Let's Examine Crusade

[K. A. Pital]

Robert Satan Merkatrignamara

FFFFFFFUUUUUUU...

And also awesome does not even begin to describe it.

[Shroom Man 777]

That makes a lot of sense actually. There's also the aura of expertise about him which makes people loathe to question him when he speaks up about things outside of his field of expertise. Which of course creates a rather nasty feedback cycle, in that tons of people agree with him that anyone who argues with him is stupid or crazy. Apparently in the online comic writing world that sort of thing is called a hugbox, where everyone hugs each other and shuns the outsider.

If the author is mature and sensible this can be relatively harmless. Unfortunately Stuart Slade is deeply insecure and has a nasty temper. The result is that he works hard to put on a polite, knowledgable front in public, but also deletes all criticism when he can, makes up random crap and tries to pass it as authoritative fact, and sends hillarious personal attacks (in the full of broken grammar and typos sense) by email. It's a real shame that he can't actually just be the affable, knowledgable personna he likes to pretend to be.

You know how Hydrocephalic Platypus Cuckolding Animals lie. They like to project themselves as affable well-meaning reasonable peoples, while deep down and amongst themselves they're total motherfuckers.

This is why I appreciate the candor of guise like Strak and also Shep. Strak won't hide what he thinks of you, and Shep won't apologize or make bullshit excuses when saying horrible things, because neither of these guise care. They won't smarm or graph behind your back, relying on the security of their circlejerk of assholes for comfort and joy.

This is also why the ridicule of the Certain Clique is so important. They call it as they see it, and it's the exact opposite of the hypocritical pussyfooting cockamamie apologistic nonsense from the hyperthyroid psycho conservative assholes.

It's also hilarious how, when pointing out the inherent racism and psychosis of those homo-phobic cock-afraid assholes, people somehow bring up how SDN is also far-left, as if this is somehow relevant to the fact that those psychos are inherently racist. That's like bringing up Martin Luther King or Professor Malcolm X's incitement of violence in the Protestant Reformation and his condescending "unfriendly" tone of voice when drafting the Ninety-Five Theses which contained words like "fucktard" and "palmfucker" in the middle of the Civil Rights era, when the actual factual topic at hand is on how a big bunch of vile racist shits the KKK are.

"Those guys in that place, where people use racist slurs and violent toughguy bullshit talk, are a bunch of reprehensible fucks."

"OH NO BUT GUISE ARE ALSO IMPOLITE AND MEANS IN SDN!!!!"

And? So? Therefore?

[Alkaloid]

Ok, as someone who has never read TBO, and after reading this has no plans to, this is what I can gather about it.

The US end world war two by carpet bombing Germany with atomic weapons, and then fighting the Russians on the eastern front themselves. Somehow as a result of this, Britain gets annihilated(?) This leads to a situation where, by the 60's, the Middle East has become a single fascistic Caliphate off all the Muslim sects, China and Japan have become Chipan, (what the fuck?) and Australia, India and Thailand have formed a 'triple alliance' powerful enough to be a serious player on the world stage? Is that accurate, because it seems, well, absurd is not quite the word, but, its just mental. Almost none of those things could possibly happen.

[Skgoa]

I also think that his writings suffer from basically being webfics. I notice that a lot of online stories have the author writing chapters about stuff in order to please his audience, lots of shout-outs and so forth. This is a lot of fun for an online group activity, but it is absolutely toxic to writing a good narrative. Of course such a story could still be salvageable if the author was willing to take a big pair of scissors and cut out all of the redundant material, as well as actually seriously edit what is left. On the other hand if you take that first draft and only clean up the grammar and the layout...

Thats exactly why I focused on these issues as much as on the actual plot in my review of TBO in the other thread. I don't begrudge Stuart his stories or his fans/board members. But once you put it out for sale and pretend its just a normal book, it has to stand up to the same standards as every other book. (Actually, the industry is changing in that regard, but thats beside the point right now.) IMHO he should have gotten an editor. IMHO he should have published short stories, instead of stuffing plots that don't interact into his books. IMHO he should sell them for a much lower price. He could still do anthologies vie POD, if thats important to him.
But then again, maybe this is getting me so worked up just because I see so many better writers fail to get traction due to these kinds of stupid mistakes.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ok, as someone who has never read TBO, and after reading this has no plans to, this is what I can gather about it.

The US end world war two by carpet bombing Germany with atomic weapons, and then fighting the Russians on the eastern front themselves. Somehow as a result of this, Britain gets annihilated(?)

The US ends world war two by carpet bombing Germany with atomic weapons, and allying with the Russians to invade Germany via the eastern front. Because Britain allied with Nazi Germany and thus makes D-Day and Normandy impossible, so the US invades Europe via Soviet Russia. Stalin becomes Super Churchill. Without wasting shits in the Battle of Britain, and with the UK as an ally, Germania manages to fight on for longer, and causes further devastation to Russia. Post-WW2, the US and the USSR are BFF.

[Alkaloid]

That barely makes any more sense.
So, what, the remains of the british empire just stayed out of this world war two by authorial fiat? Or did Canada get invaded in this one? And I take it communism was defeated by just not having Russia ever be communist or something in the first place?

[Steve]

IIRC the point of diversion Stuart proposed is that Churchill dies of injuries sustained when a New York taxi hit him during a visit to NYC in the early 1930s. As a result, when the disaster on the Western Front happens in May-June 1940, Chamberlain's discrediting leaves no "fighting" alternative and Halifax becomes PM and immediately negotiates peace with Hitler. The peace is unpopular and the RAF sacrifices itself in holding off the Luftwaffe for the RN to flee Britain for safety in Canada, along with other exiles unwilling to allow surrender to the Nazis.

Halifax himself becomes so unpopular and reviled that Canadians actually change the name of Halifax, Nova Scotia to Churchill.

And that's all I remember for the moment.

[Thanas]

That is freaking unlikely considering that Chamberlain declared war and even approved planning for an aggressive campaign including the invasion of Norway by Britain.

People are making Chamberlain to be most spineless person ever when he simply made the mistake of underestimating Hitler's craziness (Newsflash: So did everyone else) and fell for the German propaganda machine far overstating German strength (again, so did nearly everyone else).

[Steve]

I think the PoD revolved more along the lines that when the Conservative Party revolt happened in May of 1940 that led to Chamberlain's ouster, Churchill's death-by-taxicab meant Halifax was the leading alternative, and then you throw in all the conjecture that Halifax wanted immediate peace with Germany to "justify" the authorial decision of Halifax making peace.

[Thanas]

You mean the guy who in OTL rejected peace offers in 1940 before Churchill ever was in power?

[Steve]

Hence why I used the word "conjecture" and put quotes on "justify".

[Alkaloid]

Hell, it makes more sense than the entire RAF and RAN mutinying and defecting to a foreign power.

[Shroom Man 777]

I am not trying to draw moral equivalency, and HPCA isn't some paragon of virture, but SDN can be vicious too, so don't pretend that it's a clean community.

We may have unfairly responded to you while mentally associating you with Bart Blade and HPCA.

Now, if we remove all associations from HPCA entirely in this tangent.

SDN can be vicious too, so don't pretend that it's a clean community.

Yes. From SWvsST to N&P, SDN is full of dogpiling circlejerking hyper-aggressive young males eager to go "concession accepted douchedonkeycockguzzlingfuckpalmer QED retard you lose against my asteroid vaporization gigajoules" in discussions ranging from sci-fi and shitty 1970s special effects, to discussions on politics and shit. The board culture is often very abrasive and etcetera, and people have said the exact same things elsewhere. Yes, you are right in this respect.

Of course, HPCA is fucking worse and is full of death-wishing racist homophobic fuckers, but this should have no bearing on any objective critique on SDN itself, and without associating you with HPCA or Stuart, but treating you entirely separately from it, yes. You are correct in that respect, and many would agree with you, even Strak himself.

Dissociating this line of discussion from my unquenchable lust to drag HPCA across the mud, yeah, we can find an agreement on this.

[Thanas]

Hell, it makes more sense than the entire RAF and RAN mutinying and defecting to a foreign power.

Yeah....I got nothing.

[Phantasee]

Hey, Canada wasn't a foreign power!

[phongn]

You mean the guy who in OTL rejected peace offers in 1940 before Churchill ever was in power?

Nooo - it didn't go that way.

The key date here in June 17th, 1940. This is when something incredible and quite unprecedented happened. Bjorn Prytz was the Swedish minister in London in 1940. On 17 June 1940, the day France fell, RA Butler met Prytz and asked him back to the Foreign Office. There, he gave Prytz the text of a telegram authored by Halifax in which Halifax stated that officially British policy was for fighting on but that no opportunity should be missed of compromise if reasonable conditions could be agreed, and no diehards would be allowed to stand in the way'. During their talk, Halifax personally added that `common sense and not bravado would dictate the British government's policy'. Prytz was asked to send that evening to Sweden's foreign minister that evening with a request that a German reply be received by noon the next day. The text of that telegram remains in Swedish archives to this day. (Much the most detailed account of the Butler-Prytz interview is to be found in a 1986 article in the Swedish historical journal Scandia by Mr Thomas Munch-Petersen, senior lecturer in Scandinavian history at University College, London.)

What happened next was that on June 18th, Halifax organized a Cabinet meeting to discuss a mass of mind-numbing administrivia. Churchill, who hated such things, took one horrified look at it and decided to go to Oxford where he would (inter alia) write a speech. Halifax, meantime, made certain that the meeting was loaded with his supporters from the Conservative-Dove faction (who, as a result of the critical situation in France and the defeat in Norway, were at a peak in their strength). Unfortunately for him, three things happened. One was that the Germans didn't reply, the second was that MI6 had intercepted the Halifax-Butler telegram and passed the message to Alexander Cadogan, the Cabinet Secretary. That led to the third thing, Cadogan took one look at the telegram, what was scheduled in the Cabinet Room and realized what the game was. He tipped off Churchill who game straight back, appeared in the Cabinet Room and that nixed everything. Shortly afterwards, Churchill seriously considered having Butler and Halifax arrested but was persuaded not to do so on grounds of national unity. Both men's political career ended though; Halifax was sent to Washington instead of jail (arguably no real difference there), Butler was sidelined and teh telegram used to end his efforts at recoveing his career (which, by the way, solves a minor mystery. When Butler ran for the Party leadership in 1956, he was described as a "sad-faced defeatist", a description that made no sense at all at the time. However, with knowledge of the Halifax-Butler telegram, it makes a lot of sense and was a political club of unparallelled power.

So, to eliminate Churchill from power, we have to make two changes. One is to assume the Germans do respond to the Halifax-Butler Telegram offering "reasonable terms" and get teh reply to Halifax by Noon on the 18th. The second is that Alexander Cadogan is either taken out of play or doesn't get the message. Then, Halifax (chairing the Cabinet Meeting in Churchill's absence) moves for acceptance of the German terms, then goes to the leadership of teh Conservative Party (that leadership was almost exactly divided between hawk and Dove factions), waves the accepted peace deal, says that it amounts to a rejection of Churchill's policy and moves that Churchill be removed from the leadership of teh Conservative Party. In those days, the Conservative Leader was not elected, he was appointed by that leading group and served at their pleasure, They could remove him any time they wanted. So, Halifax might have had his way, he became the new party leader and that automatically made him teh new Prime Minister. That's not a probable course of events, its just the least unlikely way of getting Britain out of the war in 1940.

[phongn]

Ok, as someone who has never read TBO, and after reading this has no plans to, this is what I can gather about it.

The US end world war two by carpet bombing Germany with atomic weapons, and then fighting the Russians on the eastern front themselves. Somehow as a result of this, Britain gets annihilated(?) This leads to a situation where, by the 60's, the Middle East has become a single fascistic Caliphate off all the Muslim sects, China and Japan have become Chipan, (what the fuck?) and Australia, India and Thailand have formed a 'triple alliance' powerful enough to be a serious player on the world stage? Is that accurate, because it seems, well, absurd is not quite the word, but, its just mental. Almost none of those things could possibly happen.

The US ends WW2 by nuking Germany, yes, but is allied with Russia; the US Army anchors the center of the Eastern Front. Britain is not annihilated but was aligned with Nazi Germany and subjected to repeated USN fast carrier raids. "Chipan" is just sort of an informal term for the Japanese Empire, which was becoming more Chinese in nature. Out of necessity, AU-IN-TH aligned together and allied - in this world, that's sufficient enough for them to be a fairly major power bloc.

Hell, it makes more sense than the entire RAF and RAN mutinying and defecting to a foreign power.

Churchill sets up a government-in-exile in Canada and field forces of the British Empire start listening to him, not London. What RN forces remained in the British Isles fled with the Royal Family, technology and other bits when the Germans decided that London wasn't being helpful enough and invaded.

[TimothyC]

Ok, as someone who has never read TBO, and after reading this has no plans to, this is what I can gather about it.

The US end world war two by carpet bombing Germany with atomic weapons, and then fighting the Russians on the eastern front themselves. Somehow as a result of this, Britain gets annihilated(?) This leads to a situation where, by the 60's, the Middle East has become a single fascistic Caliphate off all the Muslim sects, China and Japan have become Chipan, (what the fuck?) and Australia, India and Thailand have formed a 'triple alliance' powerful enough to be a serious player on the world stage? Is that accurate, because it seems, well, absurd is not quite the word, but, its just mental. Almost none of those things could possibly happen.

Timeline:

1. In 1940 Halifax and Butler send peace offer to Germany which Germany accepts and results in the removal of Churchill by parliamentary means, by 1942 the UK gets occupied by German Forces, leading to a breakout of the RN to Canada.
2. US enters the war on the eastern front at the invitation of Zukov (who killed Beria who killed Stalin). The US takes about a million casualties by the end of the war.
3. With no Pacific theater, Japan consolidates their hold on China, and moves into Indo-China
4. 1947 - the US Carpet nukes Germany.
5. 1948 - Thailand, having consolidated their hold on parts of Laos and Cambodia in 1940-41, repel a Japanese attack. Economic ties to Australia and India lead to the formation of the Triple Alliance (initially NATO like, but taking on an EU like presence by the 1990s)
6. 1960 - Formation of the initial muslim super-state, starting with Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. By 1970 it reaches to Algeria (Turkey never falls).
7. 1972 - First biological attack by muslim superstate on the US results in nuclear attack on industrial targets in Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Internal politics of the muslim super-state swing back toward dominance by technocrats.
8. Mid-to-late 1970s - Fall of Algeria after mass evacuations of those who don't want to live in the muslim super-state.
9. Late 1980s - disintegration of Japanese empire.

[Simon_Jester]

It's also hilarious how, when pointing out the inherent racism and psychosis of those homo-phobic cock-afraid assholes, people somehow bring up how SDN is also far-left, as if this is somehow relevant to the fact that those psychos are inherently racist. That's like bringing up Martin Luther King or Professor Malcolm X's incitement of violence in the Protestant Reformation and his condescending "unfriendly" tone of voice when drafting the Ninety-Five Theses which contained words like "fucktard" and "palmfucker" in the middle of the Civil Rights era, when the actual factual topic at hand is on how a big bunch of vile racist shits the KKK are.

It's not about equivalence.

It's an observation- HPCA and SDN are so far apart politically that anyone who can air their political opinions on one forum without getting yelled at won't be able to do it on the other. That doesn't mean they're both equally bad, or even that both of them are bad.

People who get along fine on SDN get hounded off HPCA (Starglider, whose use of facts and logic is unacceptable to HPCA), and people who get along fine on HPCA would get hounded off SDN if they actually showed their faces (Bayonet, whose use of racism and calls to violence is unacceptable to SDN). That is not equivalency, that is just a fact. If you really wanted to you could even interpret it as "good vs evil" or "smart vs stupid" or whatever. I don't care.

Five or eight years ago, the two communities had not diverged so much, and it was more possible to be someone whose views and attitudes would be accepted among both groups. Now, it is not. This does not mean the two groups are equally bad, or mirror images, or symmetrical. It just means they're a long way apart, for whatever reasons that you can fill in for yourselves.

Ok, as someone who has never read TBO, and after reading this has no plans to, this is what I can gather about it.

1) The US end world war two by carpet bombing Germany with atomic weapons,
2) and then fighting the Russians on the eastern front themselves.
3) Somehow as a result of this, Britain gets annihilated(?)
4) This leads to a situation where, by the 60's, the Middle East has become a single fascistic Caliphate off all the Muslim sects,
5) China and Japan have become Chipan, (what the fuck?)
6) and Australia, India and Thailand have formed a 'triple alliance' powerful enough to be a serious player on the world stage?
7) Is that accurate, because it seems, well, absurd is not quite the word, but, its just mental. Almost none of those things could possibly happen.

1) Yes.
2) No. The US assists the Russians on the Eastern Front, committing a large army and air force to support the Russians, who have more trouble with the Germans than historical because the Germans aren't diverting resources to deal with the British in the West.
3) No. Britain is occupied by the Germans, but later liberated, and is never nuked or otherwise annihilated. Apparently they do more or less OK after the war.
4) Yes. And yes, this is batshit ridiculous.
5) Yes. And yes, this is batshit ridiculous.
6) Yes. And while this may not be as batshit ridiculous as (4) and (5), I wouldn't know, I'm sure not going to say it's remotely plausible.
7) You got it. Mental is the word.

[Guardsman Bass]

I could see "Chipan" simply as a nickname . . . except "Chipan" and "Chipanese" are used as descriptive terms during a Japanese POV early in ROTV. That may simply be an inconsistency, though, since Stuart has a "Chipanese" naval pilot refer to everything military as "Japanese" in his POV in chapter 2.

EDIT: Stuart did a post a long while back about the differences between the TBOverse and the Real US. This is part of it:

Another point is that, while the TBOverse differs in its strategic treatment of problems, a visitor from our timeline wouldn't be immediately aware of the differences. It would be strange but not that strange. The first thing noticed would probably be the cars, the American vehicles would have bigger engines but wouldn't be so well built (no Japanese invasion of the automotive industry so the drive to improve quality control didn't happen). No Mitsubishis, Toyotas or Nissans, but there would be Maratis and Tatas filling the low-cost vehicle niche. No Japanese motorcycles, the imported motorcycle niche is filled by British production. Go to Walmart and its full of cheap goods from India instead of cheap goods from China. By the way, unions put adds on television, castigating Walmart for buying Indian goods and thus putting American workers out of jobs. No real change there.

Television, there's a thought. We've been exploring how popular culture would change. The intense technology base of the TBOverse and its reliance on manned equipment rather than unmanned would reflect in science fiction being more popular. The woo-woo world would be less prominent (the attitude to a psychic would be "We're from Missouri. Show us. Under controlled conditions with double-blind testing." Religion is still a potent force but the greater stress on individuals means that it would be much more of a personal choice and preference. Prosetlyzing and overt attempts to enforce/impose religious-based standards would exist but they'd have much less weight. They'd be regarded as being in bad taste and quietly ridiculed. On the other hand, our casual visitor to the TBOverse wouldn't notice that, not at first. He'd watch sports on television and literally not notice the difference. The Redsox still are deplorable.

Another thing would be prices. Lower in the TBOverse, people's dollars go further and they have more of them. That's primarily because without the Vietnam War and the economic mismanagement that went with it, the stagflation of the 1970s didn't happen. I worked out the dollar values in terms of a TBO:OTL "exchange rate" and purchasing power parity exchange rate in considerable detail and ran the results past an analysis house that specializes in such things. So, that's another thing that a visitor would notice straight off the bat. He'd go into the diner and his burger would cost less. Also, he could have it the way he wanted it - if he ordered it raw, he'd get it that way - his responsibility, if he gets listeria and dies, its his fault.

Again, a lot depends on where. Because the world axis is centered around the Pacific, not the Atlantic, the US West Coast ports are much more important and better-developed than the East Coast ports. Containerization started earlier in the TBOverse as a result of the need to keep the supply line to Russia open, that's a long-gone change though. By "now" its a revolution that's been completed in both OTL and TBO.

Probably the first thing that our putative OTL visitor would really notice would be when he's walking down the street and there's a loud boom. He'd probably dive for cover thinking it was a bomb or something. Much merriment amongst the onlookers and a derisive "What's the matter chump? It's only the morning shuttle for Los Angeles going out of Idlewild. Never heard a supersonic bang before?"

Women would notice that Rome and Italy were the center of the fashion and style world, not Paris. Men would note that the really top-grade sports cars come from Italy (no change there).

The same exercise can be repeated across the world. In the Triple Alliance, the changes would be immediate and notceable; the large free trade area makes them richer (nationally) and much better off (individually) than their OTL counterparts. Russia and Eastern Europe likewise - again they didn't have 1945-1990 communism to hold their economies back.

In short, the changes from the perspective of a casual visitor really are more in details than anything else. Of course, if our casual visitor started digging a bit deeper or looking around in more depth, he'd notice the changes. Like looking at the stars at night, at first one only sees the brightest, but as one looks harder there are more and more. America's still America (assuming that's where our casual visitor is) but its one whose armed forces have a totally different orientation.

[Coiler]

And the wish fulfillment goes to 11.

The intense technology base of the TBOverse and its reliance on manned equipment rather than unmanned would reflect in science fiction being more popular. The woo-woo world would be less prominent (the attitude to a psychic would be "We're from Missouri. Show us. Under controlled conditions with double-blind testing." Religion is still a potent force but the greater stress on individuals means that it would be much more of a personal choice and preference. Prosetlyzing and overt attempts to enforce/impose religious-based standards would exist but they'd have much less weight. They'd be regarded as being in bad taste and quietly ridiculed.

Science fiction is more popular, religion and mysticism less popular? How convenient!

[Skgoa]

Wait, you turn even that into an ad hominem attack?

[Coiler]

Wait, you turn even that into an ad hominem attack?

Are you referring to me or Stuart?

[Scottish Ninja]

He'd go into the diner and his burger would cost less. Also, he could have it the way he wanted it - if he ordered it raw, he'd get it that way - his responsibility, if he gets listeria and dies, its his fault.

This is one thing that particularly bothers me - I have literally never heard of such an issue OTL. Every diner I go into has a little note somewhere in the menu that says "Warning: Raw or undercooked blah blah blah it's your fault if you get sick." I have no clue where that little boogeyman of grasping liberalism came from. Maybe it's an East Coast thing.

[Count Chocula]

^ No, it's a food safety regulation in many states. Try going to Chili's and ordering a burger done rare. You can't.