"Power Without Knowledge...": President Haig and the Era of Bad Feelings

[Born in the USSA]

Given the pretty wide divergences we've seen on the international stage I figured I'd go through and lay out what's going on with flags. Anyone I don't mention retains whatever flag they currently use. While the Union of Soviet States retains the USSR flag and Yugoslavia is obviously still around, the South Africa situation is obviously vastly different, with the Kaap retaining the Republic of South Africa flag and the Union of Azania using a variant of the current South Africa flag, except the top and bottom stripes are both red. The Second Republic of China meanwhile adopted an unutilized proposed flag for the original ROC* in order to avoid any bad blood associated with the Chinese Civil War, though independent Tibet has returned to its original flag. I created a flag for the Paneuropean Community from scratch and changed it slightly from the way I originally described it in the relevant post.

*In the new interpretation of the flag the three red stripes represent Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau with the blue used to represent the Five Races (sans the Tibetans) since they have a lot more autonomy within the new Chinese state.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I had a flash of inspiration today so I mocked up a couple of rough book cover concepts to represent Sutter's novel and my own! Demimonde would be in-universe fiction revolving around an urban fantasy setting derived from my King in Yellow timeline and Oubliette is the novel I'm working on (divided into a present story revolving around Sutter and the 2020 election and a future history one set in the ARC). I also modified the Cosmicist Manifesto cover to include the SBP logo I made and I've updated the relevant post.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I'm going to fill out the interim time sooner or later but I wanted to put out the list of candidates I came up with for my 2020 election scenario since I haven't decided whether I'll cut it off before or after the primaries when the time comes. From left to right the Establishment party candidates are:

• Citizens Party- The Senator, Mike Gravel
• Equal Rights Party- The Prosecutor, Letitia James
• New Federalist Party- The Reformer, Thomas Friedman
• Freedom Party- The CEO*, Elizabeth Holmes
• America First Party- The President, Pat Buchanan

For their part Manifest Destiny! doesn't contest the presidency and the Subversive Party just writes in St. Toad and uses the Max Stirner doodle.

*of Macondo Technologies

 

[Born in the USSA]

(And yes, the fact that the company is named after the town from One Hundred Years of Solitude but uses bananas on its logo isn't lost on critics)

 

[Born in the USSA]

 

[Born in the USSA]

-An illustration of a Thevetat by William Dyer (Credit to Eran G)

The heavier industrial pollution TTL, born out of a combination of the USS overhauling its manufacturing sector in a bid to compete in the wake of the Soviet Restoration and an American policy of deregulation under Haig, would have a profoundly accelerating effect on global climate change going into the new century, and the first and most obvious sign of this would be severe Antarctic ozone depletion. Steps would be taken worldwide to address the issue starting in the nineties, but the larger size of the hole would leave decades of work ahead and the global Regressive movement would fixate on the depletion as an intentional plot by the Soviets or other actors to drive their rivals to extinction through environmental degradation.

It would be this conspiracy theory that would prompt an American Regressive cell to head off for the continent with the stated goal of climbing Mount Kirkpatrick, the tallest peak of the Transantarctic mountains, as a demonstration of resolve, a ploy for international attention and, it must be said, an excuse to leave the country before President Powell's domestic crackdown on Regressive activists and thought leaders. As with all best laid plans, the small group began encountering unforeseen difficulties almost immediately, from inadequate provisions to the hazards of inclement weather and deadly crevasses. The group was feared deceased, and the United States would dispatch a rescue mission in the wake of international pressure. There would be only one confirmed survivor.

Found halfway up the mountain, severely frostbitten and delirious from exposure, William Dyer would be arrested upon his return to the United States on suspicion of terrorist activities, but would eventually be released on time served owing to lingering health complications from his ordeal. Dyer would spend the rest of his life telling anyone who would listen what he had seen on the ice. Claiming to have been shown a vision by a long vanished prehuman race, Dyer began promulgating a new theology with his book Meditations Under the Southern Cross. A strange mix of Buddhism, Theosophy and science fiction, Meditations offered a metaphorical reinterpretation of the Theosophical doctrine of "root races", arguing that the dragon Thevetat which had supposedly corrupted the Atlantean root race had actually been a dissident faction of the Polarian race intending to help rather than hinder the later races of men. Rather than viewing the gradual transition from an ethereal to a material existence as one of corruption, Dyer maintained that the the Thevetat had directly instantiated into material bodies, creating a vast and sophisticated civilization in Antarctica before being wiped out in a cataclysm that saw their civilization annihilated and the continent covered in ice.

Regarded as little more than a New Age fringe belief during Dyer's lifetime the text would become quite popular in the Antarctic Economic Territories, becoming the holy text of a new religious movement called Zoranism that synthesized the text with Cosmicist thought and would prove instrumental in creating a unified sense of purpose on the continent, seeing it as their holy duty to combat the Three Poisons (delusion, greed and hate) through providing education, economic support and medical treatment to those in need in the Territories. Following the Revolution, the Zoranist movement would continue to expand even as the Commonwealth governments took over much of the work in these areas, and by some measures Zoranism makes up a plurality of religious adherents on the continent. Zoranism makes no definitive statements on life after death but puts great stock in the ritual use of entheogens to foster inner growth and has produced a body of work that forms a distinct strain of Cosmicist thought occasionally called Esoteric Cosmicism to differentiate it from the temporal body of the Movement itself.

Most of the organization is made up of lay members, though Gyrovagues (priests-errant) are stationed at lodges throughout Antarctica, moving somewhat regularly to help with the sharing of perspectives and the growth of empathy between the Commonwealths. When not traveling, a member of the priesthood dwells in one of the monasteries scattered throughout the now renamed Dyer Mountains in a life that combines a focus on religious and technical education to make the Gyrovagues valued members of any community they settle in. The largest monastery and seat of the faith is actually located in the highlands of Leng, according to legend the seat of the Thevetat's greatest city, and is staffed with the highest levels of the mixed-gender priesthood, overseen by the Nameless Priest, who ceremonially sheds their old life and public identity in order to serve the Church with impartiality. The symbol of the Church is Zoran's Equation, a symbol representing "perfect knowledge" and taken from the French novel The Ice People, one of the clear influences on Mediations (along with At the Mountains of Madness).

Given the focus on personal inner revelations the Zoranist Movement has a fairly high tolerance for deviations from the pure faith, with the most outlandish or radical tendencies eroded as a natural result of the nature of priesthood within the faith. The exception that proves the rule, however, is a splinter faction calling itself the Tsalal. Interpreting the Meditations through the lens of Regression rather than Cosmicism, the Tsalal oppose the Antarctic Revolutionary Commonwealths on principle as a force that is occupying and despoiling what they perceive to be their holy land. Regarded as a terrorist group and suppressed by the government, the extremely harsh lifestyle of the Tsalal has ensured that their order remains a small one limited largely to the wild interior of Leng. Departing from traditional Regressive symbolism the Tsalal use black rather than green, symbolizing the polar night, and use a stylized representation of a vajra to represent their strength and the harshness of their environment.

*Reminder- Ridley Scott directed a long and incredibly popular series of Dune movies in the eighties and as a knock on consequence we never get Prometheus*

 

[Born in the USSA]

-The flag of the protagonist's unnamed home country in Pygmy

As mentioned in previous media updates, although superhero properties do a pretty brisk business TTL they are nowhere near the all consuming cultural force we would be familiar with. In many ways this is a blessing, with the success of the Dune Chronicles, the Indiana Jones series and the Miskatonic Cycle over the preceding decades setting the stage for a viewing public more open to experimenting with the blockbusters they were willing to take a chance on. Even then there were limits however, a case made most strongly by the public reaction to Fight Club.

Written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996 in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings the novel attracted immediate controversy over the perception by moral guardians that the novel glorified the violent nihilism of the Regressive movement. Although it was far too outré to ever be filmed it nonetheless won attention from critics even as censors tried and failed to see the book banned and Regressive groups deliberately began emulating it self-consciously in their rhetoric as yet another way to provoke a sedentary and passive society. Palahniuk had been catapulted to international acclaim and it was not long before some of his other work was optioned for films.

In the end a loose trilogy would be produced, all three directed by David Fincher and starring River Phoenix in three unrelated roles. The first, Survivor, featured Phoenix as the survivor of a cult mass suicide who hijacks a plane and narrates his life's story as he proceeds to crash it. It would premier on September 11, 2001* to critical acclaim even as many were turned off by the violence and extreme themes, a pairing that would continue through the series. The second and most experimental would adapt Rant, a strange and visceral dystopia revolving around segregated cities, a zombie-like rabies outbreak and car crash-enabled time traveling rapists. The third Palahniuk adaptation would be of his novel Pygmy, recasting Phoenix as a terrorist sleeper agent from an unnamed totalitarian country infiltrating a midwestern college**.

Although public outrage from the moral majority types had ironically made the films more commercially successful through sheer exposure, by the early 2010s tastes were beginning to change as audiences began gravitating toward films that could have deep themes without being quite so stomach churning. Into this void would step Guillermo del Toro, who had been entrusted by Universal Pictures with relaunching their Universal Monsters properties. It was an enormous gamble, but del Toro had made a name for himself with standalone films that could be simultaneously artistic, beautiful and macabre and he would throw all his energy into a set of films that he would call Gods and Monsters. Inspired by the original films and meant to offer a more emotionally weighty contrast to the more humorous Miskatonic Cycle, del Toro set out to present these staples of twentieth century pop culture in a new form for the new century.

Though not directly connected to one another in the early stages, the films would have several commonalities, including 20th century period settings, a focus on pathos over more visceral horror elements and a far greater sympathy for the monstrous characters than they typically received. The first film in the series would set the tone for the others, with 2015's Crimson Peak offering the public an emotionally engaging reinterpretation of Dracula and setting the series off to over a decade of critical acclaim and solid box office returns. Del Toro himself would go on to offer his own reinterpretations of the Bride of Frankenstein and the Creature from the Black Lagoon before turning over the reigns of the series to other directors. The latter, 2017's The Shape of Water, would set an incredibly high bar for his successors and while some have come close it's a threshold that remains uncrossed.

*Fight Club premiered September 10, 1999 so I thought fudging the date would give a bit of parallelism.
**Changed from a high school in the book given the graphic depictions of sex and drug use. The scene where Pygmy rapes a bully is still included though thankfully not shown.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Premiering in 1999 and created by Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing was a political drama series focused on the lives and work of the staff of the White House. Featuring an ensemble cast, the series is commonly regarded as one of the best television series ever made and, according to recent polling at least, is believed by a majority of the public to be a true to life portrayal of the mundane tasks and rituals that make up the work of politics, though recent criticism has centered on the somewhat naive view advanced by the series that reasoned debate is a silver bullet to overcome irreconcilable differences in politics.

Centered on the administration of fictional Democratic president Josiah Bartlett played by Martin Sheen, the series served as an invaluable outlet for Democrats during their long time in the political wilderness that separated the Carter and Mosely-Braun administrations and demonstrated that even out of power the liberal mainstream of the party still had cultural influence if nothing else. Portrayed as a brilliant economist and political thinker with a commanding grasp of theology to boot, Bartlet is served by a staff of whip smart wonks and policy experts who go about their work with a mix of boundless energy and snappy dialogue, dealing with everything from a hostile Congress to a series of domestic and foreign policy crises.

The early seasons revolve primarily around domestic affairs, offering a snapshot of the political tensions that marred the years just before the outbreak of the War on Terror. Aside from the hassle of maintaining Democratic party unity in the face of hostile Republicans and (true to life) fractured Reformers the central focus revolves around an analogue to the Regressive movement that had run roughshod since the eighties. Although Bartlet campaigned in part on a promise of dismantling the Haig security state he is forced to shelve those plans in order to properly crack down, a show of strength that counterintuitively works to his benefit in the midterm elections from a populace willing to do whatever it takes to stamp out the scourge of domestic terrorism.

After the midterms and backed by a Democrat-led coalition in both houses the show pivots to a focus on foreign policy in a bid to offer commentary on the ongoing War on Terror. Though viewed as an interesting counterfactual today, the series' invasion of Iraq stand-in Qumar in response to an Islamic terror attack on American soil was seen as somewhat contrived at the time and believed to be another example of Sorkin's alleged bias against religious faith that reappears sporadically throughout the series. Though public support for the invasion is initially high, mounting casualties weigh on the president's popularity even as he gives the order that leads to the successful capture of the Qumari officials responsible for the attack and their subsequent conviction for crimes against humanity.

This mix of perceived failures measured against real successes leads naturally into an election arc as Bartlett seeks to win a second term against a Republican clearly based on Colin Powell and a Reform candidate that drew parallels to then Montana governor David Lynch. A hardfought campaign between the three builds over the course of the season even as the stress exacerbates the president's initially hidden multiple sclerosis, culminating in an episode long presidential debate. The episode ends with the staff of the West Wing confident in Bartlet's victory even as news of the President's condition leaks to the media.

The final arc of the season sees no candidate able to secure victory, with the staff devoting their time to ensure the resulting contingent election goes to Bartlett. The final episode deals a surprise upset, with Reform candidate John Trent selected as a compromise between Bartlet and the Republican nominee. Pledging to unify the country, Trent stands at the presidential podium to deliver his address to the nation before tearing off his own face to the sound of shredding paper, revealing a pitch black void as the sky turns blood red. Trent bursts like an overripe melon as his vice president lumbers out of the Potomac to be sworn in to the presidency, releasing an ululating cry as his tentacles writhe and the inauguration crowd shrieks in horror. Why settle for the lesser evil?

Just kidding, Bartlet wins, the back half of the series deals with a war scare over Königsburg and Matt Santos runs to replace him and loses to a Libertarian. The series is considered prescient for predicting the wonkishness of the Democratic Party under Mosely-Braun and the inevitable further splintering of the American party system under the tension of three competing parties.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Though Regression was essentially the only game in town with regards to ideologically motivated violence in the wake of the Reagan assassination by the 2010s that trend had finally begun to change, with the movement in America largely shattered by seasonal waves of government crackdowns under four presidents and the political space beginning to polarize along a more conventional left-right axis as a consequence of the election of President Mosely-Braun, the passage of the Universal Care Act and Ron Paul's Whiskey Rebellion movement. The eclipse of Regression as the national boogeyman did little to staunch the tide of political violence, however, it merely resurfaced in new forms that would continue to clash and plague the country for a generation.

The first of these new forms came to call themselves the Myrmidons. Growing out of the anti-government ethos of the Whiskey Rebellion and a clear symptom of Pat Buchanan's increasingly strong appeal to that set, the Myrmidons portray themselves as a patriotic biker association but have frequently been described by the press and advocacy organizations as a hate group and by the Mosely-Braun administration as a criminal organization. Spreading like wildfire through North America in the years since its founding, the Myrmidons organize into local chapters much like any other motorcycle club or fraternal organization, though the group has developed it's own internal lexicon to maintain group cohesion and favors ant symbology on their bikes and member vests as a reference both to the mythological origin of the Myrmidon tribe of classical antiquity and also to what they perceive as the ant's positive tendency to defend and sacrifice on behalf of their society.

The second group had been gestating on the left since the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of Mosely-Braun's first term, though leaders within the movement calling itself the Weathermen freely admit that it was the rise of the Myrmidons and other groups that helped to crystalize their movement from one of impotent protest to one of focused revolutionary fervor. Explicitly patterning themselves on the original Weathermen* and the Students for a Democratic Society, the newest iteration of the Weathermen sought to use horizontal direct action to oppose what they saw as a continuing policy of military imperialism abroad and economic imperialism and creeping fascism at home. Explicitly denouncing terrorism as acceptable praxis, the group has nonetheless come under the intense and often hysterical scrutiny of the American right even as the more timid factions of the left shrink back from the group's perceived radicalism.

*They draw a distinction between that initial form of the group and its successor the Weather Underground though critics deliberately ignore this distinction.

 

[Born in the USSA]

The Cosmicist Manifesto did not have much impact in the immediate wake of its publication, something Sutter himself had expected given the fact that he had released it as a PDF published by a niche press, one more ideological jeremiad in a sea of similar invective that was barely above being self published and didn't have the forbidden fruit allure of those manifestos that had been tied to massacres or terrorism. If that was where the matter had rested perhaps we would have been spared the Antarctic Revolution and the writhing pulsing mass that is the global Cosmicist movement even now extending its tendrils across the globe and throughout the solar system. I know which one the northern bastion of Kyriarchy would prefer. As the twenty-first century inched closer to its midway point however a series of events would begin that would thrust Sutter, his Manifesto, and the radical changes he demanded onto the world stage. As can be expected this chain of events began with Macondo Technologies.

In the twenty-first century Macondo had moved from strength to strength, growing from a reliable second stringer to Atari, Google and eBay into a colossus able to outcompete them all simply through efficiently integrating its different services into a single seamless customer experience. Yes you could order almost anything and have it arrive on your doorstep the next day, but the price of that efficiency was often ruthless exploitation of the precarian underclass. Even as first world consumers became increasingly aware of the negative impact of the company Macondo was able to expand into new markets in regions that finally had disposable income and felt less guilt-ridden about where their goods came from.

The only real question had become how to meet this demand. As the exploitative manufacturing system in the Republic of China gave way in the face of domestic unrest and India churned in a cycle of climate change-accelerated sectarian violence the company settled on a solution they euphemistically called "the factory system". As elegant as it was dispassionately cruel, the program called for the creation of a fleet of large specially designed ships, the eponymous "factories", which would be equipped with large internal workspaces and sophisticated additive manufacturing systems but staffed with a skeleton crew made up of shop foremen, sailors and hardened security personnel. The ships would be deployed wherever cost of labor was lowest, where they would take on temporary workers for as long as it was profitable to do so, firing the employees and moving on whenever labor or material costs exceeded their margins or local governments moved to counter them.

Having essentially bankrolled the creation of an archipelago of mobile sweatshops, Macondo Technologies found that the richest waters (so to speak) were the islands of the global south where rising sea levels and collapsing fisheries created a large population with literally nowhere else to turn. It was the desperation of these people that would fuel the factory system, the same desperation that would provoke the system's collapse. And so we come to the Hochsprung, unofficial flagship of the Macondo factory fleet. Regarded as the most efficient*, what would reveal itself to be the ship's final destination would be Tuvalu, a nation literally on the brink of sinking into the sea.

The people of the islands knew what to expect as the Hochsprung drew near, with the horror stories coming out of the ship's prior ports of call whipping restive elements into a frenzy at the thought of this parasitic thing coming to pick the flesh from the nation's bones. By all accounts it was all over within an hour of the Hochsprung's arrival, the security services overwhelmed and executed as a hardened core of revolutionaries took the ship for themselves. News was slow to reach the outside world of the seizure, allowing the pirate regime to consolidate itself as the company scrambled to try and recoup its property. The revolutionaries had seized on the Cosmicist Manifesto as their guide star, inspired by the constructive and unified vision it offered as a counter to the indifferent world order and the reality of spiralling collapse**. By the time outside news outlets had the story the ship had been daubed haphazardly with burgundy paint and redubbed the Kanaloa, after a Hawaiin god of the sea, magic and the underworld mentioned by name in the Manifesto.

In the wake of the seizure Macondo had little recourse as the Kanaloa prowled the Pacific for months as a free floating pirate republic that made a point to seek out and attack the other ships of the factory fleet as they sailed through international waters in search of desperate workers. The locks on the 3D printers had been overridden, turning devices meant to produce consumer goods into ones equally adept at generating ghost guns. They couldn't shoot worth a damn but they were easy enough to recycle and reuse, and the machines themselves could be replenished with base blocks and other materials looted from the other factory ships. By the time the Kanaloa was finally sunk by the US Navy the damage had been done, with enough of the factory fleet sunk to render the plan unworkable and far too much international attention to possibly start it up again in any case. Macondo had learned its lesson. Rather than go to the cheapest workers it would bring the cheapest workers to it, ideally somewhere they would be too isolated from the world at large to create any more incidents. The only question was where...

*Read: "most ruthlessly exploitative"

**In contrast to the "blow it all up, damn the consequences" Regressive position.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Have a rough map of the world of the Antarctic Revolutionary Commonwealth!

• Cosmicist International (burgundy)-defense/trade pact
• America Unida (tan)- regional confederation
• North American Union* (blue)- regional confederation
• Paneuropean Community* (blue-grey)-regional confederation
• Arab League** (green)- regional confederation
• Eurasian Union* (red)-trade/defense pact
• Benevolent Accord of Righteous Democracies* (yellow)- trade/defense pact
• Monrovia Pact (purple)- trade/defense pact

*Party to the Arctic Council

**Regressive

Current Cosmintern plans for the post-Final Victory restructuring would see most of the blocs incorporated wholesale as Cosmicist Commonwealths, though the Commonwealth of Azania would give some territory to the former Monrovia Pact and the former Hong Kong Accord would likely be split in half.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Based on my above map I made some composites of the flags of the two major factions!

- The flag of Cosmicism proper is just a diagonal anarchy flag with burgundy in the top part and of course I've already posted the flag of the Antarctic Revolutionary Commonwealths before but here are the rest of the "currently" existing Continental Commonwealths (clockwise from top-left): The Commonwealths of Azania, the Indian Continental Commonwealth, the Commonwealth of Oceania and Insulindia and the Commonwealth of Patagonia.

-And here are the big four of the Arctic Council, something that'll get its own entry but is naturally vastly more important in a world starved for resources and lacking all sea ice. Clockwise from top-left we have the Eurasian Union, the Hong Kong Accords, the North American Union and the (unchanged) flag of the Paneuropean Community.

As for the remaining factions America Unida uses a tricolor harkening back to Gran Columbia, the Arab League uses a plain green rectangle and the Monrovia Pact uses a standard Pan-African flag.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Although militant Regression had given up the mantle of prime political provocateur in America by the mid-2010s the ideology still had a certain appeal around the world and would recur intermittently over the following century as the ravages of climate change became increasingly devastating. As such I think it's well past time to put together a single post laying out the diversity of theory and praxis within what was by this point a global movement. There's naturally some cross-pollination of techniques and ideas, but the factions that have arisen within the Regressive scene are largely a product of differing political cultures and attitudes toward the state as the helper or hindrance toward the universal goal of the reduction of the reliance on technology and the decreasing of the global population as laid out in Industrial Devolution.

• Kaczynskian Primitivism- The "orthodox" position rooted in the writings and tactics of Ted Kaczynski, whose unfinished manifesto provided the core of the anonymously published Industrial Devolution. Operating primarily through illegalist direct action this branch of the movement has essentially organically grown a vanguard party structure through osmosis by co-opting and absorbing the anti-government militia movement in the United States*. The Primitivists became the bette noir of the Anglosphere and were able to mainline principles that led directly or indirectly to the other Regressive tendencies. While bombings were the standard technique this school also developed a worrying proficiency with computer viruses and other cyberweapons aimed at critical infrastructure.
• Nasrism- The brainchild of the Green Guard and its leader Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Nasrism reinterpreted Regressive ideology brought to the Middle East during the first Levant War through the lense of Islamic environmental principles. Often erroneously called Eco-Ba'athism, the ideology is more committed to the notion of the vanguard party than the Primitivists who fell backwards into it and the movement's ideal is the creation a decentralized and deindustrialized revolutionary Regressive state in the Greater Middle East**. In common with actual Ba'athism at the very least it isn't sectarian and as such has followers throughout the region, with Nasrist groups even springing up as far afield as Indonesia.
• Neomalthusianism- A reaction against the violent methods of the Primitivists and the Nasrists, Neomalthusianism arose primarily in Europe and parts of Asia as a reform oriented approach to Regressive ends. Although the Neomalthusian school embraces efforts to deindustrialize where feasible and shift to renewables to ease the transition the largest impact of the school has been in the issues of legalized euthanasia and family planning. That last, inspired by the one-child policy employed by China from 1980 to 2005 under two governments shows the most promise, with lingering low birthrates giving credence to the belief that a similar policy imposed worldwide would only require a generation or two of actual enforcement to become self-perpetuating.

Aside from these three "current" schools two more are destined to come into existence in the wake of the Second Tainted Victory.

• The Green Knights- Founded in 2018 as with the OTL Extinction Rebellion group the movement is more militant but nonetheless represents a counter-offensive against the three prior factions of Regressive thought. Arguing that mass action that avoids, you know, mass murder, dictatorship and reproductive coercion has a better chance to gain mass popular appeal and produce faster results, GK is a major faction of the reborn Citizens Party and has contributed a noticeable current of geoanarchism to the party platform. Having abandoned the "traditional" Regressive symbolism XR uses the same stylized hourglass they do here.
• Including the Tsalal feels like cheating but they are a Regressive group that takes direct inspiration of one kind or another from the first three strains of the movement, though of course the lense they intuit it through is Zoranist rather than Islamic. Given the harshness of their environment they have a less strict view on the strategic adoption of technology but prefer a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer existence.

*Depending on the group in question it varied from traditional militias with a coat of green paint to more disorganized Project Mayhem groups.

**Something akin to the Geoist countries in the Separateverse in practice, though on the plus side they'd stop drilling for oil and topple all the oppressive monarchies in the bargain 🤔

 

[Born in the USSA]

As I've previously mentioned, economics is probably one of the areas of the Cosmicist program that has evolved and diverged the most from my initial rough concept, going from a bog standard mixed economy with certain reforms to a top-to-bottom system of fiscal and monetary transformation. Still, money and debt alone do not an economy make so I wanted to go through and better describe the way the actual material economy functions in the ARC and the broader Cosmintern, born out of a combination of environmental justice and opposition to corporate concentration of power.

The foundation of the Cosmicist material economy is the guarantee of universal basic services, where each citizen is entitled to housing along with a statistically adequate amount of food, water, and energy per day that may be supplemented out of pocket as desired. The basic amount is linked to the individual through their account with the Antarctic Continental Bank and operates similar to an EBT card in that it can only be used on specific expenditures.

• Housing- The overwhelming majority of habitation in Antarctica relies on a model of the megalopolis network of linked arcologies, with the size of the housing units at the basic level limited by family size similar to the Singaporean housing model. People have sentimental attachments to the places that they live and may sign even long-term leases but land cannot be owned as property and the social norm is that people will move as their family size and personal income fluctuates over the course of their lives. In order to prevent class stratification units are rated based on size/luxury and residential areas are designed to prevent both the concentration of units of the same rating and any wild disparity between the ratings of neighboring units. Mixed-use property is the norm, with residential units, businesses and recreational spaces existing in close proximity and a robust network of public transportation operates within the arcology systems.
• Food/Water- The basic allotment of daily food can be acquired anywhere or even delivered directly to the individual housing unit, though the system does not allow the funds to be spent on either unhealthy or luxury food items. Automats are common for dining on the go and most levels of most arcologies have commissaries operated jointly by the municipal government and local residents. The actual fare varies depending on local tastes but advances in vertical farming and (live) animal-free meat production means you can find pretty much whatever you have a craving for.
• Energy- Energy production is a fully public utility in a Cosmicist nation, with Antarctica in particular using a combination of geothermal, wind and nuclear energy and making full use of the six months of uninterrupted daylight during the polar summer, with excess energy stored in the form of subterranean molten salt to be used as necessary in the leaner months. In a transitional or more decentralized system outside of Antarctica proper each individual home would be equipped to generate wind or solar power, dumping any excess into the grid to supplement areas where production is low for whatever reason.

The Cosmicist attitude towards businesses is one born out of a complete rejection of the monopolization that ran rampant in the 21st century. As such firms are typically divided into four different rough categories: the individual producer, the cooperatives, the hypercorps and public utilities.

• Individual producers do exactly what it sounds like, working by themselves to generate some good or render a service. Due to the sheer scales of market forces this class is almost entirely content creators, artists and entertainers, though advances in materials science have made it easier for a single person to produce physical objects of various types at a significant rate. Most individual producers tend to also work a few hours a week with the public utilities to supplement their income or afford specialty materials for their own projects.
• Cooperatives are the standard, consisting of groups of people who work in and collectively own a business, providing whatever niche material or service the market will support. Absentee ownership is either illegal or strongly socially discouraged depending on where you are, with all joint owners expected to pull their weight and with all major decisions subject to workplace democracy.
• Hypercorps also operate as co-ops, primarily legally distinguished either by the scale at which they operate or the sorts of services that they provide. Most regional chains are classified as hypercorps, along with producers of things like armaments and complex equipment.
• Public utilities are owned and operated by either the municipal, regional or continental government and encompass socially necessary services like the public health and transportation systems and the construction and waste management industries.

A commitment to environmental sustainability is baked in to the Antarctic constitutional structure and this manifests itself in a legal obligation for firms to both use literally as high a percentage of recycled materials as is scientifically viable* and a staunch opposition both to planned obsolescence and to the proprietary nature of specific internal parts. The last is accomplished through a process called syncronization, where the designs of certain common parts are kept in the public domain or copylefted and may be used by anyone with access to the proper materials and a sophisticated 3D printer. This is similar to the way that the 3-point seatbelt was released publicly because it was a social good. The net result is a system where innovations in design quickly proliferate and universal standardization of parts between companies makes repairs and modifications relatively easy, even on complex devices like cell phones.

Labor issues and business practices are resolved at the regional level through the Regional Trade Combine, a joint legislative/executive body that works alongside the regional government, with the elected leader of each RTC simultaneously serving on the steering committee of the regional government. The majority to the RTC is made up of delegates put forward by Solidarity, the continental union to which each employee is required to belong. Operating on the one big union principle, Solidarity advocates for the workers as a whole rather than segregating by industry and is advised on the drafting of labor policy by a corporation (in the syndicalist sense) made up proportionally of the major firms of the region similar to a state chamber of commerce. Conflict between the union and the corporation is limited because of the near-universal push for the cooperative owner-operator business model.

*While the consumer is expected to recycle, the system is far less of a scam here because the requirements to use recycled materials force companies to go out of their way to collect those materials and incentivize the practice. This avoids the current system, where recycling is almost purely an ephemeral act used to soothe guilty consciences without measurably contributing back into the resource supply chain.

 

[Born in the USSA]

While the actual structure of the organization was sketched out in the Cosmicist Manifesto and sympathetic groups had been communicating on the fringes since before the Kanaloa, the Cosmicist International only came into existence as a concrete entity in the wake of the Antarctic Revolution, where it was written into the new nation's Basic Law, specifically as a section of the article establishing vanguard pluralism as the law of the land and establishing the framework of the Antarctic Cosmicist Party.

• The central organ of the Cosmintern is the General Assembly, which is open to any recognized Cosmicist interest group, political party, revolutionary vanguard or labor organization. Any member group may petition the Assembly, advise policy or draft resolutions.
  • Individual groups do not vote, but caucus with one another based on the Cosmicist Geoscheme System, which divided the globe into the proposed Continental Commonwealths. These geoscheme caucuses ("unrealized Continental Commonwealths") receive one vote each exercised as a bloc and as a consequence those groups that are not tied to a specific region are relegated to a purely advisory role. Those Cosmicist states that do not represent their entire geoscheme region tend to still be first among equals within their respective caucuses.
  • The realized Continental Commonwealths, ie. those formed to specifications, each have a vote equal to the unrealized ones but together form the Presidium, and aside from serving as the steering committee of the body are also the only ones with the power to actually put up proposals for a vote. Based on the Antarctic precedent each Continental Commonwealth uses its collective head of government as its Cosmintern delegation.
• The will of the General Assembly (as directed by the Presidium) is exercised through the Standing Committees, each of which deals with a specific issue and formed as the result of a web of binding treaties. Dealing with issues like mutual defense, cultural exchange and economic integration, perhaps the most important in the long term is the Standing Committee on Nondominiums, which governs policy in international waters and also serves as the primary organ of space collaboration.

It is fully accepted that the unrealized Continental Commonwealths will eventually become realized ones as the Zeitgeist gives way to the Weltgeist, gradually hollowing out the General Assembly and swelling the Presidium. This is considered a feature rather than a bug, intended to make the Presidium the central legislative/executive organ of a world government while the broader Assembly serves as an advisory body made up of nonstate actors. It is expected that as the territories carved out of the nondominioms reach a critical population threshold they too will become Assembly members, caucus and eventually become realized, with the cycle repeating itself until the entire solar system is made up entirely of equal and fully recognized Presidium members.

 

[Born in the USSA]

I've been mulling over the anthem of the Cosmintern and I think I found one I like! I settled on the Song of the United Front with slightly modified lyrics and in universe it narrowly won out over the Battle Cry of Freedom and the Internationale. The only real change is that the word "human" or "people('s)" is used in place of the word "worker(s)" where appropriate, to simultaneously stress the universality of the Cosmintern's ambitions and put its enemies in stark relief (and also as a sop to the radicals who dream of a definition of humanity that includes more scifi fare than just bog standard people).

Song of the United Front (Cosmicist)

And just because he's human,
a man would like a little bite to eat;
he wants no bull nor a lot of talk
that gives no bread or meat.

Chorus:
So left, two, three!
So left, two, three!
To the work that we must do.
March on in the peoples' United Front,
for you are a human too!

And just because he's human,
he doesn't like a pistol to his head.
He wants no servants under him,
and no boss overhead.

Chorus

And just because he's human,
his life is all his own.
The liberation of the human race
is the task of the people alone.

Chorus

 

[Born in the USSA]

As I've been going through my Basic Law I've been able to parse and adjust how the different election cycles interlock to create a constant but steady churn in the people's government, but that did open up the question of how Congresses would be demarcated from one another given the fact that this constant churn is naturally reflected in the collective leadership, making identification based on a single person or group basically useless. To make a long story short I went through it and by my math there'd be a national/regional election five out of every six years 🤔. As I've said before there's a huge cultural emphasis on civic participation and the actual election period is a weeklong holiday that basically leads right into the year end seasonal festivities so it's considered a holiday tradition more than anything. I'm also retconning the Festival to be every six years instead of every five in order to fall on the gap year to reward everyone for their hard work.

Year zero in the following example didn't actually reset the calendar but marked the end of the first Constitutional Convention, which in turn transformed itself into the First Continental Congress (styled "I Congress")— There's not much of a lame duck session in this system, with the new Congress expected to be seated by December 21 (45 days after the end of the election holiday) and have leadership elected by the start of the new year. This rough sketch also doesn't take into account the appointed parts of the Congress, but since they're appointed on a regular schedule instead of voted for they don't factor in to the electoral cycle. Because of the way I've structured the judiciary there's also scheduled turnover in the courts that is likewise ignored by the cycle.

1. The I Congress begins and the first Festival is held to celebrate the birth of the new state.
2. One third of Kurfursts stand for election at the Commonwealth level (initially chosen by lot, by the end of this cycle they will have formed three classes serving six years each, with one third running for office every two years); the Antarctic Cosmicist Party and the Combine labor union hold elections at the District level (both operate on a proportional council democracy system and will advance members to fill out the higher levels of the two organizations without further input) and members serve three year terms.
3. The Commonwealths elect their Councils of Citizens (regional legislatures) at the District level which select their own leadership and advance some members to the Congress; the main chamber of the Congress stands for election at the Borough level (made up of Districts and equivalent in population, roughly analogous to House of Representative districts). Both also operate on three year cycles.
4. The II Congress begins. The second class of the Kurfursts is selected by lot and runs at the Commonwealth level.
5. The Party and Combine hold elections.
6. The Councils of Citizens, the main chamber of the Congress and the third class of Kurfursts stand for election at their respective levels.
7. The III Congress begins and the second Festival is held.

It basically continues on in that vein, with each cycle opened with a Festival and made up of two legally distinct Congresses. There's also a mechanism for generational changes to the Basic Law and every thirty years the elections for everything but the Party/Combine line up and the resulting Congress acts as a constitutional convention the following year (bolstered by special delegations from the Commonwealths). The future history portions of my slow-going novel would be set in years 90-91 of this system, covering the election of the XXXI Congress, the sixteenth Festival and the fourth Constitutional Convention.

I know that was a lot but let me know if you have any questions!

 

[Born in the USSA]

As I went over in a prior post, the Antarctic Ministry of Culture, in addition to disbursing general artistic grants and operating training workshops, also managed the task of creating, cultivating and curating several shared universes for the purposes of continental mythmaking. By far the largest and most popular was Separate Spheres, depicting a hard science space opera future for the Cosmintern and the human race. Exploring Cosmicist themes and serving as a grand exercise in worldbuilding at a literally galactic scale, it would consistently rank highest on citizen engagement, budgeting and international distribution. Aside from the star of the program, the Culture Ministry would also devote resources to a variety of different projects. Two of these, Demimonde and Athame, would come to be regarded alongside Separate Spheres as the Big Three of Antarctic shared fiction.

While Separate Spheres revolved around an imagined future and Demimonde* centered on a fantastic and mythologized past, Athame would attract attention as the only one of the three set in a recognizable present for viewers, striking a balance between the former's hard science and the latter's fantasy to create a mythology for a revolutionary society. And what better mythology for the modern world than superheroes? Athame aimed to create an internally consistent and grounded superhero universe, one that depicted its characters as accessories to the Zeitgeist rather than Ubermenschen steering the world on a whim, the better to keep from accidentally writing the franchise into corners as conditions on the ground changed** and to better suit the goal of telling stories that took place either in the recognizable present, the immediate past, or the foreseeable future. As such, the core works would take place in chronological order, with an amount of time passing in-universe equal to the gap between new installments of the franchise.

Athame would revolve around those altered by exposure to an anomalous object, the titular Athame. Originally appearing the the form of a small meteorite, the object impacts with an ARC space platform, the Centimanus, transforming the sole survivor and contaminating the Earth's surface with debris from the platform inexplicably imbued with the same transformative effect. From this initial super-empowering event the Athame narrative revolves around three core heroes exposed to the object itself and a secondary cast of allies, heroes and villains empowered by debris all over the world or working to study or contain it. As a concession to franchise viability, the core troika are rendered immortal by their abilities and are recast as necessary while other characters live and die organically around them, providing a good deal of the series' emotional weight.

In the vein of other superhero universes, the Athame shared world is defined most strongly by its central triad, the franchise's answer to the DC Trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman or their Marvel equivalent in Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor.

• The Outsider was formerly an astronaut named Crozier Dalton,*** sole survivor of the destruction of the Centimanus. Directly exposed to the Athame for an extended period and floating exposed in the void of space for even longer, the shattered astronaut would somehow linger until his abilities fully awakened and he returned to Earth. Aside from an ability to perceive and manipulate electromagnetic signals, the Outsider's greatest strength is incredibly powerful and precise telekinesis, which he can use in the traditional way but also to simulate superhuman strength, flight and durability. His costume is relatively simple, consisting of a sleek Corps of Discovery space suit (sans helmet) and a trench coat he acquired when he landed. It's a great mystery to the fandom whether he can actually remove the suit, since he only eats or drinks out of habit and by his own admission only breathes because it unsettling to others when he doesn't.
• Erebus is perhaps the most unusual, having never been human to begin with. Originally a Nightspore drone, exposure to the Athame as it plummeted through the atmosphere would spark genuine consciousness in the machine and cause a reaction in its repair systems that would result in the creation of a humanoid body for that consciousness. Both highly intelligent and deeply curious, Erebus has an almost childish innocence that contrasted both with her incredibly firm moral core and nightmarish abilities. Despite possessing a humanoid form, Erebus retains hypertrophied versions of the conventional Nightspore power set, with vantablack skin repurposed into an ability to generate an impenetrable cloud of aerosolized blackness and an ability to finely tune chemical, auditory and visual stimuli to provoke a wide range of biological effects in humans from seizures and heart attacks to finely tailored hallucinations.
• Athame forms the moral center of the setting, beginning the series as a fish out of water and gradually acclimating to both her new abilities and to Antarctic society as a whole. Originally a climate refugee, she is transformed when the anomalous object that will come to bear her name impacts in her District. Transforming itself from a rough-hewn meteorite to a black stone ring inset with a crystal, the ring responds to its owners commands, transforming from a ring to a knife to a spear and boosting its bearer physically in the process. Permanently strong and durable as a consequence of contact with the ring, when she activates her full abilities it generates a suit of even more resilient armor and in its spear form can generate and manipulate light and allow its bearer to teleport. One of her early character arcs involved returning to Africa temporarily with the outbreak of the Azanian Revolutions, working with locals and ARC forces to stabilize the region that would form the Commonwealths of Azania.

Given the nature of the supporting cast the Athame universe would go through a variety of enemies, with the most notable being a recurring northern assassin-turned-cult leader who went by the name Glycon. Given the ability to transfer his consciousness by exposure to the wreckage of the Centimanus, he would use his abilities to gather followers, with the goal of collecting as much wreckage and as many empowered agents as possible in a bid to aquire the Athame itself and become truly immortal.

*A science fantasy alternate history universe combining my increasingly unusual King in Yellow setting with some ideas about New Weird urban fantasy I was kicking around. It would be bounded in scope from around 1800 to around 2100 and was considerably more structured owing to arising out of a published work in-universe.

**Think all those Marvel characters that continue to exist despite being Soviet supersoldiers from the future or whatever OTL. There's is some precedent for this "consistent flow of time" thing in major comics, most notably Valiant Comics, which stuck to its internal chronology religiously. In this universe they avoided the crossover with Image that destroyed both their brands for a generation and helped to crash the comics market.

***Showcasing the post-revolutionary Antarctic tendency to draw names from Antarctic explorers and other important figures in the continent's history.

 

[Born in the USSA]

 

[Born in the USSA]