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Have some further thoughts on the "Ruthenian" High Culture for later (especially in light of my "Mercantile Russia" counterfactual from before), but with regard to OTL comparison: My point was hardly that Neo-Caesar would be an ideologue. While I know this wasn't what you were aiming at, I'd...

So long as we're making "ad-hoc" comparisons, I actually wonder if we've glimpsed at some "previews" of what the West's Caesar figure might look like already? In fact, while Tsarist Russia may not have been a High Culture in of itself, I'd actually say Vladimir Lenin (and the Bolsheviks)...

Fair. Guess my main concern was whether enough users would "get" that I'm asking about the long-term macrohistorical implications (rather than just short to mid-term details). Even on The Sietch, most users subscribe to a vaguely "Anything can happen!" view of history, and I'd rather not have...

Question: Is this a good place to discuss AH macrohistorical scenarios, or should we mostly stick to OTL macrohistory here? For one, I know @Skallagrim (and others, including myself) has posited a few counterfactuals to better illustrate the mechanics of how things "rhyme" (if not repeat...

Yeah, but in the Western context, the spectrum ranges from a businesslike "Super-Pinochet" to an ultra-genocidal "Neo-Puritan Pol Pot" on steroids. Should Neo-Caesar be more "averaged out", that'd still make him comparable to a vaguely Christofascist version of Lenin, Stalin, or Mao whose body...

"Better that we all bent the knee to Hitler, than win and witness this." — General Patton watching from the afterlife, probably. :( Obviously, I doubt a Nazi victory would've stopped the underlying macrohistorical process, anyway. At most, it'd have only succeeded in turning Europe into a...

Also true, and I suspect all the bleating about "Literally Hitler!" the Establishment goes on about will be met with the worst backlash there. My own thinking is more to do with "on-the-ground" observations about how France seems to have the worst outbreaks of collapsing pensions, militant...

At the risk of getting a bit "political", I wonder who the first European nation to descend into Thirty Years' War II will be? Personally, my money's on France. Besides the French Revolution and their high turnover of regimes since then, there's also how recent economic and demographic...

I think the behavior of (and corresponding suspicion towards) unassimilated Muslims themselves may dissuade them from converting, though. Not to mention how Islam itself isn't very "Western", and is more viewed as a foreign faith that exists within Western society. That said, you're probably...

Too true, unfortunately. 😔 Yeah... Honestly, even if the current AI craze is wildly overblown, I think human stupidity all by itself proves we don't need Skynet to still have Judgment Day. If it still happens, I'm convinced it'll be at the hands of either Neo-Caesar as "Pan-Western Super...

Couple more thoughts germinating in my brain for later, but tackling the "pressing" stuff now: Seconded! o_O More seriously, while some ROB scenario in which he spectates everything from the afterlife would tell him where things are headed (and less than 10 years after he passed, no...

Looks like an "interesting" exchange is about to brew here, but commenting on this bit: Yeah... Probably wouldn't have made much of me, either. Apart from the fact I'm American (and of Asian descent, to boot), he might find the assorted "Americanisms" in my outline (which you and @Skallagrim...

Well… On that cheery note: How surprised do you think he’d have been to have been proven so very wrong? Seemed to have a much more “enlightened” understanding of race and culture, for sure. When the Nazis fear and hate your views to the point where they’d have otherwise killed you if cancer...

Actually, so long as I'm casting China as a self-destructing "Ptolemaic Egypt" here: I'm curious about where North Korea and its tensions with the South would fit into all of this? 
Grafting it onto the timetable I already laid out for China, I suppose the DPRK would continue to take marching...

In fact, that makes me wonder what he'd have made of everything after his death, up to 2023 and beyond? Lots and lots of stuff that's happened since then, though I suppose America's susprise ascendancy and Germany's regression to a "glorified vassal" are the most immediately obvious. 🤷

All right, many thanks for clarifying. I suppose "window-dressing" was the wrong word, as I'm not doubting major cross-cultural exchange of some sort would take place. Mostly, I'm probably a bit more wary of the idea that America will pattern itself off of Rome to quite that degree, due to the...

I'm aware, and I'm sorry your people were dealt such a rough hand over the centuries. :( Unfortunately... I think you're in for another round of genocidal persecution in another five or six decades, no thanks to Neo-Caesar (or if not him, then certainly Neo-Antony) casting the world into the...

Okay, seems like a perfectly reasonable alternative to me. Upon further reflection, I suppose the way I imagine it going (described here and here) might actually work to stymie mass-homogenization of local cultures somewhat by being so decentralized and allowing locales to enjoy extensive...

Maybe, but while America and Europe may fill the same macro-historical "niches" as Rome and Greece did, we shouldn't directly "copy-paste" the way it went in the Classical World onto the Modern Western backdrop, either. Already explained why above, though to clarify: I think the fact American...

In fact, speaking of Universal Empires: Yeah... Been meaning to express some doubts about China being "Persia" to America's "Rome" for a while, but had some difficulty collating them into a coherent text until recently. Fortunately, I've rectified that now, so sharing the same arguments I...