play a preceding role in developments later in the century.

Spoiler: Float like a butterfly...

-I'll mock up a version of this in blue-green for when I actually do the gap post about their shenanigans. ​

 

[Born in the USSA]

I've been giving a lot of thought to this version of the Commonwealth Party and I've been able to come up with a whole host of party organs and affiliated organizations 🤔 I think you'll all find their model super interesting, since they'll essentially amount to an idealized (and far less corrupt) return to true machine-style politics and they'll pursue a unique electoral strategy. In fact, you know what, I'm not going to wait, I'm just going to whip it up since it's a standalone post anyway.

 

[ZeSteel]

What do you mean by 'machine-style politics'?

 

[Born in the USSA]

-The Commonwealth Party chose its colors based on its electoral composition, with teal chosen as a compromise between the sky blue of the Equal Rights Party and the forest green of the Citizens party and bronze chosen to represent castoffs from the Manifest Destiny Party. Although previously used by the Subversives, they make up a relatively miniscule fraction of the new party's base.
​

The Seventh Party system was always a tenuous term. Initially coined to mark the rise of the Reform Party and the end of the Democratic-Republican duopoly within the broader period commonly known as the Era of Bad Feelings, the early 21st century would see "the Shatter", as internal tensions within the three parties and the patchwork nature of the American electoral system shredded weakening party bonds and polarization made reconciliation unthinkable. The second stage of the Seventh Party System would be characterized by the rise of five major parties, with most counts putting the total number at seven. While thorough and sustained reform could have made this situation tenable, the period was characterized by increased polarization, slim or technical margins of Congressional control, and a seeming paralysis that made such a change impossible.

Though some have argued that the eventual return to a tripartite political landscape should be regarded as a new Eighth Party System, the popular consensus is that the powers unleashed by the rise of Reform have continued to shape the electoral landscape, and that this period of consistent electoral flux is actually a defining feature of the Seventh as a whole. The consolidation of the third stage was the end result of half a loaf in the wake of the 2020 election, with the spread of ranked choice voting and a two round electoral system* but no effort made to either universalize split electoral votes or eliminate the electoral college entirely. This approach had the effect of overrepresenting "moderate" candidates while simultaneously preventing serious and in many quarters drastically-needed reforms.

This state of affairs naturally benefitted the New Federalist Party the most, allowing it to absorb factions of those parties to its immediate left and right, and while the remnants of the Freedom Party were devoured wholesale by the America First Party those on the left of the spectrum settled on the creation of a new party to represent their interests. The Commonwealth Party first arose in the 2030s out of an electoral fusion of the Citizens Party, the remnant of the Equal Rights Party, and those fragments of Manifest Destiny! and the Subversive Party that had resisted the drift toward the party of Buchanan. Advocating a heady mix of widespread institutional, social and economic reform, governmental decentralization, environmentalism and Georgism, the new party spent its time in the political wilderness building up alternative centers of power in an attempt to return to a form of machine politics actually capable of providing something to its constituents outside of the culture war pablums that had been the norm since the 1980s. This was accomplished through eight major organs or loosely affiliated organizations:

1. The Commonwealth National Committee was the guiding force for electoralism in the party, managing its funds and devoting itself to expanding a Commonwealth presence in elected offices across the country.​
2. A student wing was created called Collegiate Commonwealth, active on university campuses throughout the country and offering scholarships and other financial aid.​
3. The Young Challengers Association was officially unaffiliated, though the gender-integrated Scouting-adjacent group in practice served as a youth wing to the party and a pipeline to the rest of the ecosystem of Commonwealth organizations.​
4. The Common Sense Society acted as a separate legal advocacy group, born of the realization that the party's goals of a basic income and other massive changes to the system required a dedicated bench of legal minds that could be appointed to the judiciary.​
5. The Cooperative Bund was a labor organization built on the principles of one big union and the growth of cooperative businesses, bringing together workers in a number of "unskilled" or socially marginalized professions that the other parties neglected.​
6. The New Leveller Group was a coalition of charity groups and civic organizations dedicated to building up systems of mutual aid to replace the rapidly eroding social safety through things like housing and education initiatives, shelters and soup kitchens.
7. Ebru was a media group officially sponsored by the party, operating an ecosystem of websites that began by providing news coverage before branching into content creation.​
8. The Bonus Army was the most contentious, billed as an independent community self-defense group but regarded as a political paramilitary in other quarters.​

While the party spent the forties and fifties building strength it also settled on an unconventional strategy by focusing its efforts in presidential years in states with the lowest populations. Aside from the fact that they were chronically underserved and often home to the most extreme examples of climate-change fueled natural disasters a theoretical victory would prove an ideological point, with a presidential victory won with a quarter of the popular vote neatly demonstrating the need to finally abolish the electoral college. 2060 would finally put this strategy to the test, with an unproductive NeoFed controlled Congress and an unpopular America First president finishing his second term without a popular mandate.

The 2060 election would prove the most contentious in at least a century, characterized by frequent violent street brawls, several attempted assassinations, and hysterical attempts to tie the surging Cosmicist wing of the party to the recently-concluded Hochsprung affair. Though the Commonwealth Party strategy paid off against all odds** it would prove a pyrrhic victory at best, with the immediate impeachment of the president and vice president elect on charges of "inciting violence" by a coalition of New Federalists and America Firsters and the new NeoFed acting president moving swiftly to bring the hammer of state authority down on the party and its affiliates. The dismantling of the Commonwealth Party would see its good work in ruins and prominent members, elected officials and activists arrested, though ironically many would be transported to the Antarctic Economic Territories, providing the seed crystal*** that would, in time, bloom into the Antarctic Revolutionary Commonwealths.


*Similar to what Alaska has now OTL.

**They won significantly more than a quarter of the vote but given how it turned out it didn't much matter.

***In fact it was the Cosmicist faction of the Commonwealth Party that created the wrench-and-pen symbol currently in use by the Antarctic Cosmicist Party.

 

[Born in the USSA]

What do you mean by 'machine-style politics'?

Highly organized and actually able to provide tangible incentives to constituents. There's no bribes or bullshit jobs or anything like that but the party puts genuine effort into improving every community it has a serious presence in, giving it an extremely active and loyal voter base.

 

[Born in the USSA]

By any metric the Commonwealth Party did rightfully win the election, having achieved a clear plurality of the vote and the necessary number of electors, and in all the incidents of violence they were tied to they were acting purely defensively. If the corrupt bargain between the NeoFeds and America Firsters had broken down and people were a bit less cynically craven in their political loyalties it's even conceivable that the attempt to suppress the party could've provoked enough of a backlash for the Cosmicists to try their hand at a Reds!-style popular front revolution. Needless to say I'm very bitter about the possibilities of the current and future American political culture, but the Commonwealthers were in a way doomed by their own success, since the states they did very well in tended to have low populations and their successes elsewhere were extremely concentrated and gerrymandered all to hell, preventing an effective bloc in Congress large enough to stop the coup. And even those that did make it to Congress ended up impeached or arrested by the new coalition— the Speaker of the House put forward an America First candidate for his veep, so at least there's finally bipartisanship. As for the issue of transportation, by this point the Cosmicists were the clear core of hardened Commonwealth partisans, and the decision was made out of a fear they'd radicalize people in the prison system given the party's prior work in prisoner outreach. Antarctica was seen as a cheap and sufficiently distant place to dump them, though ironically the fear of Cosmicist prisoner radicalization proved to be completely correct. Live and learn, I guess.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I'll do another "gathering storm" post to finish stitching together the present and the coming future, I inspired myself with that one-off mention of a 2060 Reds! scenario and it would also give a bit of in-universe inspiration when the first Constitutional Convention is writing up the Basic Law. Which I promise I'm still tinkering with!

 

[Born in the USSA]

Also as an aside the Seventh Party System limps on after the suppression of the Commonwealth Party until the eventual creation of the North American Union after the botched response to the Antarctic Revolution. The Eighth Party System consists of the Continentalist Party (New Federalists/Liberals/PRI) and the Liberty Party (more conservative than not, though ironically similar to the Manifest Destiny! Party in outlook).