FOREWORD, THANKS, & SUCH
A FOREWORD
1976 was an election of great change. No, seriously. The US had been through one of the greatest nonviolent ordeals in its history. Faith in government itself was shaken, some would argue irreparably. A party was dead for a generation. All because a previously great statesman had fully and finally succumbed to his deepest, darkest, most primordial and paranoid urges, supposedly clawing his party down into hell with his blackened soul. But this did not come to pass. An honest good-ole-boy, the sort of person who would never lie to you (and sometimes told you a little too much), took the White House back from the Doomed Party, but without the expected landslide. After four years of this, the people decided that maybe Doom wasn't so bad compared to a sluggish economy and the most indecisive of fussy engineers. The Hippies were punched, the commies were forced to pull down their fly and get the ruler, the taxes were lowered, books upon books of regulations were burned, and all was supposedly well. When I saw this, my first instinct was... well, what if it wasn't? What if this pivotal election that so many forget about had a couple of shifts, and there was no monopoly on outsiders by one party? What then? After research and some more research, article upon book upon documentary upon NYT archive, we were here, following the narrow, dirty, winding trail, not an open, beaten path.
This timeline, my very first on this site, has been no small feat. I've worked on it, posted it, got through about two updates, stopped working on it, worked on it yet again, and eventually hit the point where I could no longer sit on it. That being said, I'd like to thank those who've test read, those who've talked over the implications of what I've actually done, and those who've generally helped me make this what it is. In particular, @Ariosto for putting my (sometimes asinine) ideas to the test, @Yes for brilliant flashes of inspiration on everything from characterization to cabinetry, @Techdread for ensuring that The Brits are indeed fully At It because any world where The Brits Are Not At It Again is ASB, and lastly, the dear readers who take such an interest in my rambling of variable coherence. You may have expected me to be more long-winded in this intro, but let's save word limit abuses for the actual updates, now shall we?
Ladies, gentlemen, and beyond: I present to you...
Last edited: