And now... we interrupt this timeline for a
very special announcement!
Some of you may be familiar with
Eyes Turned Skywards (wiki link
here), a timeline which is focused on an alternate space program; longstanding readers of either that thread or this one will be aware that, some months ago, I was invited to write a guest post, which can be read right
here. The two co-authors,
e of pi and
truth is life, both of whom are good friends of this timeline, felt that my writing style was just what they needed to complement their diligently researched and dazzlingly presented cold, hard facts with the certain
je ne sais quoi that only popular culture can provide. That resulted in the beginning of what has become a
very fruitful relationship, which culminates today in my providing a
second update to
Eyes Turned Skywards, which you can find right
here! For those of you who are missing my
Star Trek coverage and are impatiently awaiting my promised return thereto, then I most strongly
urge you to check it out, because guess what so happens to be the main attraction?
We now return to our regularly scheduled responses...
---
And yes, no update on
this thread until the weekend, sadly. The long weekend gave me some spare time, true, but it was all funneled directly into RL. So it goes...
My view is that Kerry's personal fortune and ambition make him a likely politician even ITTL, but I follow your logic.
Perhaps. But the Democratic bench is very crowded in Massachusetts, and Kerry has been deprived of a unique platform on which he can stand out.
Andrew T said:
Well, since you've eliminated one of the authentic good guys in politics, I should ask the fate of the other: how's
Paul Simon doing?
Not well. I've now butterflied
"Graceland" (because Elvis Lives)
and "You Can Call Me Al", ("I can call you Betty" is widely believed to be a reference to Betty Ford, with the eponymous "Al" being short for "alcoholic") were the two best songs on
that album (In all seriousness, I see no reason why he would not be serving in the House as IOTL, assuming that his margins were solid enough to withstand Republican challengers in the mid-1970s. I obviously won't divulge whether or not he makes it to the Senate ITTL.)
Man, I go on one little business trip to Maryland and one little not-business trip to Montreal and I feel like I am ages behind.
Glad you're still reading, e_wraith! Funny you went to Maryland and Montreal - I'll have cause to mention both locales later on ITTL, and for non-political reasons, too!
e_wraith said:
And during such an interesting political update, too! Reagan in 76 just blows the doors off of any semblance this timeline can have to our own in the 1980s. I mean like him or hate him Reagan largely defined the 80s in the US, and the populous vs. media reaction to him. 100 years from now watching reruns of SNL future historians will determine he was the most vilified and hated president of the 20th century, and wonder how he could have rigged the elections to have gotten the votes that he did. So much of the media of the 80s is either playing off of the idea of a new optimism or a scathing critique of that new optimism.
It's funny, because I've had something resembling this discussion privately, with at least three other people, and came to many of the same conclusions (though I don't think that future observers will decide that people "hated" Reagan, because of course they have the
accurate example of Nixon to measure him against). But you're right that, in short, Ronald Reagan defined the 1980s IOTL, as no President has really defined his respective decade before or since. I decided long ago who would become President after Reagan (and
when he would take office), so we'll have to see if
that gentleman (yes, it's a man) could possibly replicate Reagan's OTL achievement.
e_wraith said:
I guess with [verboten] and the national attitude being so changed, there's no Morning in America anyway. But it is still amusing to think of Reagan at the height of the Studio 54 drugs and debauchery time period... (Which begs the question of the club scene, I guess, and how it has changed with the lack of a national malaise and escapist attitude.) Still, it means the 1980s are surely not the 1980s that we all know and (possibly) love. (Well, I love them for all their flaws at least! Back to the Future a and the A-Team are enough for that, an Eastern block so we can still have good spy movies, Neuromancer and the cyberpunk genre, still some hope for the space program...) Indeed, Reagan is probably somewhat more progressive than he would have been given the progressive portion of the Republican party still exists not having sold its soul to get the South, defining the middle as closer to the left than it is these days in the US.
Having been
born in the 1980s, I'm obviously biased, but even so, there's a full-throatedness, a warts-and-all sincerity about the attitude of the 1980s which I find utterly irresistible. You'll note that I've imported some of that attitude into the
1970s in this timeline, and I think that Reagan will do his best to take advantage of that; remember, his ascension marks the end of four terms of Democratic control of the White House, and comes on the heels of the Republicans ending twenty years of Democratic Congresses - he can pass all that off as a different kind of Morning in America (with leftist wags calling it "
mourning in America" instead).
e_wraith said:
I know, I know, it is not like Reagan doesn't exist, but he won't be an 80s phenomenon. And it is going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Once again, interesting update!
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it
I gather that Spain's history is largely unchanged and that Generalissimo Franco is still dead
This just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still valiantly holding on in his fight to remain dead, having passed more-or-less on schedule ITTL. And we
will be hearing more about post-Francoist Spain in the future, though not exclusively (it will be as part of a thematic update covering a number of countries, actually).
Without Chevy Chase to keep us continually updated on this front, how will we know that Franco remains dead and has not returned from death in some capacity?
Well, I kept Elvis alive, right?
Somebody has to take his place as the man everybody believes to still be living. Why not Franco?
e_wraith said:
In fact... With SNL's Weekend Update butterflied away, and likely the many imitators that would come later down the line, how do millions of Americans get their news? Until the Internet, there will be a gaping hole in fake news that people take as real.
An
intriguing question. I may have an answer for you in the near future. It will take some careful planning...
