"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
Testing... One two one two....
*clears throat*
NOTHING COULD BE FINER THAN TO BE IN CAROLINA IN THE MOOOOOORNING!!!
Also, with the annexation of "East Carolina," the flag has changed!
Hispaniola now has joined our band! HURRAH! HURRAH!
Last edited:
D'OH. Fixed now. Just the same though, it's all god's country under the sun. Carolinae Eternum. In fact, the sun itself is now Other Blessed Sky Carolina (to keep it separate from the moon, Blessed Sky Carolina, of course).
EDIT: Now, this is just a thought, but --and here me out now-- what if everything in the universe is Carolina? "I woke up in Carolina and took a breath of fresh Carolina as the Other Blessed Sky Carolina rose in the morning Carolina."
I don't get all the Carolina jokes. So far it's seemed like more of a patrician-Southern country rather than a backwoods redneck-Southern country in terms of how it's portrayed, too. What's the gag???
I had always pegged Virginia as the genteel Southron state, and Carolina and Georgia the scrappy yeoman states.
Well it has only received minimal coverage thus far. It is going to become... interesting... when the 20s and 30s arrive. And it's not very genteel. The government is run by old-style Southern aristocrats but the people themselves are basically Appalachian hillbillies outside of the coast.
The Carolinas, like all decent, self-respectin, god-fearin Southern states both OTL and ITTL has been run by an oligarchy composed of old families, with just enough new blood to keep the self-made happy, for much of its history. However, the culture is much more defined by the middle and lower classes, who create most of the redneck attitude. Although the middle class hides it behind polo shirts and khakis in my experience (I myself hide a redneck streak behind my middle class khakis, lol). So while the government is patrician, the general population can get quite rednecky.
That's also kinda true, especially throughout history. Let's compare two Virginian presidents (Washington and Jefferson) to the Carolinians (Jackson and Polk). Washington and Jefferson were the sons of patrician dynasties, trained in European culture and norms. By contrast, Jackson and Polk were both backwoods Presbyterian boys who became self-made. This also reflected in governing style. Washington and Jefferson were fairly restrained and laid-back. Jackson deported the Indians while flipping off the Supreme Court, and Polk beat up Mexico and literally campaigned on nationalist belligerence (54 40 or fight).
Bingo. Although those who are middle class do their damnedest to hide it. Plus, you have rednecks on the coast too.
EDIT: I shall conclude my lecture on Carolinaology 101 by saying this: that redneck attitude has its very dark side, which I'm absolutely sure WMIT will explore as its theme of "everyone's worst attributes are magnified x1000." However, TTL does also accentuate the positive from time to time as well, which is something that I hope is done with Carolina. Because the flip-side of redneck provincialism (which at its worst devolves into racism, etc), crudeness and belligerence is a very deep love of kith, kin, and community, a hatred of dishonesty and pretension, and a willingness to fight those we perceive as bullies when others won't. That's something WMIT can commemorate, albeit in a messed up way I'm sure.
Last edited:
I have a feeling CoCaro at this point in time is basically the roaring 20s
POST-WAR AMERICA: HERE COMES THE BOOM
POST-WAR AMERICA: HERE COMES THE BOOM
Photograph of a packed pleasure park in Michigania
North America was in an interesting position as the burgeoning Republican Union cemented control over the continent. In former California (now Pacifica), Nevada (now Magnum), Canada (now broken into the states of Newfoundland, Hudson, Custeria and the frozen northern Territory of Boreal) and Quebec (now Keybeck), the Cleansing Month had purged hundreds of thousands of undesirables in a horrific and astoundingly short period of time. Despite many claiming that they would never surrender, especially those who now found themselves designated "Inferior," the people of those new American states were quick to line up for the vaccine program. After all, if they wanted to continue the fight, they had to be in good health! The Office of Health and Wellness put a special effort into cleansing Quebec, which they still insisted was the birthplace of the Beckie Flu, denying all evidence to the contrary.
Despite the vast, untold fortunes spent on the vaccine program, the war, the SIN Number program, and the occupation, redistricting, and subjugation of a huge new portion of the country, the truth was that the Republican Union was in an economic boom. The war had changed the face of the country forever, in more ways and and on a far deeper level than simply broadening its borders. The war had seen the American people, for the first time since the Great American War, fully mobilize and fight together, and it was the first time since the disastrous 1799 campaign against France that Americans had fought an empire together. Now they, by any other name, were the "empire." The Republican Union was a juggernaut and one of the only countries to consider the Great World War a victory. On an interesting sidenote, the Great World War kept its name in North America. Europe now largely thought of it as "the Second World War," a sequel to the Great Wars for the Empire which now were referred to as "the First World War." But North America, including the Confederation of the Carolinas, still referred to the First World War as the "Napoleonic Wars." Also of interest was, while the term Great World War was used in Carolina, there were also many instances of Carolinians referring to it as the "Great Patriotic War." This essentially masked the war and made it more palatable than admitting it was a total war of expansion and subservience to the Union, which it of course was indeed.
The crash of much of the European stock market in 1914 amidst a wave of revolution and discontent had little effect on the Republican Union and its Cokie ally. In fact, things had never been better. At the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, some three blocks north of Independence Hall, men in suits dashed about at all hours of the day, frantically taking advantage of the new opportunities for business in the newly acquired states. The Economic Clans took it upon themselves to outfit much of the new territory with modern conveniences, took over the old enemy factories, recruited laborers, and policed the neighborhoods of the metropolises of Keybeck City and the newly renamed "Port Joe" (Yerba Buena) and other cities. Greypool Protection Services was one of the private armies that quickly found themselves hired on by an endless variety of American companies setting up infrastructure. It was also the dawn of dozens of new businesses, many set up by the returning veterans now eager to start families and a new life in the New Jerusalem.
Buying and selling on the Philadelphia Exchange (circa 1920s)
One of the most important companies to rise up at this time was the Phoenix Oil Company. Created in 1915 by wealthy Anglo-Keybeckian Wilbur Law after he merged formerly Catholic-owned oil companies into his Law Oil. He chose the name "Phoenix," representing the rebirth of Keybeck's economy under its new "God-given" domination. He was welcomed into the Industrial and Trade Clan but received pushback at every step from Pentagon Oil, owned by the wealthy Texan Rudolf Kuhn, of Custer City, Texas. Kuhn wanted to move into the new territories and expand his control of the American oil market to near-total monopoly. This did not sit well with the other members of the clans, as they were growing tired of paying Kuhn's exorbitant rates for his bountiful oil supply (he hadn't dropped his prices since the war ended, quite simply because he didn't have to). The other companies in all the other clans worked together to undermine Kuhn and Pentagon, as the Distillery Clan needed his oil to deliver their trucks of beer, the Agricultural Clan needed it to power their tractors and new-fangled harvester machines, and so on. Kohler Coal and Oil of Redemption and Eds-Oil of Ohio both were the final say which left the gate open for Phoenix Oil to control the Canadian oil supply. Gas prices shot down seemingly overnight as Pentagon now had some big competition, and the public demand for autocarriages, or "cars," exploded. Kuhn never forgave the other companies for siding against his interests and he would die a disheartened and miserly soul in 1920, leaving the company to his son, Josiah Kuhn.
Vacationers park their automobiles at a Florida beach. With the end of the Beckie Flu, Americans were excited to finally see the extent of their empire, and sight-seeing vacations were all the rage in the 1920s.
Another huge impact on the "baby boom" that would lead America into the 1920s was the easy acquisition of nutritious food. With the acquisition of the bountiful breadbasket of Pacifica, food also dropped in price, with the Agricultural Clan heaping praise upon the "amazing and astute leadership" of President Steele. Whereas before most Americans had to either grow their own food or buy it from nearby farms, "supermarkets" sprang up across the nation, offering a wide variety of nutritious and healthy foods. Ebeneezer Eustace Pink, former Ohio governor and prominent leader of the 1000 company-strong Agricultural Clan, had passed his Union Food and Safety Act in 1912, ordering all Clan members to print expiration dates on canned goods and refrigerated products. This was a world-first, and it dropped food-borne illness statistics dramatically. Baby food, sold in cans, became an instant hit and had no small effect on infant mortality. Also, a process for dairy products invented in Europa called "pasteurization" was implemented in the Union under the name "Pinkization," in honor of the "Modern Prometheus of Food Safety," Ebeneezer Pink. For his efforts at bettering the, well, Betters of Society, the American Fundamentalist Christian Church awarded him the title of Servant of Christ. His son, Ephraim Walter Pink, served in the Great World War under Patton and he would go on to serve in the Steele administration in the 1930s.
Ser. Ebeneezer E. Pink
Ephraim W. Pink
So many other aspects of the economy were touched by the victory against the Bonapartes that it would be impossible to discuss them all in one chapter. But the main winners were the members of the Banking Clan. Samuel Prescott Bush, CEO of the Bank of the Union and unofficial head of the entire Banking Clan, happily took over much of Quebec's banking as part of a deal that let the Bank of Metropolis take over banking for southern Pacifica. Meanwhile, Leon Hardy, a wealthy real estate heir from Oregon, opened up a sprawling chain of banks under the banner of the rather dull name "Hardy Bank of Pacifica and Oregon." Its board would later vote to remove Hardy from his position following a series of fraud investigations, installing Maxwell McCormick as CEO in 1918 and shortly thereafter renaming themselves "Bank of the West." Hardy went back to his real estate business but in 1922 he was arrested during a dramatic RUMP raid on his Barnumsburg mansion for tax evasion, a very serious crime in the Union. He would die in prison in 1927, age 63.
As the good times began to roll, the banks celebrated, giving away electric toasters or clothes irons with new accounts and advertising a "golden age of economic prosperity." Despite the majority of Americans now living in urban areas for the first time ever, the farms were not on the downswing, by any means. As said before, Pacifica was a breadbasket, able to feed a huge portion of the nation on its own, but most of the pre-War farms were owned by Inferiors or enemies of the state. As such, the period between late 1915 to about 1922 marked the "Pacifica Land Rush." President Steele announced that all pre-War farms, plantations, and lumber mills were now property of the government and were to be auctioned or sold off cheaply to help pay for other wartime expenses. Middle-class Betters all over the Union scrambled at this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Magnum was included in this deal as well, formerly a part of the Kingdom of California. While much of Magnum was a war-torn wasteland populated by a few whites and mostly a bunch of Indian tribes, this sold as well. The natives, what few survived the war and the Cleanse, were expelled to reservations. The whites in the area were mostly Union-leaning or outright American anyway, having long encroached on the Kingdom's eastern border. However, this also led to disputes between the influx of American land-grabbers and the already-entrenched American-blooded pioneers in the area. This led to some of the last fighting on the North American frontier as the anger and feuds erupted into open violence.
RUMP officers and State Marshal Eugene Bell fight a three-way battle between land-grabbers and remainers
RUMP officers groom their horses in Magnum, 1916
1916 would see the fabled "Shootout at the Goodyear Corral," when Goodyear Enterprises' Meat and Dairy subsidiary called in RUMP to deal with a dispute between the land-grabbers and the current residents. The leader of the government forces was State Marshal Eugene Bell, an experienced lawman who was shipped in from Texas after the war. Bell and his men tried to defuse the situation, but someone fired a handgun and it ended with thirty men dead or wounded, including Bell himself who received a bullet to the right shoulder. This was enough for the government to crack down harshly on the area, with thousands of RUMP troops moving into the greater Antelope Valley region to quell the unrest. Steele himself said in an interview on Uncle Sam's Talkiebox Station that, "America will not accept lawlessness and brigandry within its borders. I will not accept it. To fight against the Military Police, especially to fire a weapon at them, is an assault on a representative of the Union government and is nothing short of high treason." Within two months, over two hundred men and women would be hanged for treason, most of them eastern-born land-grabbers. The "Magnum War" was unceremoniously ended. Many of the land-grabbers gave up on Magnum and pushed on to Pacifica, earning Magnumites the nickname of "The Remainers" and their state the moniker of the "Fight for Rights State." In 1918, Eugene Bell would win the election for governor, becoming the first Governor of the State of Magnum. The Magnum War also saw the final end of the free-roam cattle industry and the death of the cattle-rustlers of the plains. While several attempts would be made to revive the West's dying legacy of criminal adventure, most notably with the infamous Coyote Springs Cabal that went out in a blaze of glory during an attempted robbery of a Bank of the West in 1923, the legacy of near-anarchic freedom had died.
Members of the Coyote Springs Cabal pose for a photo in 1920
But even through all this success for the Union, there were still severe problems. Radical resistance elements remained in the former Bonapartist satellites. Even worse, what few inferiors that survived the Cleansing Month were now sure that the government had poisoned their loved-ones. Despite a tight silence on any and all discussion of the Cleanse as anything but "an act of God" upon the "disgustingly poor fluids and genes of the bestial, Void-bound Infees," many could see what had really happened. An attempt was made by survivors to form an Illuminist People's Liberation Army, but government plants in the ghettos helped orchestrate a roundup and execution of the plotters. Despite car-bombings and assassination still being a problem, the Inferiors were beaten into submission once more, their now nascent numbers irrelevant in the broader scheme of American Society.
The real problems were actually not at home, but abroad. The Britannic Union still struggled on against the Kingdom of Ireland, and Steele announced early-on into his Presidency that the war with Europa would never officially end unless Ireland was defeated. Half-American General Director Winston Churchill, the dictator of the Britons, tried time and time again to break the stalemate, but the war continued. In 1916, demonstrations erupted against the fascist government in London and quickly were sweeping the Isles. Whereas before the Union had been sending military supplies and advisors to help the Britons, now Steele worried his edge on Europe might vanish if an Illuminist or monarchist revolt swept the Isles. In late 1916, thousands of volunteer fighters calling themselves the "Anglo-American Solidarity Legion" arrived in London to help prop up the government. An uneasy peace broke out in Northern Ireland, as the guns stopped for the first time in years. Both Ireland and the Britannic Union needed a breather, and a general ceasefire was brokered. While this did not end the war officially, it was close enough. At long last, the world was at peace. But the Illuminist revolutions were just beginning to sweep eastern Europe. Interestingly enough, when the Illuminists came precariously close to taking over Germania, it would not be the Yankees that would respond to the call to arms against Otto Werner, but it would be some down-home boys from the Confederation of the Carolinas....
Last edited:
I like how the alternate development of America is leading to era-punk of various stages of American history and pop history. It really reinforces how alien this hellhole is and is kinda more horrifying and, well, creepily alien than Lovecraft.
I've learned that one of my favorite things to read and write about is the history of companies and corporations. We're finally reaching the point where I'm gonna go _nuts_ with company and industrial histories. There's so many opportunities for cool story arcs! The 1920s are gonna see an explosion of retail stores, brands, and companies. I think I came up for an engaging plot for the businesses moving into the newly annexed states, and it makes a lot of sense.
You guys want cultural updates. We're not gonna stop till we know what the average Yankee eats for lunch, what he wipes his butt with an hour later, and who makes _literally everything_. I'm just as excited to cover the corporate stuff as I am Cokie involvement in Germania. lol
EDIT: Oh, and we'll be seeing an appearance from the Murica's EU characters known as the "Jehovah's Witnesses." It'll be related to the original story he came up with, but I have something a little different planned. Wait and see!
You guys want cultural updates. We're not gonna stop till we know what the average Yankee eats for lunch, what he wipes his butt with an hour later, and who makes _literally everything_. I'm just as excited to cover the corporate stuff as I am Cokie involvement in Germania. lol
EDIT: Oh, and we'll be seeing an appearance from the Murica's EU characters known as the "Jehovah's Witnesses." It'll be related to the original story he came up with, but I have something a little different planned. Wait and see!
Last edited:
Brainstorming more cultural ideas when I though of something. I was trying to think of interesting European pop culture figures and I realized I could use my love of Lovecraft and created an analogue to him. I was like, "Why not a German, who makes stories about humanity being infinitesimally small and nascent compared to the empty void of existence?" Perhaps instead of a coddled mommy's boy, this character is wracked with PTSD from the war. He's gotta be legit creepy though, or it won't be pulled off right.
Yup.
I'm picturing skinny boy here using stories about meaningless existence as a way to show the "empty void" of Illuminism. "If we really are nothing more than enlightened monkeys, and there is no God, what good is existence?" Hilariously, because of his birthplace, Catholicism and where those borders currently fall, he would likely be publishing his stuff in either France or one of the former Catholic Bund members.
Yup.
I'm picturing skinny boy here using stories about meaningless existence as a way to show the "empty void" of Illuminism. "If we really are nothing more than enlightened monkeys, and there is no God, what good is existence?" Hilariously, because of his birthplace, Catholicism and where those borders currently fall, he would likely be publishing his stuff in either France or one of the former Catholic Bund members.
Vuu
Banned
If Goebbels has his OTL propaganda skills, then really he already won here, he can write a piece of trash and people will eat it right up
I look forward to a creepy cosmicist Goebbels, but a part of me is kinda sad we won't have Joey "my last name sounds like gerbils" Gobells as propaganda minister for the Republican Union from 1.0.
Have no fear, Commander Uther Pendragon Rockwell is here to stand in for his role as propaganda minister
Flag of the State of Pacifica.
Cool story here, I believe ?Petike? made the Pear Flag of California for 1.0. Here comes the design once more, but this time as only the centerpiece to an interesting Nordic Cross variant I found on some random city flag.
You know it’s going to be satisfying when the American Boom comes crashing down...
Carolinian volunteers fighting for Germania. This is going to have huge implications, later on. Also, Goebbels as a Lovecraft analogue? Hell, yeah!