u/_____itsfreerealist8

• In the late 70s, rock music would be at the peak of its popularity, but would inspire a massive backlash movement called "rock sucks" which culminated in "Rock Gets Rocked", an event in which people burned Led Zeppelin records in the largest stadium in Des Moines.
• The 1980s would be dominated by folk music. The rise of the Midwest as America's center, combined with the isolationism causing few foreign instruments to be imported, led to a massive turn towards folk with a focus on "vintage" inspirations and gritty sound, extremely dry with no reverb. This style would progressively get more ragged and ramshackle over the course of the decade, with detractors claiming that it was no better than the rock music that they had rejected. Around the same time in some of the declining coastal cities, a new style called "punk" was gaining traction, but it wouldn't gain much success in the US and mostly got shipped to foreign markets. It was especially popular in the USSR, where Yegor Letov was able to gain a serious following from it and turn it into an unexpected political career in the Communist party, which officially forgave him in 1992 for their persecution of him in the 80s. He would be a staunch anti-nationalist...but that's a story for another time.
• The folk era came to a rapid close with the 1991 album I Care So Much by the band Samsara. Their style, known as "gloss", became hugely popular with the youths of America for its positivity, elaborate presentation, and light sound despite the relative economic decline of the period. Young people were widely known as the "working" generation - hugely involved in politics, generally anti-union, and having a large overlap with the pro-free-trade activists. In the midwest, a style of music called Techno became hugely popular, but it was very controversial for its anti-isolationist messaging, with some critics calling it more damaging to the American economy than Lancaster's anti-immigrant sweep.
• In the late 90s, rock saw a major revival of popularity thanks to revisionist history which focused on its importance for coastal communities. The rock era came to a close abruptly on 9/11, as it was seen as inappropriate to perform music which was so similar to the music enjoyed by Texas separatists. The music of the 2000s was defined by a shift back towards "progressive disco", and few artists said anything negative about the Texas occupation.
• The popularity of music filesharing on the Minitel in the early 2000s was greatly supported by the music industry, but opposed by most artists who worried about it cutting into their revenue. Lars Ulrich of Funktallica was widely reviled among musicians & fans for his support of file-sharing.

I dunno what exactly would've happened after that. Any ideas would be welcome.

Where would the Lancasterverse versions of you be?

As for me, I would likely not be American in this timeline, assuming I am born at all. My family immigrated to the United States using the Diversity (DIVA) Lottery, which was enshrined with the Immigration Act of 1990. That likely doesn’t get enacted in the Lancasterverse due to how anti immigration the US is. I would actually be Singaporean, since my family was about to immigrate to Singapore until they got selected by the DIVA Lottery.

I got confused towards the end...

Was Blago the analog of DeSantis?

Starting in the Spring of 2006 there is a series of Car based sniper attacks akin to the Beltway snipers. targeting American service members and Blackwater contractors hired both the Oil and Ethanol industries. Killing dozens in the Houston area. Among them are Marine Corps General James Mattis, Exxon, (Which is a major Ethanol producer for the US market) President Rex Tillerson and Kid Rock at a USO show, On Memorial Day 2006.

After the Kid Rock assassination, the pair, going by the alias “The Ghosts of Patton & Haig” make taunting audio recording posted to the minitel and sent to news networks. The first batch of recordings diminishing initial theories was being done by Klansman or a militia operating well beyond Houston. Ending searches as far away as New Hampshire and Idaho. But a new theory possibly points to members of the miliary who have defected and join the insurgents.

But as recordings "Go viral" and the Soviet English language broadcaster Union Today, play them in full to show the hypocrisy of America and the occupation. People that are angry at the occupation and the government and the state of the country in general. Take up the message. Like "Free the Houston Ghosts" or taken directly from the recordings "Our President is an Idiot and a Liar, God bless America, Land of Free Speech" Becoming a rallying cry of resistance across America. Written in School Notebooks and referenced in Year Zero by the Nine Inch Nails.

After a 14 month long manhunt. In May of 2007. The pair are captured after an investigation by the FBI tracing the recordings to a studio within the city of Houston which proved to be their safe house.

The pair are Chris Patton and Hillary Haag. Voice over artists who dub for the relatively underground Anime medium who recorded their messages at ADV studios. Angered at the occupation of Texas by the Federal government. The two radicalized on Minitel forms and blogs and eventually took up arms. Naming themselves after U.S Generals George Patton and Alexander Haig and one of the last Anime dubs before ADV went belly up in part because of the ongoing Texas occupation. Ghost Stories, a black comedy horror dub of a children's horror anime. Which made many jokes among others, the ongoing occupation of Texas & Houston. The anime dub itself would cement itself as one of the most infamous in the world and shared around via file sharing networks. As the Dub has been virtually banned from legal disruption.

The pair's Gothic looking black and white mugshots went on the front page of Time magazine and the trial became a media circus. With both Patton and Haag criticizing the ongoing Texas occupation in their defense. The two would later be executed by lethal injection at the end of 2008 as the Bobby Shriver administration wanted a win as they were outgoing. Especially after Bobby Jindal was elected.

- The broader geopolitical alliances of this world would be unrecognizable in various fascinating ways. I believe that the US and the USSR would be allies more often than not, the great collectivist powers of the 20th century having put aside their differences and arrayed themselves against the neoliberal rising stars of Europe and Japan. I think that this timeline's belt and road initiative would be a joint project between Jobs' US and the Soviet Union, billed as a way to get America back onto the broader world stage and save various developing countries from European imperialism (and hey, if we liberate all these countries maybe we can get our hands on their rare earth minerals...)

- I was surprised that there was no mention of South America at all, so here's my idea for what's going on down there. The US quickly pulled support from right-wing regimes at the beginning of Lancaster's presidency, leading to a period of chaos in the early 80s. As the decade came to an end, a wave of left-wing governments swept into power, sometimes democratically, sometimes violently, all of them scarred by war and underdevelopment. In 1990, a conference of left-wing leaders met in Asuncion and agreed to aid each other in recovery and development. In 1992, this informal alliance was formalized as the Bolivarian League, a supranational union with a common currency, which encouraged internal freedom of trade and movement but adopted Lancastrian protectionist policies toward the rest of the world.

The League was very popular initially, and over the '90s and early 2000s it led to massive improvements in education and infrastructure, lifting millions out of poverty. It expanded, incorporating Cuba and Nicaragua as member states, and there have been frequent on-and-off discussions of Mexico joining. However, they began to run into many of the same protectionist stumbling blocks as the US, remaining technologically backward and isolated from global markets. Corruption, while more under control than it had previously been, was still an everpresent issue. Some countries were clearly contributing more to the League's common projects than others. And while the League had copied many of Lancaster's trade policies, they were far more lenient on immigration, leading to an influx of African refugees during the 2000s. All of this led to significant resentment in several member states, most notably Argentina, where the "Salirgentina" movement (anyone who speaks Spanish please tell me if there's a better Spanish equivalent of Brexit) began advocating for withdrawal from the league. Right-wing Peronist Carlos Reutemann leads an aggressive anti-immigrant, anti-League campaign that ultimately leads to a referendum. To the shock of almost everyone, Salirgentina barely passes in a low-turnout vote.

- The presidency of Jobs leads to a rise in violent left-wing groups collectively termed the "alt-left", which proliferate in online spaces, taking previously innocuous memes and turning them into symbols of revolution. One of these groups, the Society of the Godless, organizes a "Unite the Left" rally against the building of a monument of the ten commandments. When a Christian counterprotester is killed, Jobs controversially claims that there were "very fine people on both sides".

- The American Libertarian movement is now pretty firmly identified with the left, although it still includes many figures we might consider right-libertarian in our timeline. Within the Libertarian party you're as likely to meet an anarcho-communist as an anarcho-capitalist, and while the two have their disagreements they're likely to consider each other allies in the fight against statism. Libertarians are broadly pro-gun, pro-LGBT, anti-government, anti-racist, and antitheist, and are also firmly opposed to big corporations and monopolies.

- The far left is a lot more amorphous and less purist than in our timeline, often to their detriment. Weird syncretic movements that the left doesn't want anything to do with in our timeline, like Nazbols, "MAGA Communists", and as previously stated AnCaps, were instead kicked out of the right for being too left-wing and became somewhat accepted in left-wing spaces.

- Ukraine should be Tibet, with the region having broken away from China during the collapse of the PRC. Here it's Japan and the Soviets which serve as Tibet's most ardent defenders, fearful of Chinese invasion, while Europe plays America's role, with the government sending massive aid but the public dissatisfied. Steve Jobs and much of the American left are very anti-Tibet, as their atheist views cause them to oppose the theocratic rule of the Dalai Lama.

- Israel is more difficult, but I think it could be South Africa. Europe is one of the main "neoliberal" powers of this timeline and given how they treated the Françafrique in our timeline I think the CMEE would strengthen its neocolonial stranglehold on Africa. South Africa would be propped up as "the only democracy in Africa" despite not-so-covertly continuing Apartheid. Nelson Mandela would have signed a much-lauded peace deal with the Apartheid government, promising eventual full independence for the Bantustans, but this does little to calm the tensions. Violence continues, mostly on the Afrikaner side, throughout the 21st century. On October 7th 2023, black militants would emerge from the Bantustan of KwaZulu in a surprise attack, killing thousands of Afrikaners. In response the South African government enacts a brutal campaign of repression on the Bantustans, and repeatedly invades Zimbabwe under the pretext of rooting out terrorist cells.

- In general, with the decreased importance of oil, I think Africa would be the equivalent of our timeline's "middle east". It would be a site of major tensions between the CMEE and the Soviet Union, and I think that the 9/11 equivalent really should have been African Islamists attacking the European stock exchange in Rotterdam. The Texas subplot is where things jumped the shark for me.

- I can't imagine Jeffrey Epstein would ever gain prominence in this non-financialized, non-neoliberal America. Instead I think the equivalent should be a new-age cult which insinuated itself into powerful institutions across America during the 90s and 2000s, probably a weirder alternate version of NXIVM. It would have to have some kind of known connection with John McKernan during his post-presidential career. The left would be up in arms about this, both due to their hatred of religion and their hatred of the McKernans. "Release the NXIVM files" and "Raniere didn't kill himself" would become common refrains among Jobs supporters. However, it would be revealed that Jobs himself was closely connected with the cult during his own more woo-woo days, causing a good deal of consternation among the Democrats.

- Likewise, I think the leftist QAnon would be all about the evil pedophilic Vatican being in control of every right-wing politician, with NXIVM being a Vatican front to spread religious ideas.

- Hasan Piker would definitely be the Charlie Kirk of this timeline. Like Kirk, he's somebody that serves as a bridge between the more moderate and radical wings of his movement, though not without some friction. His killer would be clearly identified as a right-winger, but large segments of the right would refuse to accept this, claiming that the killer must have been a radical leftist who didn't think Hasan was extreme enough (Despite there being no evidence for this). His death causes the left to fracture, with some of the more radical leftists believing he was killed by the Jobs administration for threatening to speak against the free trade reforms.

- The online far-right of this world would be a lot more purist, constantly arguing over the fine points of fascism and refusing to participate in politics outside of protests. "Hitler did nothing wrong" is quickly becoming orthodoxy in right-wing spaces and anyone who disagrees is kicked out. Since antifa is inspired by paramilitaries that fought the brownshirts in Weimar Germany, their right-wing equivalent would literally call themselves the brownshirts.