Also, remember that we're not seeing OTL as just any dystopian AH, but as FaT. That timeline wasn't just dystopian, but had a lot of wry, darkly humorous touches. Dramatic irony.
-The primary story of the summer of 1955 in the US is the murder of political activist and lay minister John Birch. Birch had won a great deal of fame in the late 1940s and early 50s with his preaching of anti-Communism as a fundamental part of the Word of God, but after a public break with his partner the Reverend Billy Graham (who decided religion was more important than anti-Communism, while Birch thought that anti-Communism WAS religion.), Birch's influence declined outside of his weekly radio show and many books.
When the murder is connected to George L. Rockwell, a naval officer who read Karl Marx while recovering from wounds incurred at Sicily, a fair number of Birch's closest friends come to the conclusion that the Communists (or the Europeans; Birch's rhetoric was very nationalistic indeed.) took down America and God's great spokesman as his hour of triumph dawned. Clearly, they must band together in this time of need, in a society in the fallen leader's name.
They are a curious crew, this first generation of the John Birch Society. Manson, the UCLA junior; LaRouche, the former Trotskyite from New Hampshire, and Robert Welch, the Connecticut millionaire whose funds make everything possible. They're all quite mad, of course, but this is a season for madness in politics, it seems.
In Philadelphia, a charismatic minister with a concern for social justice exceeded only by his gigantic, gigantic ego named Jim Jones has won a special election to the city council.
Was just rereading FaT right now. Would like to do a Who's Who section for OTL in same ironic tone for this silly year:
The remains of MUMMAR QADAFFI lie half-rotting in an old refrigerator at a shopping mall in Misrata, occasionally put on display by the rebel forces who toppled his regime in the NATO-led uprising. His son SAIF AL-ISLAM, caught several months later, similarly rots in prison, occasionally beaten by guards and awaiting his inevitable execution after a show trial to be reunited with his father.
Also, remember that we're not seeing OTL as just any dystopian AH, but as FaT. That timeline wasn't just dystopian, but had a lot of wry, darkly humorous touches. Dramatic irony.
If OTL were an ATL made here on the site, I'd think that the author had a bit of a thing for dystopias. I mean, come on. Giving corporations the same rights as people in the United States? And all this BS happening right after 8 years of hell being caused by the very party we voted back into the House two years later?
Much more dramatically than that, the author goes to detailed effort to make united Germany and the Romanov Empire big bad repressive societies, but then goes beyond the impossible to transform a second German successor state into a technologically upgraded Genghis Khan-style kleptocracy and the Russian successor state into an inversion of the idea of the Russian steamroller, both states being more similar than different, the key difference being that the author goes out of his way to show how the Soviet Union turns into a truly legitimate regime from how ghastly horrible their enemies were, repeating the exact same thing from the Russian Civil War.....where to top things off, the Soviets again outnumber all their enemies ludicrously, the campaign sees those enemies looking superficially like they're winning when they're really not, and the author sent literally everything short of an alien invasion to bring down the USSR and the thing failed.
.....
And then it falls apart in less than a year due to a reformer.![]()