Alternate History Ideas and Discussion

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It all depends on who he is toadying to. He had weak personality and a need to latch to some kind of leader, so if he doesn't meet Hitler and attaches himself to some communist rabble rouser instead, it would happen.
 
I wonder how things might have turned out had Ron Paul won the 2012 Republican nomination instead of Romney and then went on to win the election against Obama.
 
Cold War/post-Cold War AU:
As part of Reagan's military build up, he authorized the construction of a Trident missile variant, with a depleted uranium rod payload, as a way of getting leverage in strategic arms treaty negotiations and as a potential option to deploy defensively near allied cities.

The weapons come into service by the mid-80s and survive the various strategic arms limitation treaty negotitations, but aren't deployed until the Gulf War, when the coalition to free Kuwait asks the United States to deploy them against isolated, hardened Iraqi sites thought to be developing WMDs...
 
Captain X said:
I wonder how things might have turned out had Ron Paul won the 2012 Republican nomination instead of Romney and then went on to win the election against Obama.
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It's unfortunate but I think that as a staunch anti-establishment figure Paul would've faced many of the issues Trump did, just calibrated differently to really smear & hammer him into the ground. The media would cheerfully burn itself to the ground if that's what it took to destroy him; the Obama appointees in the national security apparatus & 3-letter agencies would obfuscate and lie and straight up disobey his orders if he tried to push ahead with ending the forever wars and shuttering bases abroad or stopping surveillance programs at home; and the timetable for racial grievances & riots would probably be accelerated to exploit his Goldwaterite stance on the Civil Rights Act for the left's benefit. And remember how Ted Cruz was called an 'economic terrorist' in the fight over the debt ceiling & fiscal cliff? Paul would be smeared as 'Y'All-Qaeda in the White House' by the media complex and hordes of activist demonstrators mobilized against him over his 2013 budget plans, I'd bet.

I think Paul would also have at least as hard, if not an even harder time in Congress compared to Trump. To my understanding Paul had very few allies in Congress during his time there and the Freedom Caucus historically did not exist yet in 2012. The Tea Party wave brought in a lot of high-profile 'new blood' candidates who turned out to be perfectly fine with buddying up to the old guard, like Marco Rubio, and I think they'd dig up all sorts of excuses to frustrate Paul's libertarian, anti-war agenda even if they had run on similar platforms in the first place. Other libertarian Republican candidates who have since aligned themselves with establishment interests, like Justin Amash, would also be able to use the relentless attacks on Paul to turn him into a caricature (of what I'm not entirely certain, but '1860s reactionary who masks his retrograde plans beneath libertarian arguments' seems likely) to reveal their true colors ahead of time.

The main benefit of a Paul presidency, short-lived and ineffectual as it's likely to be, is IMO that it will serve to turn more Americans against the neoliberal/neoconservative establishment hellbent on opposing him at every possible point more quickly. Basically it'd accelerate today's goings-on by four years or even more, considering that instead of Biden in 2020 the Democrats and whatever the Lincoln Project Republicans would be called ITL (NeverPaul?) are almost certain to pull all the stops to guarantee a Hillary Clinton presidency in 2016 - and given how utterly controversial Clinton is, that in turn will almost certainly pour napalm all over the fires of American political polarization.
 
"No Italian Wars"

How would the Italian peninsula, Europe as a whole, and even the Ottoman Empire be affected by a lack of Italian Wars? Savonarola's call for France to invade the Italian states kicked off the Italian Wars, leading to the fateful Battle of Pavia where Francis I of France was captured, and was only released due to the intervention of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, which would ultimately lead to the Franco-Ottoman alliance. Without it, the Italian peninsula would remain calm for a lot longer, until a different ambitious duke or king would want to invade it.
 
No Kant.

My understanding of Kantian thought is woefully superficial, but a lot(if not most) of the underlying assumptions of the current Western world can be traced to him. My guess is some things would be thought up by other people, but how different would be a non-Kantian world?
 
'ATL 1948 Election: Henry Wallace Vs. Herbert Hoover'.

Probably ASB, but because it's novel and strikes me as a difficult enough call to generate quite the discussion, I thought I'd suggest it here.
 
'What If: William Wallace kills King Edward and the royal line'

Frankly, I just don't know enough to figure out the butterflies on this one.
 
The Whispering Monk said:
'What If: William Wallace kills King Edward and the royal line'

Frankly, I just don't know enough to figure out the butterflies on this one.
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I doubt thing he would have much opportunity to do so as he was only active briefly, winning at Sterling Bridge[1297], where Edward wasn't present, losing at Falkirk [1298] where Edward was and the Scots were routed heavily and then seems to have spent much of his time on the continent trying to drum up support for the rebels. A victory at Falkirk seems unlikely, especially one that kills Edward. He seems to have returned ~1305 but was quickly captured and executed by the English.

Also by 1297 Edward was already 60 years old and his son Edward II - albeit a weak king - was 13 so there would be a short regency before he assumed power. [Edward had had a large number of children including three sons who lived some time but the last died in 1284 shortly after Edward II was born]. This is likely to give the Scots more chance to win clear independence but there could be a lot of butterflies. It's possible that in such a TL Edward II never meets or becomes influenced by Piers_Gaveston, who seems to have been a major factor in the disorder of Edward's reign. Similarly Edward II didn't marry until 1308 so here he might have a different bride which could have affected things again.
 
I was thinking in a way of winning the reconquista earlier, when he died he was preparing for a campaign which could greatly weaken Granada, expediting their downfall.
 
PsihoKekec said:
I was thinking in a way of winning the reconquista earlier, when he died he was preparing for a campaign which could greatly weaken Granada, expediting their downfall.
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If the Reconquista is completed earlier, I think you would see all the Hispanic countries going to North Africa(just like the Portuguese did, taking Ceuta one generation after the Portuguese Civil War). The younger, landless, sons of nobles and gentry would fuel this expansion(just like they filled up the ranks of the Portuguese colonial landlords and Spanish Conquistadores in OTL).
 
gral said:
If the Reconquista is completed earlier, I think you would see all the Hispanic countries going to North Africa(just like the Portuguese did, taking Ceuta one generation after the Portuguese Civil War). The younger, landless, sons of nobles and gentry would fuel this expansion(just like they filled up the ranks of the Portuguese colonial landlords and Spanish Conquistadores in OTL).
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Berber there was christian once,and remind that way many years after arab conqest.Which they always hated.So,we could imagine situation when Berber start helping spaniards and become christian again.
 
ATP said:
Berber there was christian once,and remind that way many years after arab conqest.Which they always hated.So,we could imagine situation when Berber start helping spaniards and become christian again.
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By early 1400s(I can see Reconquista beind sped up by a century, not much more than that), I don't think there were many(if at all) Christian Berbers remaining. But you can bet that, if the Hispanic countries(not sure whether Castille and Aragon would unify here) start pushing their soldier surplus into North Africa to make it theirs, these regions will at the very least become large minority Christian.
 
gral said:
By early 1400s(I can see Reconquista beind sped up by a century, not much more than that), I don't think there were many(if at all) Christian Berbers remaining. But you can bet that, if the Hispanic countries(not sure whether Castille and Aragon would unify here) start pushing their soldier surplus into North Africa to make it theirs, these regions will at the very least become large minority Christian.
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They would certainly love killing arabs.Since they love it in our days,it is no reason to not do that about 1400.And if they must change faith to do that better....
 
'Less Eventful 2008 Election'.

Between Hurricane Katrina, a botched Iraq War, and an eleventh-hour Great Recession propelling the first black president into office, OTL 2008 had a few years' worth of momentum building before the actual election was held. Naturally, I imagine you'd have to butterfly the chaos of Bush's presidency to make 2008 rather boring and insignificant compared to what we actually got.
 
Zyobot said:
'Less Eventful 2008 Election'.

Between Hurricane Katrina, a botched Iraq War, and an eleventh-hour Great Recession propelling the first black president into office, OTL 2008 had a few years' worth of momentum building before the actual election was held. Naturally, I imagine you'd have to butterfly the chaos of Bush's presidency to make 2008 rather boring and insignificant compared to what we actually got.
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Unfortunately, I think the only thing that could stop an African selling indulgences in 2008 would be the Republicans nominating an American back to 1807 black man (or woman) who could rightly stand on the debate floor and say that Obama's ancestral racial group profited from selling his or her ancestors into slavery and was willing to do so. I'm not sure if there were any that were politically seasoned enough to get through a primary where the voters actually cared about anything but skin color.

If most urbanites weren't voting purely on race Obama wouldn't have made it through the primaries. His legislative record was short and insubstantial leaving him on everything but skin color theoretically the weakest candidate in the race.
 
Atarlost said:
Unfortunately, I think the only thing that could stop an African selling indulgences in 2008 would be the Republicans nominating an American back to 1807 black man (or woman) who could rightly stand on the debate floor and say that Obama's ancestral racial group profited from selling his or her ancestors into slavery and was willing to do so. I'm not sure if there were any that were politically seasoned enough to get through a primary where the voters actually cared about anything but skin color.
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...Huh?
 
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