TLIAW: Living in the Plastic Age - America Post-Legion 1980-2016

[BlackentheBorg]

47. Rick Nixon (Independent)
1980-1986
Incumbent President
fmr. Director of the Bureau of Investigation under Everett Dirksen, Malcolm Little & Ron Reagan, Orange County District Attorney, worker at the Office of Price Administration
VP: Paul Boutelle of New York
Incumbent Vice President, fmr. Senator, Dean at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations
*
'80: defeated Evan Mecham/Joe Buchanan (Liberty), Ed Garvey/Michael Royko Jr. (Peoples), William Safire/Joseph Buzhardt (Progressive Conservative), Homer Thornberry/Edward Muskie (Federalist), Philip Aloysius Hart/Pierre Salinger (Liberation Democratic), Henry Perot/John Gargan (Independent)
'84: defeated Archie Cox/John Seigenthaler (Liberation Democratic/New Frontier), Rudolph Giuliani/Drew Days III (Federalist), Peter Barton Wilson/Louis Bafalis (Progressive Conservative), Marguerite Ray/Fred Tuttle (Peoples), Meldrim Thomson Jr./Anthony Lorenzo (Liberty) ​

Nixon ended World War Three by threatening to turn Russia into a radioactive crater. That was the new reality America had found itself in, being on top of the food chain after something close to fifteen years under a brutal fascist regime, not to mention nearly on the losing side of WW2. Now suddenly leading in both military pushback and goods & exports, the United States had, upon forcing the USSR to withdraw from Indochina, rocketed from somewhere in the double digits on the world power rankings to Number One. No wonder he was so popular. Even if he hadn't brought the latest World War to a quick end, Nixon was also somehow playing to all crowds simultaneously. It was a mystery how he managed to satiate the wants of both Unions and the factories that herded them, the farmers demanding more subsidies and the consumers demanding fresher fruit, the young hating the olds and the olds hating the young. It seemed that nothing could stop him from winning a second term, then a third, then maybe even a fourth!

...well, there was one thing....

Nixon was in his late seventies after he cruised thru reelection, and his health was already a cause for concern, what with his busy schedule. It was only a matter of time before something slipped, and in 1986 it was when he suffered a severe stroke while preparing to eat dinner with the Ambassador to Japan. Doctors did the best they could but the swelling led Nixon to slip into a coma, then subsequently off the mortal coil.

That's when the good times stopped...​

NOTE: this is a follow up to Tear Out a Man's Tongue, in which the United States is taken over by a fascist government we know nowadays as the "Business Plot". Read it if you wanna catch up on what the hell is going on here.​

 

[Gentleman Biaggi]

HELL YEA

 

[LuckyLuciano]

What is this picture of?

 

[Deleted member 81475]

RIP Rick you were the real deal. Excited to see this continue!

 

[BlackentheBorg]

What is this picture of?

It's a couple of test dummies post-bomb-blast. Thought it'd make for a thematic title card, considering the contents.

 

[BlackentheBorg]

48. Paul Boutelle (Independent)
1986-1987
fmr. Vice President to Rick Nixon
fmr. Senator from New York, Dean at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, State Senator
VP: [vacant]
*​

Boutelle dropped out of high school. Taken out of context, this would seem like a detriment. In context, he was all but forced out when the Legion took hold, pumping out extraneous legislation on to minority communities across the 'freer' northern states; Boutelle had to quit his education in order to support his family, but soon found himself fighting on the fronts in Berkshire, Oneida and Morningside Heights, falling in with Bella Abzug when his home state was razed during the Bombing of Bed–Stuy. Boutelle was first elected a State Senator in 1964, then made a fail run for mayor in 1969 as a People's Party candidatr believed to be one of the reasons he turned to academia, going from guest speaker to lectuer to Dean in stunning time. He was selected by Governor Moynihan to fill a vacant senate seat vacated by Elizabeth Holtzman, but was disheartened to learn that the Governor expected him to stand aside for a proper election come 1980, especially considering Boutelle's unwillingness to label himself with a political party, preferring to remain a 'pragmatic nonpartisan'. As a result of the mutual disatisfaction with the establishment, he jumped at the chance to join Nixon's new Independent ticket.

When he was suddenly thrust into the Presidency, Boutelle wasted no time in rocking the boat. More to the left than his predecessor, who swung left and right as it suited him, Boutelle immediately ceased caucusing with the Progressive Conservative party, accusing of them of representing 'a softer piece of a totalitarian brutalist machine'. While he continued with the populist agenda already down the pipes, Boulette shifted discussion to that of reparation for victims of the Legion government's fascist programs, something which no prior administration (not even Kennedy or Horton) had attempted to tackle. There were victims of forced resettlement camps, families of those misconstrued by the promise of Recovery Farms, millions of African Americans and immigrant families who were brutalised under enhanced segregation, former political prisoners still traumatised, and most of them were left to find their own way out of the hole that had been dug for them. Several times, Boutelle merely wanted to start with these, then wanted to expand to overseas, intending to deliver compensation for the "virtual genocides" committed against Japan and Ireland. This raised alarm bells for the middle class, who didn't want to see their taxes skyrocket in order to pay for someone else's misery. This reaction, largely believed to be behind the surge in Liberty party candidates over the next decade, was an extremely hot-button issue for Boutelle, who could launch into fiery tirades when someone, be they opposition candidate or talkshow pundit, when asked if it was 'worth it'. Of course it was worth it, he fumed, America had done wrong, and it was pretending it wasn't entitled to pay damages.

If the circumstances surrounding his ascension weren't tragic enough, yet another tragic twist came when Boutelle was assassinated whilst giving a Town Hall meeting in Georgia by Mark David Chapman, an unbalanced Christian Rights activist with lingering sympathies to Legion figureheads, who had heard voices in his head telling him to kill. The situation the country was in was about to get a lost messier...

 

[Time Enough]

Oh dear, it seems America's going to go down the 70s Italy route in no time. It doesn't help that Paul Boutelle didn't have a VP.

 

[Sam R.]

Oh dear, it seems America's going to go down the 70s Italy route in no time.

I told you American autonomist Marxism and Maoism would blossom, didn’t I? I just did it on playing with mirrors; not here on playing with horrors.

Given all the guns lying around the red companies are going to start up.

 

[Analytical Engine]

BTW, you should probably update the tags on the previous thread.

 

[BlackentheBorg]

49. Ben Sanders (Peoples)
1987-1988
fmr. Speaker of the House of Representatives
House Representative from Illinois, fmr. Minority Leader for the Peoples Party, fmr. Peoples Party Minority Whip, Chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
VP: [vacant, 1987-], George Leland of Texas
fmr. Secretary of State under Malcolm Little, fmr. House Representative
*
​

Bernard Sanders, or 'Ben', for sake of ease, had grand ideas, sure, but nothing that warranted becoming the Commander in Chief for. He could just as easy rally for his parties policies in the House of Representatives, where he'd serving his adoptive state of Illinois dutifully since the early 70s. In fact, Sanders had been mulling over retiring his position as Speaker at the time of Boulette's felling. Evidently, he wouldn't be Speaker anymore, just maybe not in the way he intended.

Like Boutelle, Sanders was born and raised in the slums of New York, finding himself spurred to action when his brother Lawrence died from an easily preventable flu infection, largely due to a Legion-ordained embargo on essential materials in an attempt to put pressure on NY-based freedom fighters. This served as motivation to enter politics after he moved to Chicago, starting off by joining (and eventually leading) the SNCC whilst he worked part-time as a clerk under Governor Sidney Yates, something which put him in good enough graces to be headhunted as a House candidate in 1972. An admirer of former President Horton, Sanders became a major proponent of People's Party policy, loyal and efficient in his manor, unwilling to compromise on essential issues such as healthcare and workers rights. His ascension to Speaker was undisputed, especially when he became a vocal critic of the corrupt Klein administration. All things considered, Sanders could have been a great President, being a champion of pragmatic long-term legislative reform. Unfortunately for him, the circumstances had put him in the wrong place in the wrong time.

To placate the more moderate circles in the now-shakey alliance between the Peoples Party and the New Frontier (formerly the Liberation Democrats), Sanders drafted Leland, the former Secretary of State who was famous for helping end Apartheid in South Africa, as his Veep, a wise move considering Leland's name-brand popularity and solid liberal record. What tripped them up was Sanders stance on Physics Bombs, or more specifically how he wanted to do away with them entirely. While he saw unilateral disarmament as the only way forward ("An economy and an international gambit built entirely on fear of total annihilation are unacceptable"), the Conservatives twisted his ideals as wanting to undo all the progress America had made in the realms of international politics. What didn't help was his subsequent peace meeting with Chairman Yuri Irsenovich, as they attempted to settle dividends and discuss the possible independence of Soviet Germany, a trip that was skewed as Sanders being 'too soft' on the commies. Even tho he would survive his own party's nomination, Sanders unfortunately wouldn't survive reelection.

 

[BlackentheBorg]

BTW, you should probably update the tags on the previous thread.

What do you mean?

 

[Analytical Engine]

What do you mean?

To include the "tear out a man's tongue" tag in the previous TL thread as well, so the tag links both of them.

 

[Whiteshore]

Chairman Yuri Irsenovich

Wait a minute, the USSR ITTL is run by Kim Jong-il?

 

[Blorg]

Wait a minute, the USSR ITTL is run by Kim Jong-il?

Glorious leader demands the annexation of Iceland.
No clue why I wrote this but what you said made this come to mind.

 

[BlackentheBorg]

50. Steven Schieble (Liberty)
1988-1992
Senator from Wisconsin
fmr. political strategist and financial consultant
VP: Lido Iacocca of Missouri
Governor, fmr. businessman
*
defeated Ben Sanders/George Leland (Peoples), Roxanne Conlin/Toney Anaya (New Frontier), George Moscone/Benjamin Fernandez (Progressive Conservative), Lloyd Bentsen/Earl Carter (Federalist) ​

While none of his family members died, and he wasn't morally tied into any civil wars, Schieble still didn't have the most stable upbringing. His mother had initially planned to give him up for adoption, but was forced to care for an infant Steve when her state was caught in the crossfire of the Dakota-based Liberty League armies and the Michigan-based Liberation Army cells. Modern day psychoanalysts have been all too quick to diagnose the former President with some form of histrionic personality disorder, characterised by a strong desire to seek approval, which is why he was often described by his fellow pundits as "a productive narcissist", "difficult but valuable" and the occasional adage that he was "very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that." Schieble didn't so much as run for his Senate seat as he took a casual stroll, using his staggering business mindset and political know-how to appeal to market himself as a sleek new politics, with new ideas for the new era. He was an adamant Atari Politician, a rising pact of legislators who suggested that the support and development of high tech and related businesses would stimulate the economy and create jobs. This wove into his platform, as Schieble ran on a campaign of increased production, pouring subsidies into tech innovation and expanding the Infobahn to an essential public service, getting America on what he called the 'information superhighway' by the end of the millennium.

When he worked in the White House, Schiebe would work hard, pouring almost his entire day into meetings, speeches, strategies and legislature. He was not afraid to let those he considered non-essential or not pulling their weight that they were no longer required, leading to a record number of administrative dismissals within his first two years. He focused intesley on deregulation on American factories, citing how easy it was for new businesses to set up shop overseas in order to skirt around 'uncescessay costs and regulations'. As a result, he tended to go after unions, especially Teachers Unions, being of the opinion that principals should be freely able to hire and fire teachers based on their performance. Schiebe was also not very sympathetic to federal handouts, cutting the budgets to the healthcare sector and housing projects across the board. Despite all this, and being on opposite ends of the spectrum, Schiebe got on quite well with the new House Speaker, Moonbeam Brown of California, bonding over mutual interests in zen buddhism and veganism. White House staffers often reported seeing him walking around the Oval Office barefoot, with one even reportedly walking in on him cross-legged and chanting a prayer, although biographers dispute this.

While Sanders wanted to get rid of Physics Bombs across the board, Schieble wanted to create more. If you thought the monopoly America had on the Soviets was good now, he mused, imagine what the nation could extort with an even greater bolstering of American Firepower. The international community was (understandably) not thrilled with the idea, and the White House was sent endless lobbies towards allowing the proliferation of Physic Bomb technologies to particular nations. Schieble was initially extremely perturbed with the idea, not wanting to give any other nation the advantage America had, but his position softened when prospective countries began to pour on lucrative trade deals. This, in a roundabout way, resulted in the USSR developing its first nuclear programme, running off the back of intelligence stolen from the neighboring nations of Afghanistan and the Republic of China. This immediately swung public approval away from Schieble, who had inadvertently allowed the Soviets their own Physics Bombs and ruining any real leverage the United States might have against them. A master of spin, Schiebe insisted this was fine, a little risky competition between competitors was always healthy. Towards the end of his term, Schieble was rumoured to have drawn up a preemptive strike system of his own design, which involved positioning giant lasers in near-earth orbit. This scheme of orbital lasers leaking to the press was more than enough for the public to vote him out come November.

 

[BlackentheBorg]

51. Dolores Huerta (New Frontier)
1992-1996
Governor of California
fmr. State Senator, Chairperson of Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee
VP: Eric Boucher of Colorado
Senator, fmr. Mayor of Fort Collins
*
defeated Steven Schieble/Lido Iacocca (Liberty), Burt Talcott/Donald Fraser (Federalist), Phil Ochs/Roberto Mondragon (Peace!), Benjamin Fernandez/Rich Bond (Progressive Conservative), Tom Kahn/Anthony Traficant (Peoples), Douglas Coe/Marshall Applewhite (Religious Rights)​

It's all too easy to forget that America was a nation founded on farmers. The entire reason Manifest Destiny was so successful, thusly the reason the States stretched from Delaware to California, was the promise of infinite stretches of farmland ripe for the settling. When the Legion first took over, it was Agarain-based Nationalism that swept Long into office, even if it was quickly forgotten in favour of classist conscriptive labour. And following Nixon's ultimatum, America suddenly found itself under a lot more pressure to produce additional exports as a leading trading partner. Huerta had been synonymous with the underprivileged farming community since an early age, supporting her family by working fields across the west coast, eventually settling in California. When Huerta was young, she would hear her father tell stories about union organizing, which he would use as gravitas when he ran for the state legislature in 1952. Her mother also had a tendency towards philanthropy, using her status as a landlord to rent out cheaper rooms to low-income farmhands and field workers in the wake of the 1960 recession.

Dolores, despite having a strong springboard for entering politics, tended to instead focus on local activism, taking the reins of the AWOC after the assassination of the charismatic César Estrada Chávez. After helming the Winemakers Strike of 1965, becoming a vocal advocate for both the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, and helped steamroll the expansion of the Aid to Families Act, Huerta finally acted on her inherent political clout and used her connections to take over a vacated State Senate seat. After that, she made a tentative run for Governor, following the terrible state response to farmland droughts, which she won in spades. And after becoming furious with how President Scheible was leaving the fields behind in favour of automation, Huerta threw her hat into the ring, promising greater compassion for American farmers and underprivileged factory workers. She became the first woman President, the first ethnic President, and the first multilingual President since FDR (who spoke French and German). Despite these breaks in the glass ceiling, her time in office wouldn't be without it's detriments.

In theory, automation is a terrible thing for the average American worker. Generations of hard-handed factory floor workers, descended from folks who had molded sheet metal and produced tires for the war efforts, were told point blank that a robotic implement would be replacing them. Whilst yes, this was terrible, former President Scheible intended to compensate for this with an expansion of jobs in the engineering and maintenance sectors, something which he fell short in due to his staunch refusal to reduce student loan costs for the college educations required to even enter into said sectors in the first place. A simple fix would come from lowering tuition costs, as automation would be beneficial for exports as a whole, what with the increased production. Under Huerta, automation was villainized as the root of the economic recession, commiting to an expansion of the farming sector and massive subsidies for landowners as an incentive. While this initially lessened the unemployment rate, a myriad of other issues soon arose. Migration from urban areas to the farmland, causing a massive drain on businesses in cities. These typically small towns weren't prepared for a massive influx of mostly unemployed folk looking to work the fields, which put an even greater strain on economically disadvantaged areas, leading to a subsequent boom in the crime rate. Very quickly, the widening divide between the upper and lower classes caused anger on both sides. Despite her best intentions and caring personality, Huerta's plans for economic prosperity had backfired, not to mention her isolationist foreign policy allowing the newly-Nuclear-armed USSR to throw it's weight once again over Europe without any major repercussions.

 

[Whiteshore]

Wait a minute, the USSR ITTL is run by Kim Jong-il?

Can you confirm or deny this, @BlackentheBorg?

 

[BlackentheBorg]

Can you confirm or deny this, @BlackentheBorg?

Yep, that's totally what it is.

 

[Bughuntertf]

I love TLIAWs - they explore weird ideas, short-form, say just enough and leave just enough to the imagination.

(BTW: the index/tags/links are messed up. Clicking >> on Huerta leads back to Boutelle.)

 

[BlackentheBorg]

52. Sarah Obama (Liberty)
1996-2000
House Representative from Idaho
fmr. Mayor of Moscow, city councillor
VP: Ollie North of Virginia
Senator, fmr. National Security Advisor to Al Klein
*
defeated Dolores Huerta/Eric Boucher (New Frontier), Alice Palmer/Mary Tyler Ivins (Peoples), Marge Roukema/Olympia Bouchles (Progressive Conservative), Blanche Lincoln/Dr. Randall Forsberg (Federalist), Cindy Lee Sheehan/Ronnie Kovic (Peace!)​

'96 was referred to by the American tabloids as 'Year X', seeing as how by sheer coincidence all political party tickets were being lead by female candidates. None of them, however, were more of a rootin-tootin red-blooded patriotic than Sarah Obama, freshwoman representative former mayor of an ironically named border town in Idaho. Obama gave fiery stump speeches on how she'd seen Huerta's policies force her state to grind to a halt, and how she and her party would promote a fairer, faster market more fitting of the approaching millenium, adding "Our government needs to adopt a pro-market agenda that doesn't pick winners and losers, but it invites competition and it levels the playing field for everyone. So what if you lost your job to a machine? Can YOU assemble a car in twenty minutes? America should always have to work for it's pay!" Obama sought to shift the blame from the government to the worker, reducing dependencies on handouts and encouraging a self-sustaining philosophy. It also helped that her campaign stops mainly consisted of visiting greasy diners, shooting galleries, airbases and farm auctions, to prove that she was more than worthy of the nickname 'Caribou Barbie'. At most of these stops she was joined by her rather charismatic husband Barry, who she met while studying at Hawaii Pacific University, who worked as a lawyer before his appointment as First Gentleman. Behind the veil of their rather photogenic marriage, they often argued over political differences, with Barry being noticeably more liberal-minded than the eventual Madam President.

Outside of her fiscally conservative economic policy, Obama was an interventionist hawk to the fullest extent, especially now that the USSR was using it's expanding stockpile of Physics Bombs as a free ticket to restart expansion. “There does come a time when you have to take the gloves off and that time is right now." she stated, going on to point how the Eastern border of the USSR can be seen from the Alaskan Island where the first Physics Bomb was detonated. While publicly hesitant about encouraging a foreign dependency on American intervention, the Obama administration restarted initiatives influencing the fractured Indian region, an unwieldy battleground ripe for the molding, such as the newly independent nations of Khalistan and Himachal, who, while distrustful of the Americans, were more than happy to buy their arms to better outmaneuver the Communist Chinese forces camping in the Himalayas. Likewise, the USSR increased its influencers in Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, backing the insurgent Naxal Party campaign lead by Kanu Sanyal, and later the more ruthless Muppala Lakshmana Rao. This was just a handful of the geographical conflicts, dubbed 'proxy wars' (due to both sides feigning ignorance as to not entice a Fourth World War) the United States began to muddy itself in over the next four years, including the militant disputes in Nicaragua, the assassination of Auguste Hue in France, the fallout of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ascension of Anwar Sadat in Egypt. All the while, Obama refused to even meet with Soviet ambassadors, rendering summits in which the two nations might talk out their issues redundant. The world was very much on a knife's edge.

This rabid hawkishness, while not making use of any Physics Bombs as many feared the brazen Obama would eventually do, did not sit well with a vocal minority of voters. The 1998 midterms saw a massive increase in the number of leftist progressive candidates, pushing control of the House to a Peoples-Peace! coalition and the Senate into the hands of the New Frontier, effectively severing any real congressional power the president had. And they knew this, using their majority to gridlock a vast majority of government in protest of the ongoing war efforts. Obama was furious, giving speeches where it seems in addition to the new conflicts in Brazil and North Africa she was also declaring war on her own government. Even if she DID manage to placate the problematic Peace coalition by biting her tongue and sitting down with Chairwoman Lakhova, there was no way in hell she would be able to win over her opponent in the new millennium...