The End of History: The World After Syndicalism (1994-2019)

[XTrapnel]

Apologies for my lengthy absence from this thread.

Extract from a children's encyclopedia of the world published in the CSA in 1960. Writeup to follow.

 

[Pragmatic Progressive]

the technocratic "managed democracy" practised in Europe since the Third Weltkrieg was the inevitable endpoint of human development.

What is this "managed democracy" like - could you explain that?

What makes it so dangerous to travel to western Montana and eastern Idaho (i.e. the border between California(?) and the Federation of American States)?

 

[MuricanTauri1776]

What is this "managed democracy" like - could you explain that?



What makes it so dangerous to travel to western Montana and eastern Idaho (i.e. the border between California(?) and the Federation of American States)?

I assume TTL's equivalent to Chechnya, probably some kind of rural "Flyover Republic" style thing, some ethnic minority deported there (I mean the Sovs did that a lot), or an artificial "Rocky" identity created a la TTL's Appalachia.

 

[XTrapnel]

I assume TTL's equivalent to Chechnya, probably some kind of rural "Flyover Republic" style thing, some ethnic minority deported there (I mean the Sovs did that a lot), or an artificial "Rocky" identity created a la TTL's Appalachia.

The Western Montana Insurgency

Although the States which would ultimately form the Grangeland Constituent Syndicalist Republic had a marked history of pre-Civil War radicalism (and, indeed, the recognition of the Combined Syndicates of America as the legitimate government in the opening days of the Civil War by the governors of Minnesota, North Dakota and Nebraska had almost singlehandedly prevented mass starvation in the Great Lakes region), they had never been wholehearted supporters of the centralised Technocratic Syndicalism which ultimately became the CSA’s ruling ideology. Grangeland, particularly its less-policed Western regions, became a haven (at least during the earlier, freer, days of the CSA) for a loose assortment of Utopian communes, millenarian religious evangelicals, anarcho-primitivists and lone dissidents seeking to establish homesteads in the wilderness, united by little more than a vague dislike of the Chicago Congress. In later years, the population of Western Montana was augmented by its use by central government as an internal dumping-spot for political undesirables and “antisocial” petty criminals.



This vague dislike for central government began to harden into outright rebellion during the early Eighties, fuelled by widespread economic malaise and increasing government overreach, in the process taking on a nastier edge. The nascent Western Montana independence movement jumped from graffiti to murder in April 1989, with the shooting of two People’s Militia officers in Kalispell – within a year, car-bombings of regime officials and summary executions of small town police officers and commissars who attempted to enforce government authority were commonplace, particularly in the north-west of Montana.



The CSA responded by establishing the Special Anti-Terror Police Operation (“SATPO”) Force under the control of General Wesley Clark: consisting of two air attack groups of crack troops and outside the normal military command structure, SATPO quickly became feared for the brutality of its “rapid response” operations (most notoriously, the Fishhook Massacre, where an estimated three hundred civilians were killed by a combination of airdropped ground troops and gunships in retaliation for the town’s known harbouring of guerrillas). While these operations were able to restore government control over much of north-west Montana for a brief period, their effectiveness was blunted by the Commonwealth of Canada’s decision to supply the guerrillas with shoulder-mounted anti-air missile launchers, as well as by mounting official discomfort with the high civilian death toll in Montana.



Wesley Clark was assassinated on 23 December 1993: by that time, the guerrillas (now reorganised into the “Northwest Front” and fighting for the independence of the Republic of Northwest Montana) had attained de facto control over much of Western Montana, with SATPO forces being effectively confined to their bases. The first phase of the Western Montana Insurgency drew to a close in November 1994, when President Traficant formally dissolved SATPO and the Grangeland Republic (by now under Governor Max Baucus) declared an amnesty for Northwest Front guerrillas. Much of the moderate wing of the Northwest Front took this as a signal to lay down their arms: however, a hard core of religious extremists and white separatists decided to continue the struggle on behalf of the Republic of Northwest Montana.



The Grangeland Republic was forced to spend the first years of its existence fighting not only against the Northwest Front but against a loose confederation of SATPO remnants and Syndicalist loyalist militias. By 1998, when a Northwest Front missile launcher inadvertently shot down a civilian BOAC airliner en route from Calgary to Portland, Western Montana had become a symbol for the parlous condition of the Federation of American States.

 

[Wolfleaf]

This is a really interesting timeline, too bad it took me this long to find. Please keep up the good work

 

[Dizzy Miss Lizzy]

i'm just here wondering what the map looks like post collapse

 

[XTrapnel]

 

[XTrapnel]

1937-1942: Frank Merriam (Pacific Republican Party)
1938: Cuthbert Olson (Pacific Democratic Party); Raymond L Haight (Pacific Progressive Party);
1941: Hiram Johnson (Democratic-Progressive fusion ticket); William Randolph Hearst (Populist Party)
1942-1945: Angelo J Rossi (Pacific Republican Party)
1945-1959: Earl Warren (Democratic-Progressive fusion ticket)
1945: Angelo J Rossi (Pacific Republican Party); Ezra Taft Benson (Populist Party)
1949: William Knowland (Pacific Republican Party); Wayne Morse (Pacific Liberal Party); Ezra Taft Benson (Populist Party)
1953: Goodwin Knight (Republican-Liberal fusion ticket); Herman Welker (Pacific Conservative Party)
1958: Richard Nixon (Pacific Republican Party); Barry Goldwater (Pacific Conservative Party)
1959-1964: Richard Nixon (Pacific Republican Party)
1959: Earl Warren (Pacific Democratic Party); Barry Goldwater (Pacific Conservative Party); Albert Rosellini (Pacific Progressive Party)
1964-1967: Pat Brown (Pacific Democratic Party)
1964: Richard Nixon (Pacific Republican Party); Barry Goldwater (Pacific Conservative Party); Mark Hatfield (Pacific Liberal Party)
1967-1973: Richard Nixon (Pacific Republican Party)
1967: Pat Brown (Pacific Democratic Party); Barry Goldwater (Pacific Conservative Party);
1972; Henry Jackson (Pacific Democratic Party); Frank Church (Pacific Progressive Party); Barry Goldwater (Pacific Conservative Party)
1973-1974: Don Samuelson (Pacific Republican Party)
1974-1981: Pat Brown (Progressive Democratic Party)
1974: Don Samuelson (Pacific Republican Party); John G Schmitz (Pacific Conservative Party)
1978: Sam Yorty (Pacific Republican Party); John G Schmitz (Pacific Conservative Party); Harvey Milk (Pacific Radical Party)
1981-1985: Frank Church (Progressive Democratic Party)
1982: Orrin Hatch (Pacific Republican Party); Bob Dornan (Pacific Conservative Party); Richard Hongitsto (Pacific Radical Party)
1985-1994: George Deukmejian (Pacific Republican Party)
1985: Frank Church (Pacific Democratic Party); Bob Dornan (Pacific Conservative Party); Dixy Lee Ray (Cascadia Party)
1989: Scott Matheson (Pacific Democratic Party); Evan Mecham (Pacific Conservative Party); Margaret Garcia (Pacific Ecology Party)
1994-: Ed Brown (Progressive Democratic Party)
1994: Pete Wilson (Pacific Republican Party); Ron Unz (Unz's Pacific Party); Evan Mecham (Pacific Conservative Party); Bob Straub (Pacific Ecology Party)

 

[Pragmatic Progressive]

What is "managed democracy" like and how free are countries under managed democracy? Also, what is going on in South Argentina (or Patagonia)? Is it an international pariah, TTLs North Korea?

Also, what is it like to live in Albania and Kurdistan? How totalitarian/authoritarian are they?

 

[XTrapnel]

 

[XTrapnel]

The smallest and by far the strangest of the various autonomous ethnic states within the Dominion of India: comprising just three valleys on the Afghan-Indian border, it owes its existence entirely to the fact that its inhabitants practice a form of polytheism entirely at odds with the religions of their neighbours, and considered in the first half of the twentieth century to be a direct survival of the religion of the proto-Indo-Europeans. This led to considerable anthropological interest in the Kalasha people (one administrator noted sardonically in the 1930s that the anthropologists in the State at any one time probably outnumbered the locals), primarily from researchers from within the Commonwealth of Nations but also attracting theorists from across Europe, at least prior to the Second Weltkrieg (including one notorious expedition in 1938 by an aristocratic Odinist secret society aiming to prove that the Kalasha people were an offshoot of the Nordic race).

Although the academic consensus (supported by a combination of comparative anthropology and genetic testing) points to more connection between the Kalasha people and the other inhabitants of the Dominion of India than had previously assumed (they almost certainly migrated from the Punjab about one and a half thousand years ago) and killed off some of the wilder theories, such as their direct descent from Alexander the Great’s Macedonian soldiers, the area still regularly attracts researchers and is a significant adventure tourism destination in the region. In recent years, however, the state has become a key conduit for the smuggling of opium and opium derivatives from Afghanistan into the Dominion of India.

 

[MuricanTauri1776]

The Western Montana Insurgency

Although the States which would ultimately form the Grangeland Constituent Syndicalist Republic had a marked history of pre-Civil War radicalism (and, indeed, the recognition of the Combined Syndicates of America as the legitimate government in the opening days of the Civil War by the governors of Minnesota, North Dakota and Nebraska had almost singlehandedly prevented mass starvation in the Great Lakes region), they had never been wholehearted supporters of the centralised Technocratic Syndicalism which ultimately became the CSA’s ruling ideology. Grangeland, particularly its less-policed Western regions, became a haven (at least during the earlier, freer, days of the CSA) for a loose assortment of Utopian communes, millenarian religious evangelicals, anarcho-primitivists and lone dissidents seeking to establish homesteads in the wilderness, united by little more than a vague dislike of the Chicago Congress. In later years, the population of Western Montana was augmented by its use by central government as an internal dumping-spot for political undesirables and “antisocial” petty criminals.



This vague dislike for central government began to harden into outright rebellion during the early Eighties, fuelled by widespread economic malaise and increasing government overreach, in the process taking on a nastier edge. The nascent Western Montana independence movement jumped from graffiti to murder in April 1989, with the shooting of two People’s Militia officers in Kalispell – within a year, car-bombings of regime officials and summary executions of small town police officers and commissars who attempted to enforce government authority were commonplace, particularly in the north-west of Montana.



The CSA responded by establishing the Special Anti-Terror Police Operation (“SATPO”) Force under the control of General Wesley Clark: consisting of two air attack groups of crack troops and outside the normal military command structure, SATPO quickly became feared for the brutality of its “rapid response” operations (most notoriously, the Fishhook Massacre, where an estimated three hundred civilians were killed by a combination of airdropped ground troops and gunships in retaliation for the town’s known harbouring of guerrillas). While these operations were able to restore government control over much of north-west Montana for a brief period, their effectiveness was blunted by the Commonwealth of Canada’s decision to supply the guerrillas with shoulder-mounted anti-air missile launchers, as well as by mounting official discomfort with the high civilian death toll in Montana.



Wesley Clark was assassinated on 23 December 1993: by that time, the guerrillas (now reorganised into the “Northwest Front” and fighting for the independence of the Republic of Northwest Montana) had attained de facto control over much of Western Montana, with SATPO forces being effectively confined to their bases. The first phase of the Western Montana Insurgency drew to a close in November 1994, when President Traficant formally dissolved SATPO and the Grangeland Republic (by now under Governor Max Baucus) declared an amnesty for Northwest Front guerrillas. Much of the moderate wing of the Northwest Front took this as a signal to lay down their arms: however, a hard core of religious extremists and white separatists decided to continue the struggle on behalf of the Republic of Northwest Montana.



The Grangeland Republic was forced to spend the first years of its existence fighting not only against the Northwest Front but against a loose confederation of SATPO remnants and Syndicalist loyalist militias. By 1998, when a Northwest Front missile launcher inadvertently shot down a civilian BOAC airliner en route from Calgary to Portland, Western Montana had become a symbol for the parlous condition of the Federation of American States.

Ah, so "Gulag" rebellions, then. When you don't have Alaska you gotta make do, I guess.

 

[XTrapnel]

An excerpt from an atlas for use in schools published within the CSA in the mid-1960s:

 

[Gentleman Johnny]

An excerpt from an atlas for use in schools published within the CSA in the mid-1960s:

Why did they change all of the states around? I imagine that made things very confusing for people that were so used to old state geographical borders.