Separated at Birth: America and Drakia

[skarosianlifeform]

Indeed.
Situationism fully applied without compromise and taking realities into account would have been madness yes.

But the Chinese version, no. They're still very ready and prepared to defend their country against Drakia (and Japan).
And they aren't really distracting India and the Jakarta Pact, as they aren't aggressive or expansionists (so India can keep focusing on the Draka).

 

[Falecius]

Indeed.
Situationism fully applied without compromise and taking realities into account would have been madness yes.

But the Chinese version, no. They're still very ready and prepared to defend their country against Drakia (and Japan).
And they aren't really distracting India and the Jakarta Pact, as they aren't aggressive or expansionists (so India can keep focusing on the Draka).

To be fair, in defense of @Skallagrim 's view I can see the argument that focusing on having fun when the wolves are running amok is perhaps not the wisest choice of priorities.
However, I still think that Situationism is valuable in that it offers a counterpoint to the Societist madness.

 

[pelecanimimus]

Situationism isnt just about having fun, is about freeing yourself from the ruling system and obtaining a more fulfilling life, which would be a very important message if it reaches to the drakian slaves

 

[skarosianlifeform]

Yeah, it's not just "having fun" (though it's part of it). It's being allowed to live a good and happy life instead of losing your life to work (and conformity).
And again, doesn't mean China is lowering its guard and renouncing to prepare and defend itself from invaders. (THAT would be absurd madness)

 

[traveller76]

How capitalistic is India?

I am thinking something like OTL India post-1991. Heavy industry, transport and strategic sectors have some state ownership and direction but most medium and small businesses are left alone. The military and the government are big customers. Probably nothing like the License Raj but still has corruption and lots of informal economy.

 

[Herucalmo]

Wow, Free China is really an evocative and downright inspiring image, and the exploration of what mass Situationism looks like ideologically and administratively I think is really well done. But I think I want to highlight this passage right here "Free housing, healthcare, food, and water were guaranteed, and the construction of extensive public housing (and general public works) offered an opportunity for experimental and avant-garde styles of architecture to flourish. New public parks- from city parks to national parks- sprang into existence." This I think is the most critical part of the Situationist package on the ground. A huge part of the reason why, even after the Great Leap Forward went over like a lead balloon and Mao got quietly but firmly retired by the rest of the party, that he was able to briefly return on the back of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard he instigated was that he had until then been made the face of Communism up and down the country and the strongest pillar of Communist legitimacy (even moreso then promising to kick out the Japanese and piss on all the Unequal treaties) was how the countryside was utterly transformed by Communist rule. Look at literally any graph on Chinese childhood mortality rates; smallpox, malaria, polio, hookworm, flatworm, and other parasites, tuberculosis, dysentery, scurvy, rickets, even vermin and wild dogs, all took a complete nosedive after 1949. While at the same time newly emacipated woman were promised the right to never be subject to foot-binding again and received powdered milk, contraceptives, and safe clinical abortions to be able to control their own bodies and reproductive health. Men too where freed of the strict ethnic and classist sumpturary laws and mandatory dress of the bad old days and saw the final eradication of the Manchu order that enforced shit like the despised Queue braid on them, and village serfs everywhere were able to free themselves from illiteracy and utter penury on a scale that even today compels Western thinkers to justify and defend liberal democracy against the nearly biblical results of the Chinese party-state. Same shit happened with "Uncle Joe" and the Soviet Union, or FDR and the New Deal in the deep south.

The Situationists luckily enough, have been able to keep an unwavering hold of their message that these processes are acts of self-empowerment by the people they effect and rather then a top down cult of personality they've (perhaps only half intentionally) unleashed a permanent revolution from the bottom up. All future Free China premiers are restricted from enforcing their visions down because the masses hold the whip hand and freely express their displeasure by voting in Utopians or Socialists or having an orgy of strikes and boycotts and protests with unions and local councils and party chapters all unable to institutionally insulate themselves from the will of the majority. This too means that even after the heady days of the revolutionary generation and after official Situationist factions becomes institutionalized as Serious People Doing Serious Business(tm), Free China can't actually stand in the way of the Free Chinese citizens continuing to do shit like become the biggest pirate station in the world and fatally undermining pretty much every censorship regime, expression of LGBTQ erasure or neurodivergent erasure or "non-useful" deaf and blind erasure, and corporate trademark or patent (though as a semi-developed great power much like early America or OTL China that would happen anyway). Plus Free China has the immeasurable power of having immediately and permanently marked themselves as the craziest mofos in the room, whenever they claim political asylum for any number of dissidents and minorities or officially recognize as sovereign states any anti-colonial rebellion these staid old men have no goddamn idea whether or not this is an avant-garde moment of artistry , a moment of vindictive spite and provocation, or a deadly serious commitment to prove to the Situationist International that Free China aren't a bunch of sellouts, and conversely the entire rest of the world has to stay on their fucking toes to avoid confrontation with anywhere between a fifth and almost a third of all living human beings. Especially with the deliberate irony of Sun Wukong, Free China is I think one of the few societies where most people have deeply subsumed into themselves that they make it and social leaders and not the other way 'round and I can't wait for the shenanigans of the unholy fusion of 17th century Amsterdam, the 1920s Soviet Union, the 1870s United States, and Scandinavian social democracy would get up to out on the world stage.

 

[Skallagrim]

To be fair, in defense of @Skallagrim 's view I can see the argument that it focusing on having fun when the wolves are running amok is perhaps not the wisest choice of priorities.
However, I still think that Situationism is valuable in that it offers a counterpoint to the Societist madness.

I understand your sentiment and reasoning, but I cannot really share it.

To be fair, this is a matter of personal inclination, too: I utterly despise the mentality and aesthetics of this movement as it existed in OTL, since I view it as crude, escapist hedonism with very bad manners and an extremely superficial fake philosophy underpinning it. A bunch of loons with no respect for any hard work, who just want to mooch off society. ("Life is art, and as an artist, I deserve to be paid so I can experiment!")

All that stuff that @Herucalmo refers to only confirms precisely that issue. Rather than a virtue, I think that's the core of their sickening hypocrisy. We saw this with these "avant-garde" artists in OTL: to a man, they were a bunch of self-important bozos who wanted to live off other people's labour. We see it here, too: a system that embraces the "free stuff" mentality, which then allows for "an opportunity for experimental and avant-garde styles of architecture".

What that means is actually: the "bourgeois" suckers have to work, so that the "artists" can be free to build impractical monstrosities, tear down beautiful traditional architecture with sneering disdain for the past, and generally live their lives as if it's performance art (which others then have to pay for).

Some readers here may imagine it in a more rose-tinted way (and evidently some do), but I have some personal experience with types like these, and I know how a society run by their sort will eventually turn out: a degenerate rat-infested dump, where the "new architecture" rots and crumbles because it was shoddily made by brainless fools, and also because the economy has collapsed and nobody is paying for anything to be maintained anymore. In other words: the early years of Situationism are a society-wide equivalent to a debauched drug high, where everything is Wild! and Awesome! and Groovy! ...but inevitably, the high will fade, and a crash follows, and it ends with the society-wide equivalent of a pathetic drug addict sticking contaminated needles into his ruined veins under a bridge, while lying in a puddle of his own piss.

So that's why I'm negative about it.

In the ATL, of course, I think it has the potential to be even worse than that. Because rather than just being self-ruining for entire countries, it will also allow the truly horrible monsters of the world to exploit the inevitable degeneration of a situationist country. Plus, the crass hedonism of OTL situationism will presumably be changed for the worse, because here, it is born from societal nihilism. This isn't a society of happy laughter (with people "allowed to live a good and happy life", as @skarosianlifeform puts it); this is a society that reacts to the world's horrible state by collapsing in hysterical, insane giggling. The laughter that comes when your mind breaks and all sanity slips away.

 

[Herucalmo]

@Skallagrim I'm sorry, but what was even in pre-revolutionary China to be mooched off of? They worked hard yes, so hard they worked themselves into an early grave and all that came of it was the same old dirt roads around the same old electricity-less, pluming-less, freedom-less peasant villages held in bondage to the actual moochers- the Qing and Tian aristocrats that in turn had Russia's, Britain's, America's, and finally Japan's hands deep in their own pockets. The transcendental emaciation from disease, hunger, want, and oppression that China experienced OTL built up so much political capital that Mao could spend his final days in power pissing it away in one of the biggest red terrors in history in the Cultural Revolution. That's how much the Chinese people loved the transformation, and thus Mao thanks to his cult of personality. Without a Mao to fuck it all up and an actual collective leadership of communities organizers, Free China has the political and human capital to do nearly anything imaginable. Excavate all the ancient temple and restore them to their period likeness! Wage a brutal diplomatic and economic war against Russia and Drakia and enable some of the biggest Bonded escapes to date! Put a man on the Moon and leave a flag proclaiming the independence of the sovereign lunar state! Why the hell not? The revolutionary generation would have to suffer a lot more then that to not have a net gain on life before and after their emacipation. Like, did you not read my big run-on sentence where I went on, and on, and on, about how horrific life was in the pre-revolutionary feudal estates and how it came pretty close to hell on earth?

 

[generalurist]

The radial provinces are fun, but I'm quite curious what the Hundred Provinces are also. Some large cities would probably need to be multiple provinces themselves if they are to have equal population. Anyways, nice to see a country go down a path that isn't spartan militarism and uniformity directed towards or against Drakia, or worse.

Also did the Situationists decide normal numbers were too boring for the chapter titles?

Some valid criticisms, but the dice choose paths- they don't dictate the story. There were three possibilities here; Situationism wins in Britain and China, it only wins in Britain, or it only wins in China. The revolution failed in Britain, which puts Britain down a specific path that I had planned for it if it failed, and took the fate of China's revolution out of the hands of the dice. There were going to be factors (Irish support +2, that kind of thing) to make King Mob more likely to win, but they fumbled and so those things ended up not mattering.

The problem was that I uploaded so many pictures for this chapter the site wouldn't let me attach any more to the post, so I had to split it in half. Which meant instead of ending with "China wins and makes Situationism work (kinda)!" I posted "Here's a cool ideology, a cool rebel movement, and oh they got crushed", and going out to walk the dog and do some shopping before posting the second half. Understandable that people found it a frustrating read and a bad story, and I hope the newly posted second half helps to fix things.

Yeah, I guess we jumped the gun on that, though splitting the update really DID mess with things tonally.

Guessing next chapter will feature environmental disasters and unethical genetic experiments in Drakia.

 

[pattontank12]

For some reason I'm the father of American rocketry in universe being a mix of Robert H Goddard with equal parts Walt Disney and Howard Hughes.

 

[Skallagrim]

I've read your lengthy sentences, @Herucalmo -- I simply don't agree with your assessment. The analysis of the situation in OTL, sure. Your thinking on what allowed Mao to remain in power, however, is extremely reductionist in my opinion. It ignores that the Maoist regime was a terror-state that retained its power primarily by being sociopathically ruthless to any real or percieved potential threat, rather than by being somehow loved for being better than what had existed in the past.

That's actually beside the point, though. The point being that potential uses of capital aren't automatically equal to actual uses. You write that "Free China has the political and human capital to do nearly anything imaginable". Perhaps. But that potential must be actualised, and my lengthy sentences have been committed to outlining why the situationists are wholly unequal to the task effectively doing that. And therein lies the problem. A state with a huge amount of people and resources, in the hands of sane men, can and will do great things. That same state in the hands of pathetic degenerates with absurd delusions will achieve next to nothing. The dark memory of the "bad old days" and the frenzy off a mass movement will keep things moving rapidly at first... but ultimately moving on a road to nowhere. The situationist ideal (if it can be called that) is the delusion of a group of people gone mad, who have tragically stumbled upon the situation where they can drag an entire country into their madness. Your examples of what they might do are rooted in... let us say, in a very under-stated manner... mis-placed optimism.

Restore ancient temples? They're more likely to bomb those temples (because "we are not shackled to the past!") and put gaudy dada-ist "modern art constructions" in their place, to "piss on the past and celebrate the now".

Wage a brutal war? Brutal, yes, but in its uselessness: their system of promoting senior officers will hardly be based on merit, but absurdist bullshit critera, just like everything else in such a society. Have you ever studied anything the situationists did in OTL? They are completely capable of promoting officers based on genital size or something else along those lines.

Enable escapes of the Bonded? It's bloody unlikely that the Bonded would even understand what the absurdist situationist propaganda is trying to say, or that they would want anything to do with it. Which still ignores the issues that situationists are unlikely to come up with something even resembling a long-term geo-political strategy. (After all, when you fundamentally believe that the past and the future don't exist and are really just mass delusions, long-term planning tends to suffer...)

Put a man on the Moon and leave a flag proclaiming the independence of the sovereign lunar state? Launch a rocket, sure. My expectation would be a comical failure. The rocket explodes, or the astronauts are stranded on the moon and die there. But then the state media insanely proclaim to have made contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, all members of which happen to look like anthropomorphic toilets! That's the kind of stupid lunacy you should expect from this ideology.

 

[Prince Daemon Targaryen]

What's going on in India right now?

 

[Herucalmo]

@Skallagrim I mean even if your vision of what avante-garde "degenerates" are was valid, the Chinese Situationist movement built from them not exactly of them into an inter-sectional mass movement with dimensions that run the gauntlet from yes artistic wings, to political wings cross-fertilizing with anarchists, socialists, and Utopians/Communists, to wings that serve as free places for oppressed minorities where like gay and trans communities can form, nearly-extinct languages can have a poetic renaissance , etc..., etc... this isn't the meme archetype of the hippies and yuppies, this is the hippies as they actually were willing to be shot and die for their beliefs like in the Kent State massacre or the AIM massacre at Wounded Knee or more attacks then I can count on the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement. And even ignoring all that, here's the great thing about mass democracy- the Situationist old guard can just be voted out and replaced with the "real workers" or whatever is supposed to take their place.

 

[xsampa]

What happens to Tibet?
It not only controls China’s water supply, but has trade connections, the “Tea Route” through Yunnan being one of them, and a lamacracy of dubious legitimacy. While Tibet joining China voluntarily is not impossible....

 

[AlexG]

I like the dice, it’s the best solution for implicit bias and accounts for the randomness that human history is full of.

Also, I really enjoy this TL, especially with all the kooky ideologies, the alt-takes on fascism, democracy, etc.

This really is a fascinating work, be proud of what you’ve done.

 

[pelecanimimus]

@Skallagrim while I don't agree with ypir ppints I think they would be much more valid if they didnt use literally nazi terminology such as "degenerate art".

 

[Skallagrim]

@Skallagrim while I don't agree with ypir ppints I think they would be much more valid if they didnt use literally nazi terminology such as "degenerate art".

I think that, by their conduct, and for reasons and acts I have specifically described, the situations really are what I'd call a bunch of degenerates. I don't believe I used the term "degenerate art", although -- if we ignore the OTL connotations -- the term is technically one I would call accurate here.

Suffice to say, if I call something degenerate, I mean something vastly different from what the Nazis meant. To them, Felix Mendelssohn's music was "degenerate", for instance. Ironically, the situationists, in rejecting the past, and tradition, and all things of delicate and nuanced beauty, would probably come out on the side of the Nazis regarding Mendelssohn! And on the flip-side of that, certain OTL impulses of fascist aesthetics have a clear commonality with the styles favoured by situationists. Look, for instance, no further than this kind of stuff. Not quite identical to what the situationists produce, but it has the same gauche and shouty essence to it. Yes, indeed, it is something I would honestly call... degenerate. Because it is ugly, crude, simplistic and devoid of any intellect or elegance.

 

[pelecanimimus]

Suffice to say, if I call something degenerate, I mean something vastly different from what the Nazis meant.

To the nazis the avant garde movements were degenerate art, which appsrently is also ehat you believe from your previous commentd

 

[Born in the USSA]

I think we should let this conversation lie. For my part I think the Situationist led coalition governing Free China is interesting, and the replacement of radial provinces with nonpartisan-designed population based ones and a focus on maintaining heavy industry and a strong military to preserve against external threats shows that Xi'an can both learn from mistakes and fully acknowledge the reality of their situation on the world stage. The fact that Free China is a government that officially makes the personal well-being of the populace a state policy goal also puts them far ahead of several ideological blocks TTL in terms of state-citizen relations.

 

[Skallagrim]

To the nazis the avant garde movements were degenerate art, which appsrently is also ehat you believe from your previous commentd

I'm afraid you seem to be missing my point a bit. Do you also think that my arguments become less valid if I like Wagner's music, on the grounds that Hitler also liked it? Or if I drive a Mercedes, on the ground that Hitler drove a Mercedes? That seems silly. Yet you imply that the legitimacy of disapproving certain aesthetics is somehow automatically reduced if the Nazis also disapproved of those. Regardless of whether the motivations behind the dislike are quite different, and regardless of the fact the one may in fact deplore of situationist styles and fascist styles on the same grounds.

Seriously, the reductio ad hitlerum is really off the mark.