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There are a lot of built-in challenges for the USR that makes transition to a straight democracy and free society challenging, like hundreds of repressed, disgruntled minorities that would rather be independent nation states if given the chance. Some commentators I've read/seen consider Russian democracy impossible without collapsing the Empire. I'm more sanguine about their chances, but still, not an easy road.
No one's expecting the USR to have a high Democracy Index but it's not hard to see why people would doubt Russia being a true democracy unless there were some wide-sweeping changes to it in a much earlier POD.

Here, I figured a seemingly stronger USR remains a serious implicit threat that drives them to mutual self defense sooner, yet still has enough clout to prevent them from outright joining NATO, but not from founding their own CETO, which gives NATO some ability to "guarantee" peace between CETO and the USR in vague but less overtly threatening terms. In some ways this is less confrontational than OTL, but on the other hand having a "free agent" in the middle able to make separate deals with, say, China, is more instable.
Makes sense, but I doubt it will stop Russians from decrying Western imperialism even though it was done through their own volition. Guess they're just salty that post-Soviet countries like Poland or Estonia won't be part of their sphere of influence anymore.
 
The Lotus Blooms
The Lotus Blooms (2004-Present) (Cont’d)
From Painting with Light: A History of Chinese Cinema


Generations 7 and 8 of Chinese filmmakers would come of age under a New China quite different from that experienced by the generations before. The Lotus Plan of the last two decades had flowered, bringing a surge of industrialization, growth, and financial opportunity that would elevate nearly a billion people from abject poverty. Boom Cities were popping up everywhere. New factories, buoyed by the combination of a skilled and educated workforce and low production costs, sprouted everywhere. And thus, Generations 7 and 8 would, unlike their predecessors, lack a unified “vision” for Chinese cinema. Instead, the “Thousand Schools” era of Chinese cinema had begun, and arguably continues to this day.

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A Sampling of Chinese Film from the era (Image source China Daily)

Competing film schools and competing film theories began to sprout with numerous pots of money available from private nouveau riche and corporatized studios and outside investments, such that each “school” of Chinese film philosophy had an outlet and no meta-narrative predominated. Some pushed the limits of censorship through taboo subjects or satire. Some celebrated the “Lotus Dawn” era. Some approached things from a financial perspective, creating mass market films for a growing domestic audience, an audience so large that even Hollywood was increasingly modifying its films to account for Chinese tastes and import rules, hoping for a share of the multi-billion-dollar Chinese film market, and Chinese actors and directors began to make more frequent appearances in US films.

Furthermore, the repressive years of Li Peng’s increasingly heavy-handed censorship had created a major vacuum at the “top” as talented Gen 5 and 6 filmmakers fled to the US and Taiwan, the latter of which had absorbed a large part of the once thriving Hong Kong film industry, with the “Little Hong Kong” district in the Dali district of Taichung City becoming a growing film, TV, and animation center, soon inevitably nicknamed “Daliwood.” With many of the older filmmakers having fled to Hollywood or Daliwood, Gens 7 and 8 had a wide-open frontier, with many up-and-coming young directors such as Roy Chow producing the Wuxia, Police Procedural, sports, mystery, war, Grand Adventure, and Romance films. There were also a growing number of comedies, some of which proved subversive in ways both societal and political, with The Sun Never Shines in Hong Kong, a comedy/drama film about the struggling Hong Kong film industry by up-and-coming Hong Kong director Alan Mak, causing a stir among the censors.

The 2000s and 2010s proved a period of increasing experimentation, both in finding what genres and tropes worked at home and abroad, and exploring where one could push the limits and one could not, which became a growing challenge as Chinese culture and society and the economy changed drastically and the populous increasingly had little social outlet for their anxieties and dreams. Similarly, the after effects of the One Child policy had led to a growing demographic shift in terms of an ever-growing elderly population with a shrinking younger population that had increasingly less in common with their elders, even as they were expected to care for them at the expense of their own needs and wants. Director Zhang Yimou even renounced his Chinese citizenship and claimed Taiwanese citizenship when the CCP fined him 7.5 million Yuan for violating the one child policy[1]. This was made all the worse by a massive gender imbalance wrought by a tendency to abort female fetuses in favor of males due to lingering cultural biases that males provided while females only consumed. Director Kearen Pang, who’d briefly returned to Hong Kong from Daliwood upon promises of artistic freedom, soon fled back to Daliwood when her controversial Tuesday’s Boy, a romantic comedy about a young Shanghai career woman who juggled several boyfriends including Yang, the titular “Tuesday’s boy”, since young men so outnumbered young women in the workforce, was banned (prints smuggled to Daliwood would become a spectacular success upon release there).

MV5BODE2ZTAyMzUtYzE5Ny00NmE5LWI3NDktNWY5OTNlOTI3YmZhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjg0MTI5NzQ@._V1_.jpg

Kearn Pang, whose Tuesday’s Boy caused outrage with the CCP (Image source IMDB)

Several factors drove this fast-evolving industry. The Lotus Dawn era has been marked by the meteoric rise of China economically, diplomatically, and to a measured degree militarily. 2004 marked the end of Qiao Shi’s Paramountcy and the rise of his nominal ally turned protégé Hu Qili, a firm believer in economic liberalization who had expressed sympathies towards democratic institutions in his early career. As such, Western nations celebrated his rise, foreseeing a new era of Chinese democracy, capitalism, and rule of law. They’d receive one of the three.

For while Hu was enthusiastic to continue forward with the Lotus Plan and even accelerate it, he hadn’t made his way to power without making a few deals, and was soon as entrapped by the Black Lotus of entrenched corruption as his predecessor, having indeed helped plant and cultivate it in an effort to marginalize his enemies, in particular Li Peng. As such, any true “rule of law” initiatives he launched were toothless and largely symbolic, functioning if anything as excuses to purge rivals. Similarly, Democracy remained highly constrained, with only “vetted” Party Men on any given ballot, and with elections generally becoming measures of a candidate’s personal charisma rather than their actual platform, which rarely significantly deviated from any rivals. As such, voter turnout in some districts became so low that mandatory voting was implemented just to give the appearance of a popular mandate.

Instead, Hu placed economic growth as the highest priority, managing to use the Black Lotus to eliminate anyone who stood in the way of his reforms. Real Estate and banking reforms were initiated and longstanding limits on internal movement loosened in order to encourage the movement of people from the countryside to the cities to man the factories and fuel China’s economic growth. The Chinese economy has since roared to unprecedented levels, outpacing the United States in Purchasing Power Parity by the mid-2010s.

But internal political and global strategic realities remained. Residual Maoist hardliners remained a challenge for Hu, continuing to have influence in the People’s Liberation Army. Shi had placated and distracted this faction through a clever if risky strategy: focusing their ire on irredentist claims to former Chinese lands lost to foreign powers during the “Great Humiliation” of the 19th Century. Hong Kong and Macao had been reintegrated under Shi, but four areas of “Lingering Resentment” remained. The first was obviously Taiwan, though the continued strength of the US military, despite the quagmire in the Congo, remained a major obstacle and the US’s continued official support of the “One China” policy made the eventual peaceful repatriation of the breakaway island following the “Hong Kong model” seem achievable within a couple of generations. “Outer” Mongolia remained independent, but the Shi and Hu governments remained quiet on that front, not wanting to drive Ulaanbaatar towards Washington or Moscow, in particular the latter, which retained a large army. Border disputes with India remained a sore spot, but hardly seemed worth a fight that could drive New Delhi closer to Washington or Moscow.

But conflict with Moscow seemed the most likely possibility, with the region of “Outer Manchuria” as the Chinese called the northern and eastern sides of the Amur River valley being the largest, most culturally important, and most strategically valuable irredentist claim, and Moscow’s continued possession of it continued to “spit in the eye” of Beijing. The very existence of Vladivostok remained a reminder of the past Russian humiliation and a strategic “dagger” aimed at Beijing. The Maoist hardliners, finding themselves cut off from the instruments of domestic power, instead agitated for these various irredentist claims, and Shi and later Hu quietly steered them towards Manchuria in an effort not to sabotage the Lotus Plan, which relied on Western economic investment far more than it did on USR investment beyond some minor fossil fuel sales, with the majority of such fossil fuels coming via the Straits of Malacca and thus highly vulnerable to the US and Indian Navies.

As such, the most likely future conflict was determined to be with Moscow, their closest and most bitter historical enemies whose strategic incompatibilities had undermined even a Cold War alliance built of shared Marxist values[2]. Thus, fears of a Moscow-Brussels-Washington partnership reverberated through the halls of Beijing. The western-leaning Boris Nemtsov seemed a likely candidate for such a reproachment, and recently discovered documents have created suspicions that Beijing was deliberately fomenting the rise of CEFTA and CETO as a wedge between the Western Powers and the USR.

This strategy achieved mixed results, as witnessed by the growing closeness between Moscow and New Delhi and the “little Entente” with France, even as the latter remains a central player in the EU and NATO (a sign of the complexities of the modern world). A war-scare with the USR in 2009 demonstrated the dangers of this strategy.

Li Keqiang would replace Hu Qili in 2012, another liberalizing Lotus Plan enthusiast, and would largely continue these policies to today[3].

And yet one area that continues to put a strain on the otherwise booming Chinese economy in general and film industry in particular is the very nature of the Black Lotus. In addition to the central government taking notable stakes in most major corporations, reports indicate that banking institutions, corporate boards, trade unions, film studios, and even activist groups and charities have been slowly infiltrated by the roots of the Black Lotus with CCP agents working their way through the ranks into positions of leadership. And in the case of filmmakers, films that wish to explore the growing infiltration and appropriation of the many institutions of the nation tend to lose funding or get banned outright. The result is an illusion of growing freedom held back by a reality of subversion from within[4].

“This illusion of choice and freedom is a truly nefarious approach,” said Taiwanese analyst Shan Juyan. “You have these economic and political clubs that are, in the end, largely steered and undermined by the Chinese Communist Party. You have labor unions that in truth serve the state first, which often means serving the state-run corporation at the expense of the workers, ironically in a de jura Socialist state. Even the occasional strikes are symbolic, or driven by geopolitical concerns. The members of these groups believe that they are empowered and liberated, but in reality, they wear handcuffs of gold and silver.

“The poor bastards think that they’re free.”

As such, we enter into a “Post Lotus” world where China flexes its political and diplomatic muscle and Chinese filmmaking expands and diversifies, even as it remains held back by chains of gold.



[1] Occurred in our timeline as well. Here he has a place to maintain his career while remaining in a Chinese nation.

[2] Today’s Sino-Russian “Limitless Friendship” is, most analysts that I have seen insist, a temporary marriage of convenience driven more by a convergence of Xi Jinping’s push for global power and influence at the expense of Western powers and Putin’s aggressive attempts to remake the world order through force, pushing both together against a shared enemy in the West, rather than born out of any real shared long term strategic interests. Some commentators suspect that Xi’s real aim in the partnership is to turn the struggling, increasingly isolated Russia into a virtual client state, satellite, and economic dependent, setting up the eventual “repatriation” of Outer Mongolia through other-than-military means, but this is speculation. In this timeline, Shi and Hu are pursuing the opposite strategy, a “Russia first” rather than “West first” approach, seeing the internally struggling but well-armed USR as potentially the more immediately dangerous yet physically weaker enemy compared to a seemingly stronger US and NATO that did not demonstrate its limits through the Global War on Terror. There are risks and rewards possible with either strategy.

[3] This book is from the late 2010s. In this timeline Li Keqiang will be in turn replaced by Li Qiang, who in our timeline hitched his wagon to Xi Jinping and has just replaced the marginalized Li Keqiang as Premier.

[4] The Chinese government reportedly used this tactic in Hong Kong, slowly undermining democratic and free market institutions from within, until their self-appointed leadership could just end the One Nation Two Systems policy and the people of Hong Kong were left powerless to do anything about it.
 
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Fascinating stuff with China's continued cultural liberalization and a radically different foreign policy. Despite that, China's goals seem to always be the same with the undermining of their neighbors and asserting their political/economic dominance, albeit in a far more insidious way with the Black Lotus compared to OTL.

Some approached things from a financial perspective, creating mass market films for a growing domestic audience, an audience so large that even Hollywood was increasingly modifying its films to account for Chinese tastes and import rules, hoping for a share of the multi-billion-dollar Chinese film market, and Chinese actors and directors began to make more frequent appearances in US films.
Guess this was an inevitability.
 
You go, Yugo!
Remembering Yugoslavia’s Journey Since the 90s Until The EU
BBC History Magazine, October 26th, 2013

Guest Post by @Damian0358[1]


With Yugoslavia scheduled to end its membership in the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) and join the European Union at the start of 2014, it is worth remembering everything the country has gone through since the end of communism and the rise of democracy in the region.

The 90s would be a tumultuous period for the country, as it tried to confront the underlying issues existing within its borders. The 1993 Constitution would officially make Yugoslavia a confederate state, after many years of bouncing back and forth between whether to remain federal or not, which many analysts today consider to be the main reason why the country remained together. The liberalization found early in the decade though would find itself squashed with the mid-90s elections however, as a multi-state political coalition between the leading rightist parties of the country would take power across the majority of the state, key being in Croatia and Serbia[2].

With Montenegro and Macedonia, four out of the six republics shared the same interests, and with their influence shaped the direction of Yugoslavia’s continued decentralization and economic liberalization. The leaders of the countries would enact various policies that critics would consider sub-optimal, from the restructuring of communist-era institutions to avoid “falling back on old habits,” as then-Croatian President Franjo Tuđman would put it, to questionable privatization practices, moves enabling the “reassessment” of charges made by the old communist regime, allowing figures such as war criminal Momčilo Đujić to return, and unbeknownst to the public, engage in work with the mafia[3].

This period would finally come to a dramatic end in the year 2000, when early into the Serbian premiership of Vojislav Šešelj, journalistic reports would flood revealing the confederate coalition’s ties to the mafia and the overwhelming corruption across state institutions since 1994, which would seal the fate of the coalition and lead to Šešelj and his compatriots being ousted from the government, replaced with a democratic coalition[4]. This transition would similarly see Yugoslavia embrace the idea of Euro-Atlantic Integration, encapsulated by Yugoslavia’s formal departure from the Non-Aligned Movement in 2002 at the 13th Summit (though remaining an observer), and a formal application to join the European Union being submitted that same year, along with becoming member of the Central European Free Trade Agreement.

The journey to join the European Union would be fraught with trouble, however, induced by two factors. Though work was being made to recover from the poor economic decisions taken during the 90s, recessions would show a fundamental flaw in the Yugoslav system in a lack of true economic cooperation, with its members being more interested in investing in themselves, which while perfectly viable for Slovenia and Croatia, for the remaining republics foreign investment was required. The economic disparity between the republics did not help either. Another would be the rise of Euroscepticism in the economically-weaker republics such as Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Macedonia. Serbia’s Democratic Party, previously hand-in-hand with the idea of joining the EU, would shift to supporting at best joining the European Free Trade Association, and building off previous deals made with the EU to satisfy Slovenia and Croatia’s wishes instead[5].

Internal divisiveness over the prospect of joining a transnational military alliance, in particular on the end of the Serbs who believed it to “unnecessarily heighten tensions in Europe,” torpedoed any real attempts at joining the CETO military alliance, making Yugoslavia, along with Sweden and Finland, an EU member that’s not a part of either NATO or CETO – one oddly approved by both the US and the USR. Alongside being member of the EU, the Confederate Republic of Yugoslavia retains its own internal diplomatic and military alliance.

The rise of new big tent parties within these states, notably the Serbian Progressive Party led by Slobodan Milošević, would be the ones to challenge the Euroscepticism of the leading parties and come to power in the 2010s. Even with those attitudes present, Yugoslavia had developed far enough that, by the time Premier Milošević voiced his support for joining the EU in 2012, the European Commission was more than happy to recommend a treaty of accession be signed as soon as possible[6]. The current president of Yugoslavia, Slovenian President Borut Pahor, as well as the other Presidents of each Republic, were present at the signing of the treaty earlier this year[7].

Though much excitement has been raised on Yugoslavia joining, there have been those skeptical, as the country is often compared to the United States in light of its issues with interracial and religious discrimination, as well as underlying far-right politics being ignored, despite efforts made politically to alleviate these issues, along with some of Yugoslavia’s continued economic deficiencies, evident by growing homelessness among the population. But its integration would provide a beacon of hope in its eternal opponent in Albania also joining the EU in the future, as well as provide another avenue for interaction with the Global South[8].



[1] This post is salvaged from a previously planned double-feature I was writing for Geekhis on Yugoslavia, which would've been released during the 90s era. The first post would've covered the early 90s as well as developments in Yugoslav animation, while the second post would've finished the 90s and gone slightly into the early 2000s, as well as talk about other elements from Yugoslav pop culture. Perhaps someday the original double-feature will be completed for the guest thread, but the key elements from both posts will be mentioned here, and more.

[2] Western coverage of Yugoslavia’s transition from communism to democracy will largely glance over the rightist shift at this time, as now they were with us™, so there was no need to worry about them. What happens later would shift that mentality, but you’ll still have scholars saying that it was only the constitutional change which allowed the country to remain together.

[3] Many western scholars will forget to mention, or at least delay mentioning, the role local mafias would play in aiding and abetting the existence of the rightist political coalition, seeing it as a means of infiltrating the now-confederate government and individual republican governments. Additionally, the nationalism of especially the Croatian Democratic Union and the Serbian Radical Union ends up getting swept under the rug, since they can’t explain it under western dichotomies (ex. ‘96-’97 would see the Serbian Radical Union support a resolution that would increase the rights of Albanians within the Republic of Serbia, among other motions made towards them, in a bid to maintain Kosovo as a satisfied autonomous province of the republic and avoid a Troubles scenario; motions which nearly destroyed the party if not for the Albanian Civil War occurring and allowing the party to quickly adjust saying how good they are to Albanians when Albania itself can’t do the same - yet continuing anti-Albanian rhetoric as they did so).

[4] Šešelj is specifically highlighted as the Serbian Radical Union would be an unstable gathering of non-allies who only shared rightist mentalities, featuring the likes of Šešelj’s own far-right nationalists, the monarchists who sided with Vuk Drašković (who served as Premier before Šešelj), the rightist nationalists of Mirko Jović, rightist-leaning defectors of the Socialist Party of Serbia, and rightist emigrants who had come to aid in the effort and represent the diaspora, such as Momčilo Đujić, who only reluctantly came, among many others, making a sort of right-wing big tent party. The Serbian mafia, or rather sections of it led by Željko 'Arkan' Ražnatović, would pry and prod at the party to weaken it and make their position in it stronger, and after Drašković and Jović fell out with Šešelj a second time after Đujić’s passing, by the time Šešelj came to power in 1999, he had a slim majority and was in deep with the mafia, whom had convinced him they would see his dreams through. With a lack of state media control as intense as our timeline, nor the same degree of distancing between state and mafia, journalists investigating the issue would not face problems as severe in this timeline, though there would likely still be assassinations. The fall of the Croatian Democratic Union would be akin to our timeline, though sharper due to added mafia involvement.

[5] The issue of cooperation across the republics was one that Yugoslavia struggled with for decades, which necessitated the federal communist government to just funnel resources from the economically stronger republics to build up the weaker ones, which was part of the reason why decentralization and confederalization were pitched in the first placed, and one would suspect the European Union would want a somewhat uniformly decent economy. Regardless, the EU would also very likely be very invested in integrating Yugoslavia, and the Democratic Party of Serbia had traditionally been pro-European integration our timeline, which would be a major factor in many YU-EU deals signed in the early 2000s in this timeline. However, without the legacy of the communist system rearing its ugly head as much in this timeline due to the shitshow of the 90s, apathy would likely set in as it takes ages to join the EU due to same reasons why it has taken our timeline states such as Montenegro and North Macedonia ages to join. Some of the Euroskeptic rhetoric you'll see in this period will resemble our timeline Spanish leftist rhetoric on the issue. Some of the political rhetoric of the 90s would resurface as Croat argues against Serb argues against Bosniak argues against Slovene argues against Macedonian argues against Albanian, beginning to resemble some of our timeline’s politics of Bosnia.

[6] The big shock moment, just as it was for the original double-feature! With a definite show that decisions taken under communism would not be carried over, Slobo, his wife and his son returned to Serbia in the early 2000s. He and his wife quickly set off to create a new party, the Serbian Workers’ Party, a leftist nationalist Eurosceptic party which would syphon members from and quarrel with the remnants of the Serbian Radical Union, still led by Šešelj, who remained politically active, but irrelevant. In the lead-up to the 2012 election, Milošević, who had gotten more experienced during his time in the Sovereign Union and being a lesser political figure for the past decade, would take the initiative to shift away from his wife’s leftist policies and coalesce with several other parties to create a new big tent party in the form of the Serbian Progressive Party, a party name that had existed back in the 19th century (and also parallels the real-life active party). Slobo will, in some sense, parallel the rise of Aleksandar Vučić, and in western coverage will be framed as an affable, if eclectic and opportunistic, leader fully intended to integrate with the West, with only those looking into him deeper finding out his old associations. Some of his state politics will be informed by how he had been forced to leave the country decades prior, framing his opposition (whom include the Socialists) in a negative light.

[7] Assuming no interruptions in the yearly rotating presidential office, Slovenia would very likely hold the position in 2013.

[8] The Albanian Civil War in this timeline, slightly delayed due to nearby Yugoslavia not tearing itself apart, would see some of the resources injected into Kosovo by diaspora groups instead by redirected to Albania, ultimately leading in this timeline to a northern faction appearing which would ultimately force the post-civil war government to engage in more aggressive politics against Yugoslavia, resembling in many ways our timeline Kosovar politics. Yugoslav Albanian politics would turn out slightly more moderated, advocating for a ‘two-state’ solution with deals to make it easier to travel between the two countries, as well as fighting for upheld civil rights.
 
Seeing this post finally show up is a bit bittersweet, given the previously planned double-feature mentioned. If nothing else, I'm glad we managed to get one more post featuring Yugoslavia out in the core threads before the end.
 
WestCOT and all that
Chapter 23: The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow
Excerpt from The King is Dead: The Walt Disney Company After Walt Disney, an Unauthorized History by Sue Donym and Arman N. Said


2005 would see the groundbreaking for the long-awaited WestCOT, which had been on hold while the Animal Kingdom was pursued[1]. In addition to the cost avoidance of pursuing the less expensive Animal Kingdom, the extra years of development allowed the Disney Company to work out the many zoning, political, and legal hurdles necessary to appease regulators, local government, and NIMBY opposition to the plan, in particular the assumed light pollution. The 300 foot “Spacestation Earth” was scaled down to a sphere embedded within a giant “obelisk of light”, all ultimately inspired by the trylon and perisphere combo on the 1936 World’s Fair in Chicago, was ditched. Finally, berms, walls, trees, and other obstacles were installed both to keep the light of WestCOT in and also to provide that immersive experience for the gusts, blocking views of surrounding buildings and power lines and designed with forced perspective to make the small space appear larger and more open than it truly was[2].

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Original Plans (Image source “allears.net”)

Guests would take a PeopleMover from the parking garages or an expansion of the monorail, to Spacestation Earth at the center. It would be surrounded not with a Communicore complex, but with a fountain-filled lake that would play dancing waters and light shows. It would house the Cosmic Journeys dark ride. Spokes out from Spacestation Earth would lead to the “Seven Wonders of WestCOT: three Futureworld pavilions and four World Showcase pavilions. Future World in turn would feature The Wonders of Living, The Wonders of Earth, and The Wonders of Space pavilions, which would house upgraded clones of the of EPCOT Center attractions, including Horizons, World of Motion, Journey Into Imagination, Universe of Energy, The Living Seas, The Living Body, The Land, and the Great Movie Ride.

The World Showcase featured pavilions based not on individual countries, but on regions. First was an Americas Pavilion featuring the sights, smells, and tastes of North and South America and the Caribbean, to include a special First Nations Spirit Lodge. Next was a Europe Pavilion, an Africa Pavilion, and an Asia Pavilion. In addition to native dancers and musicians, restaurants, shops, and 360° Circle-Vision footage of the regions and their countries, there were rides such as the Asia Pavilion’s Ride the Dragon coaster, the Americas Pavilion’s Rio de la Tiempo recreation, a white-water river raft ride down the fictional Congobezi River in the Africa Pavilion, and a World Cruise boat tour around the “World’s Ocean” lake. Over the years, dance clubs and new attractions were added, such as the super-popular Soaring Over the Earth ride[3] in 2006. Finally, one side was framed by the Grand Californian Hotel and Resort, completed in 2003, which had its own dedicated entrance to WestCOT.

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The Grand Californian Hotel

Disney would, however, had to put on hold plans for several additional hotels and plans for a “Downtown Disney” type attraction, which were abandoned as redundant to similar facilities at DisneySea. Eventually, a recreation of the popular Jurassic Park attraction would take up the space along with another two hotels. Other funds went into developing Roger Rabbit’s Toontown in the main Disneyland park and expanding Muppetland. Plans for a Disney Improvement District extra-governmental enclave similar to the Reedy Creek Improvement District that housed Walt Disney World were abandoned due to local government opposition to the loss of sovereignty.

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New WestCOT designs (Image source Theme Park Tourist)

The slightly reduced WestCOT ultimately cost $2.7 billion, a cost somewhat mitigated by corporate and international sponsorships, including $800 million from Pearson PLC continuing their park relationship with Disney. As a child-friendly adult park, it offered something different from Disneyland and DisneySea, but still familiar to Disney fans, who loved to debate whether WestCOT was a downgrade to or a refinement of the original EPCOT. WestCOT finally opened in 2009 where it became a popular part of the Disneyland complex and a third gate at Anaheim if you counted DisneySea, which most Disney fans did. Multi-day passes and hotel packages at any of the many new hotels between Disneyland, DisneySea, and WestCOT helped encourage visits to all three gates. Finally, Disney Cruises aboard the Disney Wonder operating out of Port Disney brought in influxes of passengers from all across the Pacific coast.

The 2010s likewise saw expansions in Walt Disney World, including new Gates, such as a US version of Valencia’s popular Imaginarium and the fully-immersive Harry Fletcher’s Wizarding World, created in partnership with Pearson PLC, who would also add a Legoland attraction around the same time. All three proved very popular in the long run, and kept Disney Parks, Walt Disney World in particular, as the Gold Standard in Themed Entertainment.





[1] As a lover of EPCOT Henson is certain to continue supporting the WestCOT plan.

[2] To save money, Disney’s California Adventure originally did not put up such barriers, but left the park open to the outside world, which was determined to be part of why it “didn’t feel like Disney” to guests. They eventually added them in during the massive retooling in the 2000s, making the upgraded California Adventure “truer” to Disney, and finally making it a popular part of Disney today, particularly once Cars Land and other Pixar attractions were added.

[3] Essentially Soarin’.
 
You mentioned that WDW has the Imaginarium, plus Legoland and the Wizarding World.

How many gates does that add up to now, and why do I get the feeling they bought more land to make room?
 
WestCOT is probably very similar to OTL in terms of design and attractions so no doubt people will like it as the "third gate" of Disneyland. A shame about Downtown Disney but I think Port Disney a worthy replacement and provides Anaheim locals with a lot more space with all of the parking spots and buildings being freed up.

You mentioned that WDW has the Imaginarium, plus Legoland and the Wizarding World.

How many gates does that add up to now, and why do I get the feeling they bought more land to make room?
WDW would have this by present day:
  • Magic Kingdom
  • EPCOT
  • Hollywoodland / MGM Studios
  • Animal Kingdom
  • Imaginarium
  • Wizarding World
  • Legoland
  • DisneySpace
8 gates.

Technically, they could realistically fit everything into the Reedy Creek Improvement District and no one would bat an eye (though DisneySpace is at Port Canaveral so 7 gates max). It's that massive.

It would be nearly impossible to experience all of Hensonverse WDW in a week, though. People struggle to plan or even pay with the current offerings, so imagine if Disney offered double everything in WDW.
 
WestCOT is probably very similar to OTL in terms of design and attractions so no doubt people will like it as the "third gate" of Disneyland. A shame about Downtown Disney but I think Port Disney a worthy replacement and provides Anaheim locals with a lot more space with all of the parking spots and buildings being freed up.


WDW would have this by present day:
  • Magic Kingdom
  • EPCOT
  • Hollywoodland / MGM Studios
  • Animal Kingdom
  • Imaginarium
  • Wizarding World
  • Legoland
  • DisneySpace
8 gates.

Technically, they could realistically fit everything into the Reedy Creek Improvement District and no one would bat an eye (though DisneySpace is at Port Canaveral so 7 gates max). It's that massive.

It would be nearly impossible to experience all of Hensonverse WDW in a week, though. People struggle to plan or even pay with the current offerings, so imagine if Disney offered double everything in WDW.
That is incredibly insightful. Thanks!
 
Fascinating stuff with China's continued cultural liberalization and a radically different foreign policy. Despite that, China's goals seem to always be the same with the undermining of their neighbors and asserting their political/economic dominance, albeit in a far more insidious way with the Black Lotus compared to OTL.
Yes, without NATO bogged down in the Middle East and a much less internally stable USR they decided that Russia was the lower hanging fruit and that agitating on Taiwan was self-defeating to the Lotus Plan. As far as the West is concerned it's a slower, more insidious advance, but for the Russians it's far more aggressively revanchist, roughly the opposite to OTL.

Guess this was an inevitability.
Yes, Suddenly having hundreds of millions of paying customers is impossible for any company to ignore. I imagine that more movies will start marketing to South Asians now that India is passing China population-wise and catching up economically.

Seeing this post finally show up is a bit bittersweet, given the previously planned double-feature mentioned. If nothing else, I'm glad we managed to get one more post featuring Yugoslavia out in the core threads before the end.
And i appreciate as always the help on what can be a complex and emotional topic. The Guest Thread is always open for more!

Technically, they could realistically fit everything into the Reedy Creek Improvement District and no one would bat an eye (though DisneySpace is at Port Canaveral so 7 gates max). It's that massive.
The RCID is 43 Square Miles. It's larger than some US counties. It's over 2/3 the size of the nation of Lichtenstein. I think that it will all safely fit.

And technically many of these are smaller "half day" parks or expansions of Hollywoodland.
 
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Yes, without NATO bogged down in the Middle East and a much less internally stable USR they decided that Russia was the lower hanging fruit and that agitating on Taiwan was self-defeating to the Lotus Plan. As far as the West is concerned it's a slower, more insidious advance, but for the Russians it's far more aggressively revanchist, roughly the opposite to OTL.
Funny how that works.

The RCID is 43 Square Miles. It's larger than some US counties. It's over 2/3 the size of the nation of Lichtenstein. I think that it will all safely fit.

And technically many of these are smaller "half day" parks or expansions of Hollywoodland.
That's what I'm thinking as well. Wizarding World, DisneySpace, and Legoland could theoretically be smaller parks (especially the latter two) and people wouldn't really complain since WDW is so expansive ITTL.

Wizarding World might be a full-on park though instead of a land, as all three parties involved (JK Rowling, Pearson, and Disney) would be very interested in expanding the whole idea to its maximum potential because of how profitable the IP is. I can totally see a plotline where Disney is proposing Wizarding World as a land in Hollywoodland only for Imagineers, Pearson execs, and JK Rowling herself to constantly upscale until it just became a park in of itself, only to succeed because Disney will maintain the high quality and authenticity to the IP that she desired on top of the extra features.

Feels weird for this to be it’s own thing, not going to lie.
I don't think it's that weird. The Harry Potter (or Harry Fletcher ITTL) universe is quite expansive and even unique for an IP and Disney can be very creative, especially for the Hensonverse.
 
That's what I'm thinking as well. Wizarding World, DisneySpace, and Legoland could theoretically be smaller parks (especially the latter two) and people wouldn't really complain since WDW is so expansive ITTL.

Wizarding World might be a full-on park though instead of a land, as all three parties involved (JK Rowling, Pearson, and Disney) would be very interested in expanding the whole idea to its maximum potential because of how profitable the IP is. I can totally see a plotline where Disney is proposing Wizarding World as a land in Hollywoodland only for Imagineers, Pearson execs, and JK Rowling herself to constantly upscale until it just became a park in of itself, only to succeed because Disney will maintain the high quality and authenticity to the IP that she desired on top of the extra features.

I don't think it's that weird. The Harry Potter (or Harry Fletcher ITTL) universe is quite expansive and even unique for an IP and Disney can be very creative, especially for the Hensonverse.
I just don’t think you can make a entire park, and certainly not a full day park, out of one single IP, no matter how popular it is. Even in OTL’s Universal Studios parks, not everyone goes to said parks for Harry Potter.

I really think you’d need to diversify it a bit more, since a park like that could quickly start bleeding cash for Disney if the IP starts loosing its relevance or not enough people want to go to it just to see that one IP. Whether it’s making it part of one park or putting it in a park with other IP’s (like for example Star Wars), I think you need to diversify. Maybe you can connect it with Legoland, but it otherwise should not be any bigger than a Disneytown and even then I’d argue you’d need to try to still diversify it.
 
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Are you Man Enough for this Post?
Hear me Roar! A Men’s Rights MAN-ifesto, by BigDirk069
Excerpt from Pg 1 of 72, posted February 14th, 2004 to Manliness.org/messageboards/inn/cell/discussion


I am MAN, hear me ROAR!!!

For too long the Unfair Sex has abused its inherent power. For too long they’ve been allowed to use their sex as a weapon against us! For too long the ball-busting bitches of Hollywood and Washington have tried to castrate and emasculate us.

NO MORE!!!!

From neutering James Bond to pushing Princesses on boys, this OVERT ATTACK ON MASCULINITY SHALL NOT BE ACCEPTED!!!!!

Men of America and the World, stand up with me against this overt attack!! Reject the poisonous lies of “political correctness”. Heed the call of the Manly Times and other responsible, Y-run news sources! Reject the chains of the Matriarchy! Toss aside the Kneutering Knife! Stand when you piss and leave the seat up without regret!!!

In other words, GROW A SET!!!



- - -​

New Millennium, Old Values: The Conservative Pushback of the 2000s
Article in J Street Review by Harlan H. Hughes, October 2012 Edition


In a healthy democracy power tends to swing between two or even more poles as majorities and minorities and independents wrangle with the issues and their visions for the nation. Cultures also tend to swing with the times as progressive pushes receive a conservative counter-push and then back again. Sometimes these swings can be huge as one side takes things too far for the middle, and other times a motivated minority can have a disproportionate impact due to tenacity and energy, particularly when tactics like gerrymandering are in place.

All of these factors were at play in the 2000s, a decade where pushback against the progressive gains, both real and imagined, spurred an equal and opposite reaction from “marginalized” conservatives. And as America prepares to decide between continuing the Republican reign in the White House by electing Vice President Jeb Bush or swinging back to the left by electing Kansas Representative Kathleen Sebelius, it’s worth remembering the swing in social politics that helped elevate President Heinz to the White House in 2004 and kept him there in 2008.

Now, it’s worth noting that politically, the 1990s were fairly moderate in the US, with both progressives and conservatives gaining small wins. The largest “progressive” bills, such as the Green Growth Act and Health Care Act, made heavy use of private companies and followed blueprints developed by Republicans in many cases. Similarly, the Crime Bill and Social Security Act were notably more conservative in their approach, and many progressive social issues like LGBTQ rights were largely sidelined or watered down. Political populism in the form of Ross Perot’s Reform Party ultimately led to the rise of “Stripeback” politicians as a middle-ground option for moderates of both major political parties, helping stem a “race to the edges” by both as litmus test politics gained ground. As such, one might imagine that cooler heads would have prevailed, that this would have been a period of relative moderation in political thought and a “coming together” moment for Americans.

Instead, the opposite happened. The 1990s saw a wave of political violence from the far right, in particular the DC Bombing and the decade saw a rise in hate crimes. Nativist candidates like Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich predominated. The fledgling internet became a haven for radical and reactionary politics that only skyrocketed as social media spread, accelerating further with the advent of the Intelephone or “Inpho”, a nickname that led naturally to the dismissive term “Miss Inpho” for the person, most stereotypically a suburban housewife, spreading political or medical misinformation on social media.

So, if the politics of the Gore and Gephardt administrations were so relatively moderate, why was there such a big conservative backlash? Well, talk radio and other conservative news outlets such as the Patriot News Network exaggerating the issues was certainly a major factor (there appears no end to what can be considered “Socialism” or “treason” if a Democrat does it), but it is my personal belief that pop culture is largely to blame, specifically the rise in progressive social politics and inclusion on the big and small screen, which gave the impression that things were swinging farther left socially than they really were.

images

(Image source Risk Management Magazine)

One of the largest hallmarks of the 2000s was the “Men’s Rights” movement, a rise in sexist and misogynistic rhetoric and politics that started in comedy clubs and burned across the internet. This was overtly in response to the pop culture of the 1990s. The 1990s had seen the rise of Third Wave Feminism and the Girl (or Grrl) Power movement. While some of this manifested in ways that can be seen as subtly sexist or reductive today (such as the “Action Girl” trope), at the time people like Buffy Summers of the Final Girl film and series, the Whoopass Girls, or the more action-oriented Disney Princesses, culminating in Damsel’s Rebekah, were considered revolutionary, spawning whole new areas of feminist research and discussion. The “Season of the Witch” and rise of the witch archetype as a stand-in for female empowerment built off of this. Both tropes represented tough women who could overpower the manliest of men, which undoubtedly grated on insecure young men in particular, and the implicit threat to male privilege and traditional gender roles made the trope a particular target of conservative and right-evangelical commentators and influencers, the latter of which literally saw Satan in the Season of the Witch.

Similarly, male characters, particularly side characters, were often less traditionally masculine. Much like the “sensitive man” of the 1970s, male characters were increasingly likely to adopt less-macho traits, be more willing to show emotion, even if only in small ways (the “lone manly tear”), and be more likely to be seen cooking, cleaning, or raising children. Similarly, “Gay Best Friend” archetypes and the appearance of gay and gay-coded characters further blurred the line between the masculine and feminine. The “Gayening of America”, as it was dubbed, further enraged those who insisted on maintaining the strict dichotomy of masculine/feminine, and further appalled right-evangelicals, who again saw Satan in every lisping queen.

The internet and social media, in particular the rise of “Incel” culture, allowed this increasingly overtly misogynistic line of thought to spread like a virus in the 2000s, infecting vulnerable young men with Capital-M Manly dreams of a life where he’s the King of his Castle served and serviced by a harem of docile, submissive women. Soon open talk of “putting women back in their place” spread across the forums, merging and forging alliances with far-right politics, which was experiencing a renaissance in the later 2000s and remains a growing threat today, with fears of a return of Sword of Liberty or similar Militant White Nationalist Organizations entirely well founded.

And it all began as a joke. A “Macho Men’s Support Group” skit on Saturday Night Live. A trolling comedy routine by Jimmy Kimmel. The satirical and irony-laced Dark Horse comic Alpha Man. The ironic song “Manly” by NuPunk band Black Hearted Bastards. Some naturally took the jokes a bit too seriously. Soon overtly sexist comedy acts followed and SITCOMs began slipping in more and more subtle or not-so-subtle misogyny in their humor. Movies like The Bro Code and Dicks featured endearing sexist jerks and objectifying humor, even if they maintained a tongue-in-cheek sense of irony. The Agent X movie series, in a deliberate pushback against the perceived “pussification” of the “New Old Bond”, despite the New Old Bond being more accurate to Fleming’s original novels, unironically reconstructed the 1960s film version of James Bond as epitomized by Sean Connery, with women as shallow objects to be used and discarded and villains, male and female, inevitably queer-coded if not outright queer and frequently dark skinned.

The decade saw the return of large, powerful, masculine heroes and moved away from the “everyman” heroes of the 1990s, whether they were old faces like Stallone and Schwarzenegger or new ones like Momoa, Schreiber, McCallister, and Diesel. While not all of these movies were subtly sexist or queerphobic, and other action films like the Red Sails franchise with its queer-coded pirate Jack Swallow (Hank Azaria) carved out a large box office share, enough of them were. Similarly other films and TV series directly took on the perceived emasculation of the American Man and defeminizing of the American Woman, or featured characters motivated by such beliefs, such as Hacked.

Things spiraled even further on the fringes of pop culture entertainment. Unironic comics with Manly Man superheroes followed in Alpha Man’s footsteps (much to its creator’s dismay). A hyper-masculine spinoff of NuPunk joined Hip Hop as musical havens of overt misogyny. Video games featured opportunities to rape, assault, and murder prostitutes. Entire “cults of manliness” grew up around the country, many of them influenced by a fundamental misunderstanding of the works of Chuck Palahniuk, where men could “rediscover” their inherent manliness, often in pseudo-ancient rituals that bordered at times on Native American cultural appropriation.

Similar pushback on racial and ethnic and religious grounds followed. Changing demographics in the US due to immigration and population growth, and increasing acceptance and normalization of interracial marriage and mixed-race identities, revived racist “replacement” narratives. The Bismarck bombing and other acts of Salafist terrorism spurred a rise in Islamophobia which bled over into antisemitism and further fueled Christian Nationalism, which in turn overlapped heavily with White Nationalism. Anti-immigrant bias, particularly against Hispanics and Middle Easterners and South Asians (three groups that are frequently conflated in the bigot’s mind), spread and grew, and occasionally manifested in racist words and actions. Traumatized Congo War veterans externalized their PTSD against African Americans and African immigrants and refugees in particular, much as the trauma of Vietnam fed a rise in anti-Asian bias in the 1970s and 1980s. Pushback against progressive calls for police reform has further fed this anti-Black and -Brown bias. While overt acts of violence in the decade were few compared to the MWNO terrorism of the early 1990s, attitudes and rhetoric made Archie Bunker attitudes of race and gender much more publicly visible than they had been in decades.

Much of this neo-racism has been shielded under the fig leaf of opposing “political correctness”, an unfortunate top-down attempt by collegiate progressives in the early 1990s to reframe the narrative on race, gender, ethnicity, and ability. It was ultimately an Astroturf movement that quickly devolved into self-parody, with even progressive comedians and commentators butchering its awkward euphemisms like “differently abled”. Making fun of progressive overreach on political correctness soon evolved into actual racism and sexism. “I’m just being politically incorrect” became the go-to defense for overt racist, misogynistic, and queer-phobic hate speech, and for more subtly racist and sexist portrayals of characters in fiction. The number of non-white villains killed by Agent X, for example, is in notable disproportion to the number of heroic people of color in the franchise; you could call these latter “the good ones”, I guess. Similar issues plague the Detective Kilian series, which reconstructs the Cowboy Cop tropes of the 1970s without any of the original social commentary. While neither drops “N-bombs” and both featured the occasional MWNO villains, their clear throwback to more denigrating portrayals of marginalized groups speaks to a greater public acceptance of such views.

Similarly, backlash against “Disney Diversity” and other acts of inclusion played a part, with many attacking the Mouse and Chairwoman Lisa Henson in particular over the proliferation of non-white and rebellious princesses, even though most of these films had been greenlit under her father, himself a frequent subject of right-wing attacks and occasional slander. Other studios from Universal to WB faced similar backlash, in particular Universal’s John Carter adaption, which changed the original novels’ white ex Confederate hero to a Black Union veteran. Turok’s use of a Native American hero with a Confederate villain likewise raised ire, though the low budget, modestly popular animated film flew under the radar compared to the popular Princess of Mars.

Another factor in the rightward turn, and one that has fed radicalization on the fringes, has ironically been the very thing that protected many of the small-p progressive gains of the 1990s: the Senate incumbency advantage and blatant House gerrymandering, particularly in the otherwise solid-red Texas, that have kept the Democrats largely in control of congress. This has stymied many of President Heinz’s more Red Meat agenda items, which he promised on the primary campaign trail before running to the middle against Gephardt. While Progressives could shift much of the blame for a failure to make greater progressive gains in the 1990s to the Moderate Democrats, chiefly Presidents Gore and Gephardt, Conservatives could focus all of their ire on the Democrats for such offenses as watering down President Heinz’s major tax cuts and preventing some of the more arch-conservative judicial nominees from being approved.

As such, Heinz and Bush, though nominally center-right moderates not that far removed from Gore on most non-wedge issues, mostly escaped the conservative backlash. In a sort of ironic counterpoint to the 1990s, the pop culture of the 2000s makes things look far more conservative than the political record would indicate. Heinz tended to work with the Democratic congress to pass budgets on time, and even achieved balanced budgets on more than one occasion without drastic cuts to spending programs, undoubtedly helped in this by the Gore-era compromises on entitlement spending. Economists tend to see the Heinz years as a continuation of the Gore years in many respects, with a center-right economic push and a “compassionate conservatism” social one which took a softer stance on social wedge issues. Bush’s compromises on immigration reform opened further avenues for legal immigration and seasonal work in direct contrast to his occasionally fiery speeches on border security. One suspects that Heinz and Bush’s more overtly conservative statements were intended for a right-shifting populist base, and didn’t necessarily reflect their actual politics.

And in this vein, it’s worth remembering that most US conservatives have not bought into the overtly white nationalist or openly misogynistic narratives. Most remain de jura supportive of equal rights and claim not to be racist or sexist (they may be more willing to state discomfort for Muslims or LGBTQ people). Many would call themselves accepting and rationalize away any unconscious bias. So for those hoping to win these folks over to more accepting ideas, lumping them in with the Incels and MWNOs is a counterproductive strategy. Education about privilege and unconscious and systemic bias is a better strategy than accusations or finger pointing. That said, fearmongering to these more moderate conservatives has been an effective tactic for the far right, conflating race, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality with crime and violence to scare this moderate conservative plurality into supporting politicians that they otherwise might not. And a real danger remains that a charismatic populist demagogue of the Buchanan vein might be able to scare just enough of this fearful demographic to seize power.

But pendulums tend to swing back the other way as well. Slowly but surely moderate conservatives are sliding into more accepting or at least more tolerant views on social issues and becoming more de facto supportive or equality and diversity. The rising Millennium Generation of voters has already shown a leftward shift, particularly on issues such as climate change, police reform, income inequality, and LGBTQ Rights. Backlash against the excesses of Agent X and Detective Kilian and the increasingly hateful rhetoric from comedians and politicians have led to a much more politically active youth, who increasingly support diversity and tolerance and fight back on social media. Growing grassroots activism via social media are allowing new voices to be heard, and already we are seeing many corporations and brands leaning in to this new progressivism. Even Evangelical Christianity has seen a split, most notably the exodus of many conservative white Baptist churches from the Southern Baptist Convention following the election of Fred Luter Jr. as its new President in 2009, with growing awareness of social justice issues and “good steward” environmentalism by the younger members at the heart of the split.

Polls in the upcoming presidential race are neck-and-neck, and the energy surrounding Sebelius stands out against the “he’ll do” attitude behind the relatively uninspiring Jeb Bush, making the election of America’s first female President seem fully possible. In fact, the right-wing media and social media attacks on Sebelius following her stalwart defense of murdered Kansas abortion provider and personal friend Dr. George Tiller only managed to skyrocket the little-known Kansas Representative into the national spotlight, and may be what earned her the Democratic nomination to begin with. A character obviously based on Sebelius even appeared as a villain on Detective Killian, further adding to the buzz surrounding her, another example of where pop culture and social media have driven real world events.

So, with a leftwards counter-counter push starting is this the beginning of the end for the Conservative Millennium? Will the trend shift back to the left in the 2010s? Only time will tell. But for those in the Progressive movement, there’s much to be learned and remembered in the rise and proliferation of conservatism of the 2000s for their fight ahead, and much for the conservatives to keep in mind as they inevitably push back.
 
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I think it's a really good point you bring up here @Geekhis Khan - the political reality of a country can be immensely impacted by things outside of direct politics. I guess that's been one of the big parts of this project, bubbling away in the background, the impact of pop culture on politics, and how pop culture is manipulated by politics (either directly or in reaction to it).

It's nice that it's all laid out in posts like these I reckon.


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I also think it's fascinating that an actual, notable pop culture anti-social justice movement developed here. In OTL of course, despite a massive conservative push, all major movie studios have remained producing content aligned with left-wing social values. I wonder what the difference here is? Maybe because this is happening closer to the 'hyper-masculine' 80s there are still influential executives and creatives left with the power and inclination to cater to the right-wing demographic?

I'd be very interested to see what trends led to this outcome TTL
 
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