All Along the Watchtower: A Dystopian TLIAW

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shearsforest

shearsforest

I don't know who these presidents are (they end up being obscure OTL figures), but somehow they keep getting worse and worse.

From Mr. Nukes-it-All, we now have... BORK.

How do I even begin to describe BORK? I can only describe the guy as controversial.

It's bad enough when I get reminded of current politics after seeing the election results, and the following protests (since it's Current Politics, I'm keeping to a minimum), but somehow it's even worse than that—BORK wants these protesters detained!

Also, funny namesake reference with Gore Vidal, heh.

Back to BORK, and now we have him getting turned into a word for unjustifiably invading smaller nations to advance American interests.

That's not even mentioning the opening passage alone, where a bunch of Canadian scholars (so Canada still exists in 2022? Good! or... well, we'll see) agree that 1984 is when the US went to shit.

If illegally detaining people who protest against your presidency and doing shady crap with other countries is only the start of the decline of the USA, I cower at the possibilities.

Bravo.
 
Peppermint Cardboard

Peppermint Cardboard

I’m not 100% on this one, but it’s the best I could think of
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TheInnerMoon

TheInnerMoon

Bork definitely Borked it, but the dystopia is coming at a slower pace than I expected. That's good though, it keeps things realistic. And I like that things turning out worse for the US does not necessarily turn the rest of the world into a hellhole. I don't like what happened in Korea or the Middle East, but it's not as if the world is collapsing as soon as the US isn't there to 'save' everyone. Curious to see who the first New Party president will be, if that's what we're getting.
 

Kermode

Love that not only does the supposedly non-partisan attorney general runs for president, but uses the powers of his office to facilitate it. Obviously it was never truly non-partisan, but this really puts the lie to it. Agree with @AllThePresidentsMen that Joe Lieberman as the good guy you root for is hilarious, and (on my screen at least) a brutal fakeout:"Joe Lieberman" was split across two lines, so between the age, the ambition and the name Joe I mentally autocompleted it as Biden. Not so.

Speaking of Lieberman, while his opposition to Bork is obviously just, I can already see how it's going to set a precedent that will be abused next time the Republicans gain the office. It looks like the independent AG's entire role is going to be to harass political opponents and stymie any change, which is a level of gridlock that the bingo card didn't really anticipate…

PS: Good shout to Dudley Dudley, a politician whom I know next to nothing about, but I love her name and wish her career went further just for that
 
Vidal

Vidal

Kermode said:
PS: Good shout to Dudley Dudley, a politician whom I know next to nothing about, but I love her name and wish her career went further just for that
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I love her. Her slogan when she ran for reelection to the NH Executive Council was: "Dudley Dudley: Worth Repeating."
 
ThatAutisticGuy

ThatAutisticGuy

I know people have mentioned this, but the fact that Joe Liebermann, a man I fundamentally do not like, is a GOOD GUY in this story, shocks me quite a bit.

Well done Vidal, well done.

EDIT: Also, I'm getting a yearning to do a utopian version of this...
 
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shearsforest

shearsforest

ThatAutisticGuy said:
I know people have mentioned this, but the fact that Joe Liebermann, a man I fundamentally do not like, is a GOOD GUY in this story, shocks me quite a bit.

Well done Vidal, well done.

EDIT: Also, I'm getting a yearning to do a utopian version of this...
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That's gonna be interesting to do. The last utopia-dystopia pair scenario I've read was the Current Politics Upon a Cross of... series, with ...Globalism being the dystopia and ...Trumpism being the utopia. I'd be glad to see another one!
 
ThatAutisticGuy

ThatAutisticGuy

shearsforest said:
That's gonna be interesting to do. The last utopia-dystopia pair scenario I've read was the Current Politics Upon a Cross of... series, with ...Globalism being the dystopia and ...Trumpism being the utopia. I'd be glad to see another one!
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With Vidal and Enigma's permission that'd be cool to do.
 

Deleted member 81475

ThatAutisticGuy said:
With Vidal and Enigma's permission that'd be cool to do.
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It would definitely be fun to read an upbeat presidents-list style timeline, though it'll be a challenge to keep it engaging, plausible, and utopian at the same time.

It'd also be nice to see more collaborative TLIAW style stories in general. Not like the usual collaborative TLs where it's half a dozen people with contradictory tones and someone killing characters they dislike, but grabbing some of the immensely talented folks from Test Threads and seeing where they take each other's hooks and trends. It feels like a great format for readers and writers alike.
 

Arthur Marston

Vidal said:
A New Sheriff in Town

On his first full day in office after being inaugurated, Lieberman raised questions about the president’s authority to invoke the Insurrection Act and said that the orders would be challenged in federal Court. He knew that many of the lower courts were stacked with conservative justices, but he hoped that the more liberal-leaning Supreme Court would determine that prolonged occupation of cities by American street to prevent the “resurfacing of insurrection” did not meet the standards necessary for a legal invocation of the Act’s powers.

Lieberman also announced that he was dropping charges against all protesters. Bork quickly challenged him on this point, and he moved quickly to keep the dissidents detained, labeling them as “enemies of the state,” and arguing that as domestic terrorists extraordinary measures had to be taken to ensure national security. In a rare move, the President himself personally filed a brief on the case challenging the Department of Justice. Bork argued that the form of speech espoused by the protestors was not protected under the First Amendment, that it in fact aided and abetted crimes against the state, and so it was imperative that extraordinary powers be granted to the president to defend the homeland.

These cases languished in the federal courts for months, but before they reached the Supreme Court, Justice Edward Allen Tamm died in office. Bork moved quickly to replace him with Antonin Scalia. The nomination was quickly filibustered, but internally the Senate Democrats didn’t know what to do. Bork was not going to nominate a liberal appointee and they could not justify keeping the seat open for four years. Eventually, the Senate Democrats blinked first – again in the name of institutionalism. Eleven Democratic Senators agreed to “take a walk” during the final vote, allowing Scalia onto the bench through a plurality. Many of them were in close states, afraid that the air of obstructionism would haunt them in a future campaign. Instead, their decision often meant they lost to a candidate from the New Party. Antonin Scalia was elevated to the Supreme Court, where there were now four Republican appointees.

Nonetheless, Lieberman won two decisive victories in the 1987 Court Term. In Bork v. Harrison, the Court sided with a wrongfully-detained individual, dismissing the idea of an “enemy of the state” as a legal classification. In a 6-3 vote (Kearse sided with the liberals), they ruled that the dissidents being detained in military camps around the nation had to be released. Then came Lieberman v. Bork, in which the Court decided 5-4 (Kearse went back to the conservatives), that the President lacked the authority to promote “sustained occupation” through the Insurrection Act. The purpose of the law, they decided, was to allow temporary invocation to quell and immediate threat.

The dynamics of the Court changed significantly just days later, when Edith Green died. Once again, Bork had the chance to replace a liberal-minded Justice. He nominated Pasco Bowman. Senate Majority Leader Ed Muskie, armed with an even larger majority after the 1986 Midterms, struck a deal with the White House. In exchange for leaving three circuit court vacancies open until 1989 and appointing two Muskie choices to district courtships, they could have Bowman. Bork agreed and suddenly there were five Republican appointees on the Court for the years to come.

Legal troubles aside, Bork confided early on to his Chief of Staff, Paul Manafort, that he was not going to be a successful domestic president. The Democrats had punishing majorities in both chambers of Congress. Instead, he reasoned, he had to turn his attention to foreign affairs.
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Never thought I'd find myself rooting for Lieberman.
 
ThatAutisticGuy

ThatAutisticGuy

Charcolt said:
It would definitely be fun to read an upbeat presidents-list style timeline, though it'll be a challenge to keep it engaging, plausible, and utopian at the same time.

It'd also be nice to see more collaborative TLIAW style stories in general. Not like the usual collaborative TLs where it's half a dozen people with contradictory tones and someone killing characters they dislike, but grabbing some of the immensely talented folks from Test Threads and seeing where they take each other's hooks and trends. It feels like a great format for readers and writers alike.
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Exactly, that's what I was thinking!
 
Fleetlord

Fleetlord

Charcolt said:
It would definitely be fun to read an upbeat presidents-list style timeline, though it'll be a challenge to keep it engaging, plausible, and utopian at the same time.

It'd also be nice to see more collaborative TLIAW style stories in general. Not like the usual collaborative TLs where it's half a dozen people with contradictory tones and someone killing characters they dislike, but grabbing some of the immensely talented folks from Test Threads and seeing where they take each other's hooks and trends. It feels like a great format for readers and writers alike.
Click to expand...
If we're keeping with the spirit of the original it should start with, say, Reagan winning in '68 and that somehow turning out okay.
 
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