You Get What You Give- An End of History Timeline

vultan

Wake up kids, we've got the dreamer's disease,
Age fourteen, we got you down on your knees,
So polite, you're busy still saying please...
But when the night is falling,
You cannot find the light, light,
You feel your dream is dying,
Hold tight
You got the music in you.
"You Get What You Give" by The New Radicals

We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
Line from Fight Club, winner for Best Picture at the 72nd Academy Awards

...

Excerpt from End of History to End of the World: 1991 to 2021, by Scott Baldock
"Everyone was excited, watching the Soviet Union collapse. It was supposed to mark the transition from a world ruled by fear to a world ruled by hope. For the first time in modern history, mankind thought we could finally put aside our differences and boldly march into the future. So we watched our televisions intently from the year 1989 to 1991, watching walls get torn down and statues toppled. It was over. History was over.
When does it ever work out that way?

...

First voting round, October 19, 1991, Louisiana Gubernatorial election:
Edwin Edwards-34%
David Duke-32%
Buddy Roemer-27%

As no candidate received an absolute majority of the vote, the result of the election will be decided in the run-off vote scheduled vote November 16...

The Campaign

First came the shock. In an upset, sitting Governor Buddy Roemer failed to qualify for a run-off election. Many blamed this on a poorly-handled party switch from Democrat to Republican. The election was now to be fought over by Edwin Edwards, former Governor of Louisiana who many viewed as insanely corrupt... and David Duke, a white supremacist who few before the election had thought would be a strong contender.

In the beginning, Edwards received a groundswell of support- few people actually wanted to see a former Grand Wizard of the KKK as governor. Buddy Roemer and even President George Bush endorsed Edwards, a Democrat, over Duke, the ostensible Republican. A slogan that emerged accurately captured the sentiment of many Louisiana citizens- "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard".

However, just a week before the election, a bombshell derailed the Edwards campaign. An audio recording surfaced of the former governor after he learned of the preliminary election results. In it, he laughed and said something to effect that the election was over now. He then went on to make a disparaging remark about Roemer, and several more disparaging remarks about who he felt would be Duke's major voting demographic- "dumb crackers", among other more obscene names. One of his aides, who was never named, posed a sarcastic question to his boss, implying more people would feel comfortable with a "crook" as Governor than a racist. Edwards just laughed.

The effect was three-fold: it alienated Governor Roemer, who withdrew his endorsement of Edwards (but was still careful to not endorse Duke), offended thousands of so-called "crackers", who would be voting in the election, and, perhaps most importantly, the laugh Edwards made to the joke posed about his record as being corrupt implied that the former Governor accepted that fact.

Duke capitalized on this by portraying Edwards as an enemy of the normal, working class white majority (Edwards had, in fact, come from a modest background himself). Many moderates who would have gutted out voting for Edwards, even after nearly being indicted by US Attorney John Volz several years earlier, now decided to sit out the election in disgust.

Edwards decided not to address the incident until two days before the election, confident the whole time he would still be elected. He backpedaled on November 15, trying to put some of his comments in context. For instance, he stated that he had laughed merely at the idea he was a crook, because he considered it "preposterous". By that point, however, it was probably too late. Duke was riding on a wave of populist support, with many of his supporters not even racist, just disgusted at the corruption in Baton Rouge and using Duke to protest vote.

Final round results, November 17, 1991, Louisiana gubernatorial election:
David Duke-52%
Edwin Edwards-48%

David Duke will become Governor of the State of Louisiana on January 13, 1992.

----


Ok, this is my first REAL attempt at a TL, so any thoughts?:eek:
 
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vultan

Dead Sea Squirrels said:
This. This may well be one of the most dystopic TL of all time (though I doubt anything could be more dystopic than FaT:eek:)
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Here's the thing: David Duke isn't going to be a strong focus for the TL, at least initially. It's important thematically for other, more dystopic things planned.
I'll just say this right here: with Duke elected as a Republican, it hurts the GOP nationally. With the party's image hurt, a certain high-profile Democrat from the State of New York is going to decide to throw his hat in ring, a Democrat whose policies would not be very well received at all by the nascent militia movement...
 

vultan

Aftermath

DOWN WITH DUKE

DOWN WITH THE KLAN

AMERICA, OR SOUTH AFRICA?

These were some of the signs used in demonstrations on November 19, 1991, two days after the election. A huge, predominantly African-American crowd of people marched down the Center Business Square in New Orleans, ending at Lafayette Square, right at the foot of the statue of the French war hero. The organization was organized by the local NAACP and other civil rights groups.

They were also joined by representatives of the sizable Jewish community in New Orleans. The rabbi from the Congregation Beth Israel gave a very well received speech comparing the rise of Duke to the rise of Hitler some 60 years before.

All went fairly well until 3:16 P.M., when three white men in their twenties, hair cropped into a buzz cut and dressed in pseudo-paramilitary outfits, stepped out of their parked car and began firing on the crowd with automatic weapons. Over sixty people died, not counting one policeman and two of the three attackers in the ensuing firefight. The man was found to be a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and a proud supporter of Duke, who was out to help his favored politician "get his agenda done".

That's when the rioting began. Thousands of blacks all over the city began to start mass protests in the streets, in sharp contrast to the more organized demonstration earlier in the day. When police tried to calm the situation down, they were often attacked. A nervous policeman shot and killed a 14 year old boy. Many police were shot. Businesses were looted and destroyed. Millions of dollars in property damage were lost and nearly two hundred people died over the course of the next few days.

But it wasn't just in New Orleans. Egged on by television footage of the destruction, similar disturbances were soon being seen in other big cities, especially NYC and Los Angeles. New York was still recovering from the Crown Heights riots that had taken place in August, and race relations in Los Angeles had been tense for months after footage surfaced of Rodney King, a black man, being viciously beaten by white police officers. The events in Louisiana had caused all of this to boil over.

In many ways, the issue of racism, a topic not spoken about often in the 80's, had reared its ugly head again for the 90's. Americans at home across the country were shocked to see the great cities of the United States explode in ways not seen since at least the 60's, or perhaps even the 20's. Children were being exposed to graphic videos of the violence on the CNN, from a line of police firing into a crowd of protesters in New Orleans to a young Indian-American filmmaker named M. Night Shyamalan being beaten to death by rioters in New York.

President George Bush and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, among others, appeared on national television, pleading that the rioters return home. By November 28 most the rioting nationwide had finally subsided. The final body count total was over 500 dead and tens of thousands injured, and nearly $5 billion dollars in property damage.

Perhaps most sadly, a new generation of racism is started when many young white people begin blaming the violence on the blacks, and vice-versa...
 
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Orville_third

Banned
One wonders if Murray and Herrnstein's "The Bell Curve" will get an even better reception in this TL. (Ironcially, Murray is somewhat rehabilitated-despite having the same views. The Telegraph recently quoted him approvingly.)
 

vultan

Well, I'm not going to have the results of the 1992 elections up like I'd originally hoped- RL calls- but here's a taste of some Congressional elections that may or may not be representative of the election as a whole.

Notable 1992 Midterm Elections, Senate:

Georgia Senate Election Republican primary:
Paul Coverdell- 35%
Bob Barr- 27%
Other- 62%

Georgia Senate Run-Off:
Bob Barr- 51%
Paul Coverdell- 49%

Georgia Senate Election:
Bob Barr (R)- 50.6%
Wyche Fowler (inc) (D)- 48.7%
Other- 0.7%

-Bob Barr barely edged out Coverdell in a runoff election. The Libertarians threatened to mount a serious campaign in the general election until Bob Barr assured local Libertarian Party officials that he would fight to defend civil liberties if elected to the Senate, and thus was supported by them. He narrowly managed to avoid a run-off election.

Notable 1992 Midterm Elections, House

Alabama 2nd District
George Wallace, Jr. (D)- 50.7%
Terry Everett (R)- 49.1%
Other- 0.2%
-George Wallace Jr., son of the former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, won this race. It was closer than expected race, primarily due to redistricting that put more blacks in the district. Some accused Wallace of race-baiting in the aftermath of the riots the previous year to win the election. He would serve as a strongly conservative, traditional Southern Democrat, and would switch to the Republican Party after the 1994 election.

Maryland 5th District:
Steny Hoyer (inc) (D)- 48.2%
Alan Keyes (R)- 50.1%
Other- 1.7%
-Alan Keyes, a former Reagan Administration diplomat and candidate for the Senate for Maryland in 1988, decided to challenge this race. He had originally wanted to challenge Barbara Mikulski in the 1992 Senate election, but was convinced not to because he would have little chance of winning.
 
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imperialaquila

vultan said:
:D
But seriously, how do you like the TL so far? This is my first one, so, is it plausible enough? Engaging? Interesting?
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Yes, I like it, in a morbid kind of way. I don't know much about the individual races to comment much about them, though I am surprised to see Alan Keyes taken seriously anywhere. I can see how his race would help him, and it is a close race, so I guess it can pass.
 

vultan

imperialaquila said:
Yes, I like it, in a morbid kind of way. I don't know much about the individual races to comment much about them, though I am surprised to see Alan Keyes taken seriously anywhere. I can see how his race would help him, and it is a close race, so I guess it can pass.
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Well, part of what helps him is that the Presidential election will be rather close, because the Democrat candidate is more of a true liberal than Clinton, which Keyes will exploit.
And remember, this was a time when Keyes was still taken seriously, more-or-less, even if he was acknowledged as a solid rightwinger.
 

imperialaquila

vultan said:
Well, part of what helps him is that the Presidential election will be rather close, because the Democrat candidate is more of a true liberal than Clinton, which Keyes will exploit.
And remember, this was a time when Keyes was still taken seriously, more-or-less, even if he was acknowledged as a solid rightwinger.
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OK, still makes me cringe to think of.
 
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