ISOT 2012 Lower US States To 1952

[Zyobot]

On January 1st, 2012, the lower half of the United States depicted by this map (minus Mexico and the islands) are sent sixty years back in time to January 1st, 1952. With the nation experiencing its post-war boom, the Korean War raging, and a presidential election on the horizon, how will this ISOT affect things going forwards?

Here's the map itself, for those with more visual inclination around here.

Thank you in advance,
Zyobot

 

[Buba]

Economic collapse of the ISOTed area. Supply chains gone, export markets gone ...
Financial collapse of the ISOTed area, as all assets held outside are gone. And the Lower/UT USA is using "monopoly money" not backed by any Government.
In ISOTed area all those dependent on Federal largese - be they institutions or individuals - are broke and need to work/change their business model/declare bancruptcy.
The Upper/DT USA ejects the wokist Lower/UT USA. It wants no truck with champions of all sorts of perversions as it sees them.
Antifas/other troublemakers who go North to spread the word are incarcerated or simply shot when they act as they do in 2012.
Distraught drug dealers - their sources of supply are gone and their money disappeared.
Such an Act of God (Higher Power as We Understand It) sends both UTs and DTs to churches in droves.
The DT Mob is upset as it lost Nevada and UT Indian Reservations offer gambling.
The career of many DT politicians ends (before it starts, in some cases), e.g. Kennedy Brothers may possibly win elections for dogcatcher or like.

 

[DarthOne]

Well, the Soviets will be having a field day over this...sure, 1950's US might have gotten a tech and knowledge bost, but the country is in a disarray and we've got Marxists all over the place. Plenty of useful idiots for them to use to cause issues and to funnel them information.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I can't see any reasonable way this wouldn't wind up with the two United States splitting into two countries. In most ISOTsone part is so much smaller than the other it can be absorbed (albeit with much drama), or the tech advantage is so overwhelming the UT side can have tremendous influence that lets it prevail, but here that's less likely than a complete split.

 

[Buba]

Speaking of careers - as the Pentagon is in Virginia, I imagine that quite a large portion of people working there would be domiciled in that state and not in DC or Maryland. Hence quite a few of America's Finest Military Minds of 1952 are gone.
Same applies to all levels of Government - especially as the ISOT is on a National Holiday everybody who only could would be in their home state. So, half of Congress is gone?
The UTs position is weakened by having DC in the DT part. That's where the Legal Govmint is.
BTW - would Truman had been in DC at the ISOT date, or home on the range? If the latter, Barkely would had been in Kentucky or in DC? Would the Chain of Succession be maintained?

 

[Atarlost]

Uptime and Downtime tend to confuse me so I'm going to call 1952 America "America Classic" and 2012 America "America Nouveau." Sorry.

I predict a war. America Classic can't tolerate a communist puppet state on its southern border. All the voices crying in the wilderness in America Nouveau are going to go north where they'll be listened to. I'm going to bet on America Classic. It's not tied at the hip to a China that doesn't exist yet and its internal divisions aren't as dire. The 1952 Democrats are wrong, but mostly not maliciously so. The more hot blooded 2012 Republicans are going to take malicious glee in hamstringing any efforts America Nouveau makes to defend itself.

The only thing the 2012 Republican and Democratic platforms agree on as progress since 1952 is the civil rights movement and the Dixiecrats have just been erased from history so no one's really contesting that. There's no reason for most 2012 Republicans to be loyal to America Nouveau.

If things somehow don't come to violence, the 1952 Democrats, 1952 Republicans, and 2012 Republicans probably caucus together to freeze out the 2012 Democrats. In the battle for the 1952 mind the liberals are talking crazy talk and the conservatives speak fluent Red Scare and have future Russian defectors to cite. It's remotely possible the 1952 Democrats will take 2012 as a warning about where the Great Society leads and agree to roll that back. Northern blacks are not going to be happy about what wellfare did to the black family.

Either way America Classic is going to want to amend the constitution to prevent stuff like non-legislatural abortion legalization and same sex marriage and the selective application of the establishment and free exercise clauses to make atheism the de facto state religion. With a war these are likely to be imposed like the 13th and 14th amendments were. Without one some might fail, but there will probably be some changes made.

I don't think the 2012 tech base is a lost cause. I'm pretty sure military electronics are manufactured in the country and a lot of important military contractors are in the temporally displaced region. The parts chains for consumer electronics may be gone, but the expertise and infrastructure for hardened electronics a couple decades behind the transistor count per square millimeter curve should still be in the country just waiting for a new source of silicon. I think the military industrial complex saves the economy of places like San Diego while tying them to America Classic.

Most optimistic long range outcome is that the USSR collapses trying to maintain a nuclear deterrent against a half century tech gap with most of their agents identified. Most pessimistic is that there's a nuclear exchange while America is still in or barely out of its temporal civil war and the most pessimistic predictions of nuclear winter are correct.

 

[f1onagher]

Economically you'll start out with a period of collapse as the Uptime US loses its supply chains, financial institutions, and other bureaucratic paraphernalia. Given that this is America it'll avoid truly bad things like starvation or systems collapse, but governors are going to have to break out the martial law to maintain systems while some hasty rejiggering of US finances is worked out with Downtime US. It'll work out in the long run, but in the short term a lot of people are going to lose their shirts and whole industries will dissolve and take a lot of livelihoods with them.

Culturally there's going to be a lot of interesting crossed wires. Bringing so much of the uptime deep south and plains states will cushion things a bit, but uptime culture is going to look grotesquely deviant to downtimers almost explicitly. A lot of what we typify as woke is an explicit rejection of traditional norms so much of uptime projected culture is in direct defiance of downtime cultural acceptance. It's not all going to fun "take that's" at the SJWs though. The Klan is still extant in downtime US and Civil Rights are still being fought over. There's going to be backlash from downtime racists and uptime droogs against minority communities for varying factors, particularly in the opportunistic chaos immediately after the transition. In the long run expect uptime progressives to coalesce even deeper into highly cosmopolitan urban centers for safety while uptime conservatives and downtime liberals awkwardly try to craft a half-way point everyone can agree to.

Politics will revolve far more around representation in the house than any cultural issue. Texas, California, and Florida are the three most populous US states and all of them just burst onto the downtime electoral scene with gargantuan populations. The downtimers will never agree to be functionally annihilated in the House and the uptimers will never accept the same. I expect there to be a middling term halt on redistricting to maintain the house at downtime levels until something can be hashed out, but it will be a sore point, especially once the economic chaos sorts itself out. There will also be grief over who runs what given that government coattails will be different on either side of the time divide.

On the more sexy political end, the communist subversion of America is dead. Uptime conservatives are by this point fired up about the long-term side effects of letting Marxists traipse about American culture and academia and the downtimers will seize on this Red Scare style. It'll definitely be ugly and you'll see uptimer leftists circle the wagons hard while trying to throw downtime communists under the bus. It'll shake out eventually, but there will be some very unpleasant political violence and California is going to learn to love the 2nd amendment very quickly. All uptimers agree about Civil Rights and the Dixiecrats just got Thanos'd so that is likely to be passed through quickly and early to give the government a big propaganda win during the early chaos. You'll definitely see uptime conservatives try to milk the situation for other issues like abortion and gay rights.

Internationally this is going to interrupt markets while the world is still trying to recover from WWII. US relations will get interesting real quick once future history leaks and there will be a lot of people trying to preempt history. The US navy can keep American military obligations juggled while the mess sorts out on the mainland, but there is going to be a lot of resource pinching since defense industry chains just got shattered. Future tech will heavily benefit the US and once things get patched up between DC and the uptime states the US will use tech transfers as diplomatic goodies to short circuit the Cold War.

The USSR is almost certainly going to try and pull a China with the evidence of what comes next and we'll likely have a lot of hybrid communist regimes fortify themselves against the future. The Soviets will definitely pull a number of fast ones while the US wrestles with its economic and political collapse, but once North America is back in order the international game is America's to cheat at. The USSR will be doing its best to entrench local regimes to ward off a freshly anti-interventionalist America and we may see an actual spread of watered-down communism as the Reds take tips from future history and the US balks at stomping of every petty nation they don't like.

From there the butterflies grow too large. I could make a joke about Thatcher never getting elected, but I don't like chasing future knowledge butterflies as they divide too quickly. In the long term, future tech makes it an "America wins harder" scenario which can be rather boring. The long term effects of a culturally whiplashed US and the preemptive demonization of interventionism are the big items of interest in this scenario as it scrambles the Cold War like an egg and makes the many, many issues in the middle east a bit more delicate since we know now how that all ends up.

 

[Buba]

Texas, California, and Florida are the three most populous US states and all of them just burst onto the downtime electoral scene with gargantuan populations. The downtimers will never agree to be functionally annihilated in the House and the uptimers will never accept the same.

This.
Although the bi-cameralism of the USA would serve it well, as the UTie States number 21-23 (I eyeballed the map), so the US Classic folks can block UT "crazies" in the Upper House.
I'd expect Alaska and Hawaii (Viva Peurto Rico, Estado numero cinquenta y uno! ) to become States a few years earlier ...
Still, I'm not sure that a UT-DT union would ever happen.

I could make a joke about Thatcher never getting elected, but I don't like chasing future knowledge butterflies as they divide too quickly.

Or the future Baroness might become PM a decade or two earlier ...
BTW - just think of the furball in France ... De Gaulle might not live to see the next Sunday ...

ADDED LATER:
How different is the racial makeup of the UT South from that of the DT North? 1952 is mid way during the 2nd Great Migration and it was much, much whiter than today (not to mention the lack of Latinos), a VERY big deal then. Wouldn't the North feel threatened by being swamped with blacks&tans?
Sorry if already mentioned ...

 

[stevep]

This.
Although the bi-cameralism on the USA would serve it well, as the UTie States number 21-23 (I eyeballed the map), so the US Classic folks can block UT "crazies" in the Upper House.
I'd expect Alaska and Hawaii (Viva Peurto Rico, Estado numero cinquenta y uno! ) to become States a few years earlier ...
Still, I'm not sure that a UT-DT union would ever happen.

Or the future Baroness might become PM a decade or two earlier ...
BTW - just think of the furball in France ... De Gaulle might not live to see the next Sunday ...

ADDED LATER:
How different is the racial makeup of the UT South from that of the DT North? 1952 is mid way during the 2nd Great Migration and it was much, much whiter than today (not to mention the lack of Latinos), a VERY big deal then. Wouldn't the North feel threatened by being swamped with blacks&tans?
Sorry if already mentioned ...

Buba

Agree that the constitution will be a big help here as the UT'ers would be numerically in a clear majority - albeit there are a fair number of conservatives in the affected areas. As such their likely to have the Lower House and the presidency - after the 1st post shift election while the DT's will have the Upper House. Hopefully this will keep extremists of both groups in check. The Supreme Court could be an issue.

Thatcherism would only really appeal to the hard core reactionaries of Britain in the 1950's. Hopefully that poisonous boil would be lanced. Also in 1952, even with the country still suffering the after effects of WWII, still has hopes for the future so the defeatism of Thatcherism isn't going to get much traction. When details get out of the dramatic decline of Britain in the period 1979-2012 its going to be unpopular with a lot of people.

Not sure how many blacks there were in the DT areas but there were definitely a lot of racists. Don't forget the strongest support for the KKK back in its post-WWI surge was in Indiana and a lot of racists murders occurred in the north. Plus hostility towards other groups, such as Jews were still significant and the DTers are likely as well to be unhappy with the large numbers of Latinos and E Asians. As such there could be issues there. Not to mention that the UTers have elected a black president. Race will definitely be a significant issue in the DT areas and also issues such as sexual equality, abortion and the like.

Steve

 

[Buba]

Plus hostility towards other groups, such as Jews were still significant

Yup.
Some of the New England/Middle Atlantic craziest commie colleges of today at that time had "Jewish quotas" - and/or for Ayteelians, Spics, etc. - or simply "no Jews/Spics/Niggers" policies.

I humbly disagree with you about the Good Baroness - however, as a non-Brit, I'm sure I don't have the full picture ...

Good point about the DTs - in spite of having a Senate majority - they'd be swamped by Uties (regardless of leanings) in the Electoral College nonetheless - something I've overlooked.