ISOT MAGA to the 70s.

[Agent23]

After witnessing the "free and fair elections for the most popular president everz" a ROB decides to have some fun by ISOTing every single county and miscellaneous other electoral region on the same level, like, say US military bases, that supported Trump back in time 50 years, from November 4th 2020 to November 4th of 1970.

The missing landmass will all be replaced not with the 1970s, but with the geographical equivalent as it existed prior to any human colonization of the Americas, with all resources there naturally being at the same levels as they were back a few thousand years ago.

How does this affect both timelines?

 

[WolfBear]

I think that a lot of Americans from 1970 would be upset at just how much demographic change even red states such as Texas underwent over the next 50 years.

As for the 2020 US, it would undoubtedly become much weaker and have its unity and national cohesion destroyed. It would also become much less capable of helping Ukraine in its future war against Russia due to it having less people, industries, et cetera.

 

[Agent23]

I think that a lot of Americans from 1970 would be upset at just how much demographic change even red states such as Texas underwent over the next 50 years.

As for the 2020 US, it would undoubtedly become much weaker and have its unity and national cohesion destroyed. It would also become much less capable of helping Ukraine in its future war against Russia due to it having less people, industries, et cetera.

Yeah, but does Downtime Trump still become president?
How do politics change in Downtime?

Also, I am sick and tired of Ukraine contagion.

 

[WolfBear]

Yeah, but does Downtime Trump still become president?
How do politics change in Downtime?

Well, is 2020 Trump sent back in time to 1970?

 

[Bear Ribs]

So it appears to be going by county, so let's get a map:



Basically, the vast majority of the land just went back in time.

Upstream, US is hosed on a grand scale. It just lost half its population, and that's the specific half that does the lion's share of fighting, food production, mining, and basically all the resource extraction. Even in California, the farmlands in the Central Valley went to Trump so they just lost all that production. They're going to have to recolonize and unfortunately, they have only the inner-city population to do it with. Basically you've got a lot of Twitter employees and LA gangs who are going to have to make a go of being pioneers, it won't be pretty.

California in particular has just become a death world. The various canal systems to bring in water have huge sections missing so the densely populated west coast is still present, but not enough water to keep them alive. Abundant supplies of meat and grain from the midwest and south are also nowhere to be found, they'll be starving within a few weeks, possibly only days. They have to get the people out, no way around it. Fortunately, the ports are still intact (planes just don't have the capacity and convenient airports like Oklahoma's international one are gone) but even that's going to be able to handle the millions of suddenly-thirsty Californians fleeing the death zone.

Mexico's about to get refugee trains from California charging across its borders.

The upstream US just got a mountain of natural resources so they can put things back together but it's going to hurt, and there's every chance other nations are going to be looking to take a bite out of those resources. The US navy is still intact since those ships were mostly not on land, so they can prevent, say, China or Russia from gouging out the coasts but only if the remaining bits of the population don't vote to go ahead and give it to them. Mexico is in a position to take back some land if they choose to.

 

[WolfBear]

So it appears to be going by county, so let's get a map:



Basically, the vast majority of the land just went back in time.

Upstream, US is hosed on a grand scale. It just lost half its population, and that's the specific half that does the lion's share of fighting, food production, mining, and basically all the resource extraction. Even in California, the farmlands in the Central Valley went to Trump so they just lost all that production. They're going to have to recolonize and unfortunately, they have only the inner-city population to do it with. Basically you've got a lot of Twitter employees and LA gangs who are going to have to make a go of being pioneers, it won't be pretty.

California in particular has just become a death world. The various canal systems to bring in water have huge sections missing so the densely populated west coast is still present, but not enough water to keep them alive. Abundant supplies of meat and grain from the midwest and south are also nowhere to be found, they'll be starving within a few weeks, possibly only days. They have to get the people out, no way around it. Fortunately, the ports are still intact (planes just don't have the capacity and convenient airports like Oklahoma's international one are gone) but even that's going to be able to handle the millions of suddenly-thirsty Californians fleeing the death zone.

Mexico's about to get refugee trains from California charging across its borders.

The upstream US just got a mountain of natural resources so they can put things back together but it's going to hurt, and there's every chance other nations are going to be looking to take a bite out of those resources. The US navy is still intact since those ships were mostly not on land, so they can prevent, say, China or Russia from gouging out the coasts but only if the remaining bits of the population don't vote to go ahead and give it to them. Mexico is in a position to take back some land if they choose to.

I wonder if the 2020 US could import some farmers from elsewhere in this TL. Though it might have to be from the developing world since almost all developed countries have low fertility rates and thus have few excess people to spare.

 

[Agent23]

So it appears to be going by county, so let's get a map:



Basically, the vast majority of the land just went back in time.

Upstream, US is hosed on a grand scale. It just lost half its population, and that's the specific half that does the lion's share of fighting, food production, mining, and basically all the resource extraction. Even in California, the farmlands in the Central Valley went to Trump so they just lost all that production. They're going to have to recolonize and unfortunately, they have only the inner-city population to do it with. Basically you've got a lot of Twitter employees and LA gangs who are going to have to make a go of being pioneers, it won't be pretty.

California in particular has just become a death world. The various canal systems to bring in water have huge sections missing so the densely populated west coast is still present, but not enough water to keep them alive. Abundant supplies of meat and grain from the midwest and south are also nowhere to be found, they'll be starving within a few weeks, possibly only days. They have to get the people out, no way around it. Fortunately, the ports are still intact (planes just don't have the capacity and convenient airports like Oklahoma's international one are gone) but even that's going to be able to handle the millions of suddenly-thirsty Californians fleeing the death zone.

Mexico's about to get refugee trains from California charging across its borders.

The upstream US just got a mountain of natural resources so they can put things back together but it's going to hurt, and there's every chance other nations are going to be looking to take a bite out of those resources. The US navy is still intact since those ships were mostly not on land, so they can prevent, say, China or Russia from gouging out the coasts but only if the remaining bits of the population don't vote to go ahead and give it to them. Mexico is in a position to take back some land if they choose to.

Yup, on the flip side for the uptime USA, though, no more mean tweets from that evil, evil Drumpf and his fanclub.
They can turn that into a subsistence farming work song as they plant their potatoes and grains.

Well, is 2020 Trump sent back in time to 1970?

Depends where he was on November 4th, since IIRC Washington is the bluest place in the USA then probably not.

 

[WolfBear]

Yup, on the flip side for the uptime USA, though, no more mean tweets from that evil, evil Drumpf and his fanclub.
They can turn that into a subsistence farming work song as they plant their potatoes and grains.


Depends where he was on November 4th, since IIRC Washington is the bluest place in the USA then probably not.

Well, in that case, I'm not sure that 1970 Trump still becomes President in this TL since he won't have the necessary 45+ years' worth of life experience that would make him a viable candidate. Maybe he'll get it eventually, but maybe not due to the different political developments in this TL.

 

[Agent23]

Well, in that case, I'm not sure that 1970 Trump still becomes President in this TL since he won't have the necessary 45+ years' worth of life experience that would make him a viable candidate. Maybe he'll get it eventually, but maybe not due to the different political developments in this TL.

Yeah, I meant, eventually.

Anyway, I think that with the uptimers, the 1970s republicans might actually gain a super-majority, it will be interesting how this influences things like Nixon's presidency.
I mean, he might get flack for what OTL Nixon did, but you can't legally go after someone for something he hasn;t yet done, IMO.

 

[Atarlost]

I mean, he might get flack for what OTL Nixon did, but you can't legally go after someone for something he hasn;t yet done, IMO.

You can't go after them using the law, but you can sure as shooting use it to inform your voting decisions. Nixon's getting primaried in 1972. Unless the 1970 Republican Party refuses to recognize 2020 Republican voter registrations in which cases he's getting nineteen twelved.

 

[WolfBear]

Yeah, I meant, eventually.

Anyway, I think that with the uptimers, the 1970s republicans might actually gain a super-majority, it will be interesting how this influences things like Nixon's presidency.
I mean, he might get flack for what OTL Nixon did, but you can't legally go after someone for something he hasn;t yet done, IMO.

Is this time travel done by state or by county?

 

[WolfBear]

You can't go after them using the law, but you can sure as shooting use it to inform your voting decisions. Nixon's getting primaried in 1972. Unless the 1970 Republican Party refuses to recognize 2020 Republican voter registrations in which cases he's getting nineteen twelved.

Maybe Pat Buchanan could become an earlier version of Donald Trump in this TL? But at the same time, he does strike me as being too polarizing and too Christian-tinted to gain quite as much of a mass following as Trump did in real life.

 

[Bear Ribs]

On the downtime side, I doubt any otl politician will be getting their vote. The MAGA crowd I think is more likely to pick from their own numbers, there's too much of a divide between 2020 culture and 1970 culture, downtimers won't have the right slang, know the right cultural references, or even have the right speech patterns to sound authentic.

Ironically if they do, they'll probably vote Democrat. Donald Trump was a card-carrying Democrat at this point, before the party moved so far left he was left on the right. The Republicans meanwhile have moved far further left than they were then, even the more progressive people in 1970 wouldn't be as gung-ho for things like gay marriage as current conservatives are.

On the technology front the US is now 50 years ahead and has foreknowledge of several key events. This advantage won't last, there're scads of foreign students who are more loyal to their homelands and historical knowledge can be plucked casually from every library, even closing them all there's zero chance the KGB can't get somebody to sell their high school history book for five grand. Some massacres and events are butterflied away, others are going to be caused, unfortunately. The US has lost a lot of natural resources that hadn't been mined yet but the advancements available in resource extraction will make up for it. The US currently doesn't have a great manufacturing base but I suspect the part that didn't stay downstream is going to be rebuilt, and stay in the US this time. Technologically, the US is going to be hyperdominant for some time.

Knowing that it's going to be a contentious issue for at least the next 50 years (and probably painted as the next Dredd Scott by the uptimers), I suspect Roe vs. Wade won't come up at all in 1973 and if it does, will be judged differently with at least a significantly different line of reasoning behind it.

The US in 1970 has a bit over half the total population the US had in 2020. However, it had a much higher percentage who are rural than the modern day, who they'll lose. The MAGA group is going to outnumber the downtimers significantly and will be a deciding bloc until they split up and start arguing among themselves.

Israel will discover that the Palestinian situation will never be resolved, will never stop getting their people killed, and may well decide to do something drastic to rip off the bandaid given how things turned out.

The USSR's reaction is going to be interesting. They know now that their nation is going to fold like wet tissue paper, and that further, the US's tech advantage is so high they can roll up the USSR's entire military if they make any serious effort. The USSR is truly between a rock and a hard place and they could well decide to do something stupid with their nukes before the US can crush them utterly.

 

[WolfBear]

Knowing that it's going to be a contentious issue for at least the next 50 years (and probably painted as the next Dredd Scott by the uptimers), I suspect Roe vs. Wade won't come up at all in 1973 and if it does, will be judged differently with at least a significantly different line of reasoning behind it.

Equal Protection?

BTW, I would expect immigration restrictionism to be extremely popular in 1970. MAGA could tell everyone how the 1965 Immigration Act failed to achieve its purpose of preserving a white-majority US and how instead an alternative solution should be devised. Getting rid of birthright citizenship might also be a very popular idea during this time. Prominent Democrat Harry Reid was in favor of this as late as the early 1990s, after all.

In 1970, only 7% of Americans wanted more immigration while around 35% wanted less immigration.

 

[Agent23]

Is this time travel done by state or by county?

By county, but I couldn't find a county by county electoral map for 1970.

Anyway, how do you think this impacts the Vietnam war?

 

[Atarlost]

Equal Protection?

Equal protection certainly says nay. Abortion is a special women's only right. Equal protection says that if fathers can't decide if their children live or die neither can mothers.

Anyway, how do you think this impacts the Vietnam war?

Wide open. There may be enough enthusiasm for Comminists that can be shot at to keep the war popular or resignation to the whole affair being pointless may dominate. It depends on the geographic distribution of isolationist sentiments in 2020 and I don't know the answer to that.

We know that militarily the Viet Cong was spent after the Tet Offensive and after that the war is winnable if a Korea situation is classified as a win. Nixon's Vietnamization plan would probably have worked if the material aid he promised wasn't denied them after his impeachment and resignation.

 

[Zyobot]

On the downtime side, I doubt any otl politician will be getting their vote. The MAGA crowd I think is more likely to pick from their own numbers, there's too much of a divide between 2020 culture and 1970 culture, downtimers won't have the right slang, know the right cultural references, or even have the right speech patterns to sound authentic.

I've noticed contrasts there, yeah.

Given time, however, I imagine downtimer politicians will eventually to adapt and make themselves palatable to the MAGA voting base? For one, this probably means more support for protectionism and immigration restrictions, though the fact much of their dirty laundry is out and publicly available (e.g., Nixon sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks) may end their political careers too early for them to do anything.

Ironically if they do, they'll probably vote Democrat. Donald Trump was a card-carrying Democrat at this point, before the party moved so far left he was left on the right. The Republicans meanwhile have moved far further left than they were then, even the more progressive people in 1970 wouldn't be as gung-ho for things like gay marriage as current conservatives are.

Socially, without a doubt. However, 1970 is still a decade before Reagan came along and moved the Republicans to the right economically, or is that shift overstated? For one, I believe there were still a bunch of tax loopholes and deductions that existed back then that were reduced under his administration, though given how complicated the US Tax Code still is, I'm not sure how successful they were on that front.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Uptime infrastructure is screwed. No real highways or rail lines exist now. Basically means that most of the uptime population starves to death or dies from lack of meds.

Down time...all that advanced military tech just got put in the hands of US vs the USSR...

 

[Bear Ribs]

One effect any ISOT like this is going to have is on the concept of unity. It's not going to escape notice that this happened specifically along political lines, during a time of extreme political polarization. People are going to always have in the back of their minds that it could happen again, should their country become sufficiently disunited.

Consequently, Globalism is likely to take a hit, you can't trust that your factories won't vanish if the foreign nation you put them in becomes disunited. There's going to be a much bigger push worldwide to have at least all your vital services in-nation, and an equally strong effort by each country to keep its politics from becoming too polarized and attracting another ASB. This is liable to turn into most world leaders being milquetoasts in the short term to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Long term? Going against the majority is going to be a huge social taboo. Personal freedom is probably going to unfortunately take a big hit and every nation stresses unity to prevent most of the country from vanishing.

Some nations will eventually probably try to deliberately cause it, after mining out a section of all minerals they may attempt to foment rebellion in that area in hopes that it will be ROB'd away and restore all those lovely natural resources again. This will probably end badly, I don't imagine the ROB in question will be happy at crude attempts at manipulation.

 

[Agent23]

Uptime infrastructure is screwed. No real highways or rail lines exist now. Basically means that most of the uptime population starves to death or dies from lack of meds.

Down time...all that advanced military tech just got put in the hands of US vs the USSR...

Um,

No, I am pretty sure that a lot of that infrastructure was already put into place by the 70s, you know, Ike's interstate highway project and all that, and a lot of the USA's rail networks were built before WWI.

One effect any ISOT like this is going to have is on the concept of unity. It's not going to escape notice that this happened specifically along political lines, during a time of extreme political polarization. People are going to always have in the back of their minds that it could happen again, should their country become sufficiently disunited.

Consequently, Globalism is likely to take a hit, you can't trust that your factories won't vanish if the foreign nation you put them in becomes disunited. There's going to be a much bigger push worldwide to have at least all your vital services in-nation, and an equally strong effort by each country to keep its politics from becoming too polarized and attracting another ASB. This is liable to turn into most world leaders being milquetoasts in the short term to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Long term? Going against the majority is going to be a huge social taboo. Personal freedom is probably going to unfortunately take a big hit and every nation stresses unity to prevent most of the country from vanishing.

Some nations will eventually probably try to deliberately cause it, after mining out a section of all minerals they may attempt to foment rebellion in that area in hopes that it will be ROB'd away and restore all those lovely natural resources again. This will probably end badly, I don't imagine the ROB in question will be happy at crude attempts at manipulation.

Maybe ROB should ISOT Riyadh to a bombed out nuclear wasteland and replace it with an equivalent crater.

Since more people voted for Trump than for Nixon overall, if Pence is still around doesn't that make him president of MAGA USA?

Maybe there can be a compromise where he is Nixon's VP, then becomes President once he resigns.

What about people from the MAGA area that have been elected into office?
Wouldn't there be a demand for them to take their seats in the US congress?