After reading the Alternate Presidents Game, I've noticed that NS users have a special and dangerous brand of ignorance of American history. Unlike someone who simply doesn't know about the history, these people have enough knowledge to give them confidence in their distorted views. So, instead of derailing the Alternate US Presidents Game, I'm going to simply list all of my deep-seated grudges against a lot of Alternate History writers on the internet.
1. Applying modern 'Left-Right' politics to everything: Showing either a complete lack of creativity or a powerful sense of partisanship, the alternate history writer often applies their anachronistic concepts of left-wing and right-wing politics to early 20th or even 19th and 18th century politics. A good example of this practice can be seen in the Alternate Presidents Game in a couple examples. (But, you can see this in actual serious alternate history timelines on occasion.)
Rockefeller's Presidency: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=460143&start=200 Why would Rockefeller 'betray' his black supporters? Why would he take away votes from blacks? What do large Northern businesses gain from aiding Southern whites against Southern blacks, despite the former having a record of getting in the way of the interests of said Northern businesses? Reality is that the mantra 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' is a reality in politics, especially in America's system. Absent our history, our great political divide could very well be between a nationalist pro-labor party and a pro-corporation party that promotes the rights of minorities. The former could be perfectly secular and accommodating to Catholic immigrants, and the latter could be highly religious and thus oppose immigration from non-Protestant countries. Many 19th century leftists were incredibly racist, while many 19th century corporate captains of industry were accommodating to minorities when it is in their interests.
However, the most egregious example of this is...
Thomas Paine's Presidency in the latest timeline: Where to start? Well, firstly, the notion that Alexander Hamilton would align with the South against the North is bollocks, but that is a subject for another axe for me to grind. What is far more important is that a civil conflict in the 1800s could EVEN possibly be worldwide. Thomas Paine is not the sort of person to declare himself a revolutionary dictator. (Especially when Thomas Jefferson is around and actually stands more of a chance to pull off a revolt in the timeline.) Advocates for decentralization mimicking Jacobinism is absurd, and the idea that something is 'one step away from socialism' shows a strange sense of politics where everything is placed on a spectrum of ideas. Politics is not a competition between ideas, it is a competition between interest groups. There is also the idea that women and blacks would magically start marching together in the early 1800s, or even marching together, but analyzing that nonsense is for another post.
Basically, applying a cosmopolitan, pro-immigration, liberal, feminist left into every single timeline along with a racist, xenophobic, religious, patriarchal right shows a lack of creativity, a lack of understanding of the political-economic forces of the time period, and a distinct bias towards whatever side of the modern day political spectrum you're in. (And yes, the recent posts in that Forum 7 actually irked me enough to start this thread.)
I hope that this thread is perfectly fine to be posted here. I mean, it is kind of 'personal' compared to other threads in this forum.
