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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown's_Body
I guess I respect some troops a bit
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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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chapotraphouse
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It is the union army during the civil war that remains the only thing about the US I could be almost patriotic about. Almost. I mean an army of "rebels" that sought to maintain their position as slavers and grow that system across the country? It's like the most despicable thing to rise up for and they fought tooth and nail for it. They would raid northern cities and take black people, born free on that soil, and consider them "contraband" and remove them to the south as slaves. With that as the enemy it's so simple to be the hero.
It was also a real inflection point at which the US could have made a massive shift in its makeup as a country, the possibility and will was there, but it was failed by the worst aspects of this country that sought to just forgive and forget what the south had done and move along to colonizing the west.
Of course the US was never salvageable as it is a settler colonial institution from the get but damn, that was one of those points where a less shitty version was possible.
Yeah
I have a deep hatred for the US normally but when like Union Dixie hits you with the "EACH DIXIE BOY MUST UNDERSTAND THAT HE MUST MIND HIS UNCLE SAM", I'm just kinda like, "...hell yeah"
Oh yeah I go wild at that line (wag an index figure to the beat towards and imagined enemy)
nothing wrong with feeling wistful for a future that never was
and i agree the U.S. was significantly less cringe for like half a decade
i could almost tack on the brief U.S.-Soviet alliance and FDR's tight relationship with Stalin and the future that also never was
That is the other particular moment I think of too, had FDR lived a little longer, taken Wallace as his VP again. The labor movement was there and even a single administrations worth of goodwill towards the USSR could have produced a better reality. This runs parallel to Lincoln taking Butler as his VP (or I should say, Butler not refusing it) instead of the worst possible option in Johnson.
i wonder if any decent alt history books have been written about either of these two hinge points?
seems like most alt-history is written by shitlibs and chuds
Christman had a bonus episodes about Butler and Wallace on Hell of Presidents I'm pretty sure, and they go into it on Hinge Points as well. So very Chapo-y and I'd be interested in other, more typically "scholarly" perspectives too.
I don't know if the serious types ever delve into alt-history, which would make sense if they didn't, it's all speculation and quickly becomes a wish fulfillment fantasy, at least when I do it in my musings. I guess actually it's really sad I find it easier to imagine different pasts, and their consequent lost futures, than seeing much hope in this current world. Still mostly not a doomer though!
i wouldn't mind some fiction just for escapism. escape the doomerism
kind of like reading the Years of Rice and Salt (aka the world where all the white people die in the 14th century)
I wouldn't either! You're right most alt history is libs or fash so a lefty getting into it would be refreshing.
It's interesting that a book about all the whites gone is named after two famously white things
yeah i think there is a "ahh the title now i get it" moment in the book. it's been awhile since i read it
it is cool how in that book at the end after the brutal world superwar is on the path of to global socialism led by the communist superpower of the Haudenosaunee
my biggest complaint is how each short story chapter is just so damn short like you could write an entire novel in each historical period like i almost want to fanfic it
especially the japanese diaspora-haudenosaunee alliance of convince and anti-colonial war
i would say the cold war happens no matter what, it could have been delayed by a bit in the best case. Korean war being averted would have been a hugely different world though.