"Stumbling Into Bad Alternate History" Or "Slumming in the Multiverse"

 

Despite Alternate History being one of my favorite subgenres of science fiction it carries the burden of absurdity far more than the typical space opera. Mention the idea of the Roman Empire never falling, the Confederate States winning the Civil War, or Nazi Germany conquering the world to any real historian and at best they will look upon you like a kindergarten teacher does a slow child. You will then receive a lecture spelling out how numerous historical factors assured history could not have happened any other way.

Instability of Roman imperial succession, barbarian invasions, corruption, societal changes, and even climate change all lead to the collapse of the western Roman Empire. With the bulk of manufacturing and manpower overwhelmingly favoring the Union, the southern states would eventually been ground down to dust. And as for Nazi Germany, despite the propaganda Hitler was one insane evil fucker who in many ways was his own worst enemy. Best example of the top of my head, Hitler looked down upon “Jewish Physics” destroying any real chance the Nazis would develop atomic weapons.

So stories of Alternate History largely remain in the background with those enjoying idle speculations on how real history could have unfolded better looked upon as kooks and nerds by those normies just looking to read about starship battles and space wizards fighting with laser swords.

Typically, Alternate History requires some basic but important and often ridiculous change to allow events to differ. In one Harry Turtledove novel entitled, Gun of the South it is time traveling, white South Africans jump back to the American Civil War and give Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia AK-47 assault rifles.

Long story short, when no deus ex machina is involved some real historical person is usually changed to be luckier or smarter resulting in the desired plot point. The problem with using that as the historical breaking point is that it strains believability. I’ve read a few essays by real historians who dip their small toe into the acidic Counterfactual seas and they usually conclude that the already existing situations and behaviors of those living in the past meant things just couldn’t have gone much different.

It leaves Alternate History novels, movies, and television shows in an awkward spot having to rely on some improbable event to move the store along. To build an interesting story and not write a boring rehash of actual history with small changes in minor details you have to push the envelope on the suspension of disbelief.

This is where real life and alternate history have intersected in my view.

Mistakes in history are common, and I’ll throw it out there that Trump’s 2016 election win was one of those situations. The Electoral College allowed Trump four years in the White House. Trump was a national and global embarrassment every time he spoke or acted. His stupidity alone resulted in the death of untold number of Americans during the pandemic. Then there were the events of January 6th, 2020 when he came close to overturning the election.

Any reasonable nation would have permanently tossed him aside never to speak his name again favorably.

But what did around seventy-seven million Americans do in 2024? They gave the bastard a win in the national popular vote. This was the very improbable- nonsensical- event that many alternate history stories rely on. It is not an exaggeration to absolutely say Trump has not one redeeming quality. He is the definition of a human parasite totally devoid of any ethical or moral restraints.

But somehow he and his syncopates not only convinced enough Americans that he had some talent with handling the economy but that he could solve international conflicts with an almost literal wave of his hand. If all of Trump’s political career were just an alternate history novel I would have to classify it as a satirical farce.

Ignoring the last eleven years since he rode the golden escalator down to the lobby of

his New York building, I would have never believed for a moment that “grab them by the pussy” man would become the president of the United States.

Even when I was a proud patriot of this country I never harbored any illusions about American Exceptionalism. This country has committed terrible crimes, even worse, we refuses to acknowledge them. But looking from 2015, you could have never convinced me that millions of Americans would sell their souls, either entirely or in part. The idea that millions of Americans would abandon the Constitution and the Bill of Rights unbelievable. A textbook example of the awkward, improbable event that alternative history stories depend on.

Carl Sagan was the first scientist that I ever heard mention the term “Multiverse.” Simply put that our universe resides in a sea of infinite other universes where history unfolded differently. Even at my most nerdy, I always found the concept to be too abstract to be taken literally. The Multiverse was something only theoretical physicists needed to play with seriously.

There is an old Chinese curse that says, “May you live in interesting times.” We sure as Hell won the Multiverse lotto on that one. I’d like to think that out there in the untouchable vastness of the Multiverse someone in a wiser reality is reading about our situation in an alternate history novel and throws the book away thinking no people would ever be so persistently stupid.

Cocoa Pebbles And The Farce We Call Civilization

 

 Started August 8, 2026

On the way home from work yesterday I remembered we were almost out of milk. And since part of my recovery plan from surviving another day at my job during hellish levels of South Carolina summer heat and humidity is enjoying a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles cereal; I knew I had to make a “short” side quest to the grocery store.

So, I chose to visit the Lowe’s Foods grocery store about two miles from my house. Since I was only picking up a gallon of milk I intended to use cash. Small purchases with a debt card just mean added fees and another pain-in-the-ass when it comes time to balance the checkbook.

Years before while visiting Key West I got a bit of a lecture from a clerk at a t-shirt shop about how how his store gets hit with different fees when debt cards are used. That on small purchases the debt card fees cut the profit margin to the point he might as well just give stuff away for free. The look on the store clerk’s face was one of genuine annoyance and pain.

Fucking banks. But since my purchases were just a couple of Key West bumper stickers I sheepishly put the debt away and pulled out ten bucks to buy the items.

But anyway, returning to the present I pulled the jug of milk out of the cooler and proceeded to the checkout. As I walked up the aisle I had pleasurable dreams of getting home, pouring Cocoa Pebbles into a bowl followed by the milk.

Dammit! My local Lowe’s Foods only had two full service checkouts open and the lines for both stretched somewhere from fifty to a hundred meters. Yes, I and totally serious. Now my local Lowe’s did have four self-checkout kiosks but in the infinite wisdom of corporate America they only take debt cards!

Fucking banks. So that should explain my strange and disjointed mention of the Key West t-shirt store.

As much as I would have loved putting the milk back and driving to another grocery store that just didn’t make any sense. There was a Publix a little over a mile down the road. But when you throw in the hassle of it all I decided to just suffer through and take my place in one of the checkout lines.

That’s when I noticed the lady at the cash register.

She was at least in her later sixties to early seventies. No, I’m not being unkind or exaggerating. And she was obviously new to that job. And since I’m a bleeding heart, social justice warrior, my assumption was that this lady was working to to make ends meet. This lady was catching Hell scanning items and figuring out how to input codes for things like fruits and vegetables. No one in this wide world would be able to convince me that poor woman was behind the cash register because she “wanted to stay busy during her Golden Years.”

Watching her I remembered some McDonald’s hamburger place propaganda from back in the 1990s. The suits in charge of the hamburger clown ran a series of commercials trying to recruit retired folks work for them saying a job there was a fun way to stay busy and meet people.

Holy fucking shit, the visuals during these commercials showed healthy gray haired folks flipping burgers, taking orders, and mopping the floors with huge inane smiles. The only older folks I ever saw working at McDonald’s back then were people struggling to perform the most basic tasks.

As with the older lady at the checkout at Lowe’s Foods it didn’t take a sociologist to understand I was seeing desperation.

How much money did the US Government spend for the war in Iraq? Last I heard a conservative estimate says four trillion. How much has been spent “fighting” Iran since that deranged pervert living in the White House last declared total victory?

Always plenty of money for war but don’t say a damn thing about diverting funds to help folks. They’ll call you a communist out to destroy Jesus, capitalism, apple pie, and all that other crap.

Eventually the checkout line moved enough for me to pay for my milk. I walked back outside knowing I would soon be enjoying my precious bowl of Cocoa Pebbles.

Hey, don’t give me any grief over my Cocoa Pebbles. Our world and country has been an absurd parody itself this entire century. With the rich and powerful manning the controls of the crapfest called civilization all each of us lowly plebs can do is find whatever solace is available.

Personally, I want to hang bastards from lamppost. But I get told that’s too extreme.

Captain Capitalism Has it Tough

 

About a month ago while surfing Reddit, I stumbled upon a post that linked over to an article where some billionaire I never heard of was upset about how the general public viewed people like him. There was a picture of this pillar of early twenty-first century hyper-capitalism with the article and it was pretty much what I expected.

The picture showed a white guy dressed in what was certainly a very expensive suit. The suit was a dark blue, the tie he wore was the standard Trump-approved red, and to finish off the statement of style and privilege his smile showed off an array of blinding white, perfectly symmetrical teeth. If American capitalism could convince Marvel Comics to create a superhero for the rich it would be this guy. Add a utility belt with pouches for credit cards around his waist and a cape he could then fly off to defend the downtrodded men and women fighting off the threat of evil socialism.

But that was the point of his article.

Usually I would have just read the comments by Redditors who both summarizes crap like this as well as offering up opinions. I guess curiosity got the better of me and I read the article.

Initially, Captain Capitalism started off whining about how disrespected he and his cohorts are by the general public. That their lives are tough and stressful because the well-being of the economy rests on their shoulders. People like him are “job creators” who work to expand the wealth of society.

Yeah, sure Skippy. Tell me about how tough things are for you.

I didn’t look into this guy’s background but being a billionaire makes me think you don’t have to worry about a place to live, putting food on the table, or finding a doctor. Unless he gets stressed out about deciding whether to take his personal luxury jet to summer in the south of France or to take it to New Zealand and enjoy winter in the southern hemisphere.

But Captain Capitalism biggest grip was how he felt common folk didn’t have a stake in the success of the economy. In the article he didn’t use the word “parasite” to describe those of us who deal with daily concerns like paying the mortgage and buying food, but it was heavily implied.

I’ll give the Captain one gold star for almost acting human. At least he didn’t mouth off like another of his brethren I heard back in the 2010s who thinks rich people should be awarded more votes in elections because of their importance. Yes, I mean that. Some rich guy I saw on CNBC believes that while the hoi polloi should be allowed a single vote in our democracy they should have some higher number. CNBC guy didn’t suggest a how many but I’m sure it would be high.

I’ll be honest, in the space of about twenty-five years I’ve moved from being a Colin Powell-Republican to independent centrist to now being a socialist. I am beyond sick of seeing working class folks, who have a real stake in how the economy and society works be played off against each other.

I’m sure in coming centuries historians will write about how bizarre it was that the vast majority of American society allowed the rich and powerful to manipulate their fears to keep power.

I’ll tell you the folks that have a legitimate claim to being vital to society. I saw a documentary once that showed the plight of the homeless in the bright sunny paradise of Hawaii. I don’t know which island this documentary took place but the local government had allowed these folks to build an old fashions shantytown someplace. We’re talking plywood and cardboard constructions with many of them having roofs covered by a plastic tarp.

This shantytown had a designated leader whose job it was to keep everyone in check. These folks had to always be on their best behavior. If drunken brawls broke out or if trash started to be noticeable the cops would come in and tear the place down. Which is damn funny since these folks have no other place to go. Affordable housing in the rest of the United States is already as rare as a Bigfoot sighting and in Hawaii it’s even worse.

Not that my opinion matters, but I despise the rich elites. The real people who have stake in society are those folks who fight everyday to keep a roof over their heads, put food on the table, and be able to have healthcare good enough they don’t have to fear getting sick or injured. The closest Captain Capitalism will ever get to encountering people living in that Hawaiian shantytown will be as drives over to one of those exclusive country clubs to play golf with his buddies.

In a much better world those golf courses would be taken over with the land being used to build affordable housing. But hey, that’s just me.

The Last Warm Place by Barry Napier

 

Philosophers and scientists have for thousands of years made a job speculating about humanity’s place in the universe. Sometimes I wonder about poor old Aristotle, if he could visit any decent observatory now and talk with cosmologists and astrophysicists how would he handle learning that his view of the universe was so completely wrong. Of course we have the high ground of over two-thousand, three hundred years since his death to figure things out.

And yes, I’ll hazard an assumption that humanity has pretty much got the basics figured out now. And no, I will not speak of all the new conflicting data we’re receiving from the James Webb Telescope. We’ve stirred up a shitstorm of issues with our models of the universe and what that brilliant piece of engineering floating out at the second Lagrange point about a million miles away.

But thing with science is that all the astrophysicist boys and girls are as happy as pigs in mud trying to rework their theories to fit the new data. That’s how science works.

The problem that occupies a small collection of poorly working brain cells my head is whether or not our science boys and girls might be missing something we can’t see. Or even worse something that our puny human minds can’t conceive. Some aspect of the universe or even the structure of reality that puts us back in the same category as my boy Aristotle.

That’s where the subgenre of “Cosmic Horror” makes its presence known.

Cosmic horror, for those with much better taste in reading, deals with the terror of realizing the universe does not give a flying damn about humanity. That we live in a vast, uncaring universe that has existed for almost fourteen billions years and our species just can’t comprehend how insignificant we are.

This is where the book I just finished reading comes into play. It’s entitled The Last Warm Place by Barry Napier.

Here’s the SITREP (situation report).

Time and Place: Pretty much our modern day world.

Giant slug-like monsters have begun appearing all over the Earth. Yeah, think Gozilla-sized creatures that flatten cities just like my atomic powered Japanese lizard buddy. And as you might expect the national governments of Earth are unable to stop the creatures with conventional weapons.

Since the novel is set in our current time societies all over the planet begin to fall apart. Not just because of the monsters. The only things that kills them are nuclear weapons. Here in the United States it’s mentioned that the government tried to evacuate the cities about to be attacked, but it was nightmarish chaos.

People are scrambling to survive and there is almost everyone is out to save themselves. That’s where the main character of Eric enters the story. He was in New York just before it got nuked and got away after saving a young woman named Kendra. Kendra had been raped twice in the chaos and as they make their way out of the city and move south Eric does his best to protect her.

Because of the sexual assaults Kendra is pregnant and gives birth months later as the two continue to head down the eastern seaboard. Eric helps Kendra deliver the baby and it is born healthy.

They are now a de facto family with Eric hopelessly in love with Kendra and the baby. Eventually they grow tired of moving and they take up residence in an abandoned house in rural Georgia and spend their times scavenging for food.

Because of the nukes and the monsters the world is a gray dead place. Think Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Eric and Kendra and the baby are surviving, but only barely. Things begin to change when two other survivors happen up the house Eric and Kendra are living. There is a short fight with the two stranger attempting to assault Kendra. Eric kills one and Kendra the other, but one of the dead strangers was carrying a piece of paper that says there’s a government run “Safe Zone” back up in Virginia. That paper is actually a ticket for admission and Kendra immediately wants to leave their house and head north.

Eric has reservations about leaving but with supplies getting harder to find he knows they will eventually starve if they stay. The trip north is dangerous but it’s fellow humans that pose the biggest risk. That is until Eric and Kendra start encountering these large burnt circular areas that other survivors call “nests.” These nests have strange effects on human minds and they are filled with creatures that don’t belong in our reality.

The Last Warm Place is not literature. But it is a damn good story of survival and fighting to retain just a small spark of hope and humanity. One of the things I liked the most was that Eric is not some highly trained soldier. He was just a decent and caring guy attempting to take care of his mother before the monsters appeared. As for Kendra, she was just a normal young woman working a standard 9 to 5 job.

Most post-apocalyptic books have the main characters as harden survival experts who already knew what to do in these situations. I got the feeling that Eric and Kendra only survived as long as they did out of sheer luck. More to the point I was rooting for that small family and hoping they would find a place where the baby could grow up. And yes, Eric and Kendra fall in love while heading north. They were both in love while living in house down in Georgia but their individual traumas kept them from admitting it to each other and themselves.

The main point of the book that hit me hard was the idea that there is a real possibility that we do not have existence completely figured out. That while highly improbable, the universe and the nature of reality could send something our way that defies our ability to comprehend.

Because Even Sasquatch Needs To Be Heard Sometimes

 

Some poor, foolish people out there might still wonder why I have become the blogger version of a Sasquatch. Like my mythical hairy counterpart I still lurk Blogger reading posts and maybe commenting from time to time. Its just hard to find the energy to give a damn.

Way back in the long ago 2000s and 2010s I was filled with rage over the disastrous Bush/Cheney Administration and their wars. Looking just at the surface of the situation the war in Afghanistan was justified in the sense that a legitimate terrorist organization was using the country as a sanctuary and training ground.

But George W. and Dick Cheney weren’t satisfied just to eliminate the Al-Qaeda threat. No, ever since Daddy Bush refused to overthrow Hussein for his oil buddies, those big boys were looking for any reason to force the US Government to drive up to Baghdad and take over all that black liquid gold.

I might be out of practice with my clever allegory, so let me say it plainly. The Iraq War was pure corporate imperialism. The best figures I can dig up say at least SIX TRILLION dollars disappeared into the Iraqi desert. And at least One-hundred thousand Iraqis died in Bush and Cheney’s attempt to control that country’s oil.

One of the many reasons Obama would win the 2008 election was to remove US forces from that country. One of the others being to clean up the banking mess. But strangely enough I admit Bush/Cheney didn’t directly cause that clusterfuck. That mess can be traced back for at least a couple of decades.

But I’m once again getting off point.

For years George W. Bush held the title of worst president of the United States. But history and the stupidity of the American people are never to be out done.

In 2016 a whole host of stupid decisions resulted in Donald Trump winning the electoral vote and becoming president. He was a criminal incompetent deviant back then but he had mistakenly picked several members of his cabinet who did their best to try and keep him in check. Of course, he lost the 2020 election and as his first term ended Trump attempted to overthrow the newly seated House of Representatives preventing them from confirming Biden won the electoral vote.

The result was four years of him buzzing around like an enraged horse fly while the Biden’s Attorney General twiddled his thumbs. Now throw in Biden’s failing mental acuity and the natural ability of Democrats to fuck up and we get Trump back into the White House.

We’re not even halfway through Trump’s second term and the national and global situation now makes the Bush/Cheney years look like a triumph of enlighten statesmanship. Oh dear God in Heaven, I’d love to jump back in time to the last couple of years of the Bush Administration and go inform my self-righteous younger self that no matter how badly Bush fucked up Iraq, the handling of the banking crisis, and the Hurricane Katrina response it was going to get so much worse.

I can objectively state that the Republican Party had been losing its mooring to reality as far back as 1996. It during that election that the late General Colin Powell was considering a run for the White House. At that moment in time he was held in high honor by the majority of Americans for his handling of the First Gulf War. Given the prevailing zeitgeist dominating the country with every semi-sane individual it was believed Powell could have beat Clinton for the presidency.

But no, I clearly remember all manner or conservatives nutjobs foaming at the mouth protesting the idea that Powell should run for president. Conservative monster Rush Limbaugh entertained callers on his radio show who said Powell was a traitor.

Powell’s supposed crimes ran all over the legal spectrum. Long story short, the bullshit reached a point that Powell’s wife told him no. And to be completely honest the lives of the Powell family was threatened by America’s usual collection of racists to the point the Secret Service knew what to prepare for when Obama became POTUS.

Looking back during the Republican primary for the 2008 presidential run I clearly remember thinking that the assorted space aliens in the Mos Eisley cantina scene in A New Hope looked more intelligent than the hopelessly distorted individuals running for the nomination. Every election cycle since then the Republicans have drifted further towards authoritarianism while pointing a bony finger at Democrats exclaiming we were all nasty commies.

But Trump’s one success can be compared to a body fighting a viral infection. He, his family, and the various little parasites that follow him have corrupted the country like a virus in such a way I don’t believe there is a real way back to “normal.”

Yeah, I get a chuckle reading my old posts from the Bush years. I’m a fairly well read guy when it comes to history and while I probably would have accepted the possibility that the US could do something as suicidal as electing someone worse than Bush, I wouldn’t have believed it for a minute.

I had an ugly, naive belief back then that while we Americans could make evil choices, we weren’t an inherently evil people. I’m not just faulting Trump voters. They’re an ignorant, hateful, fear-filled people ready to jump and kill the most current Fox News scapegoat.

But a full accounting for this mess has to include those folks who couldn’t vote for Hillary back in 2016. It doesn’t matter whether they voted third-party or stayed home. The result was Trump getting elected. Dying for your principles is fine, except when your sacrifice results in Trump picking three Supreme Court justices.

How many women and girls are going to die because Roe v. Wade was overturned? I honestly didn’t like Hillary but even my dumbass knew she would be better than Trump.

So, if your were wondering why I just can’t find the energy to cruise the blogosphere like I once did there it is. It’s late and my hairy Sasquatch butt is going to bed.

Prime Minister Mark Carney- The Leader of the Free World

 

News outlets are reporting that just today the Neon Orange God of American Proles has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if went ahead with a trade deal with China. The Neon God is worried that PM Mark Carney himself is angling to make Canada a “Drop Off Port” of Chinese good that will flood into the United States.

On the surface, what essentially is happening is that the Neon God is transferring his fears of little brown people coming up from the southern border to cheap Chinese electric vehicles crossing into the US from the north. 

I imagine Neon God is partially concerned about this situation because heaven forbid that Elon fucking Musk might actually have to play by the rules of the great game of capitalism. But the main reason Neon God is losing his ever decreasing supply cranial voltage is because the honorable Prime Minister of Canada is running rings around the supposed leader of the free world.

Truth be told, while Neon God, “the festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit” was at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos he clearly proved to the world that the United States is in full collapse.

Neon God’s obsession with acquiring Greenland- by force if necessary- will in more enlighten times in the future be studied by political scientists, historians, and anyone in the profession of treating mental illness. And while our erstwhile allies were able to placate America’s mentally challenged, narcissistic ruler and divert his attention to a different shiny object, just today he once again called the Canadian Prime Minister “Governor Carney.” Reminding everyone that Neon God was still fixated on making our patient and kind neighbor to the north, the “51st state.”

Where PM Carney proved himself to be a true leader was when he turned down Neon God’s invitation to his “Board of Peace.” This pissed off Neon God to the point he released a statement revoking the invite. Which I’m sure in Neon God’s decaying neural pathways he believes happened retroactively before Carney politely told him to fuck off.

What I really like about PM Carney is that he is emerging as the leader of a movement of countries to counter US, Russia, and Chinese global influence. If I had the PM’s ear I would be screaming into it for him to push hard for the movement to forge a new economic and military alliance because, like I and many others have mentioned, the United States should never be trusted again.

Even if Neon God and his low-IQ cohorts are expelled from power in 2028 the United States could very easily fall victim to the likes of such a fascist demagogue. In fact I’m sure it will happen because the average American hasn’t got the IQ of a rock. As a nation Americans are looking for easy and painless answers to problems that require years of patience and rational thought.

In fairness, I’m including the short-sighted and spoiled idiots on the left of the American political spectrum. The people who couldn’t vote for the black lady back in November of 2024 own a huge chunk of the blame for the deaths and damage Neon God has caused.

So to any of our Canadian kinfolk that might find this shout out to the blogging abyss, please support your Prime Minister! Work together with any country looking to preserve liberal democratic values because the alternative is US Army M-1A2 tanks rolling into Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Sandbar Exile

 

Had ChatGPT recreate what I saw. It's pretty close but the sandbar was longer.

Back in September my wife and I were returning from Florida after having spent a week visiting the Mouse and his friends. My motivation for being on this trip is, of course, my wife who is one of those “Disney Adults” some complain about. She’s always had a thing for Disney but her enthusiasm now is mainly a leftover from us taking our kids there back when they were small. 

I’m lukewarm at best about Walt’s creation now. Whatever “magic” existed for me has been smothered by decades of corporate greed. The goose that used to lay all those golden eggs was cooked long ago with the carcass cut into pieces and sold off at outrageous prices. At some point there’ll be a reckoning for the grossly charming and overpaid corporate personalities along with the swine-like shareholders but that’s in the future.   

But all things considered, it wasn’t a bad trip, the crowds were manageable and while we naturally paid an arm and a leg for the experience, I was able to unwind and relax. No, it wasn’t my idea of a perfect vacation but take what you can get these days. 

But it was on the drive home when I saw something that would have made Jimmy Buffett smile. 

Somewhere around northern Florida or southern Georgia we were on a bridge crossing an estuary when I glanced to my right. Someone had grounded a jon boat on a nice sized sandbar and set up one of those beach cabana shade tents. Naturally, since I was driving I was only able to look down at it for a second or two, but I noticed there was someone sitting in a chair under the shade. Beside that person was an open cooler. 

I haven’t a clue if that person was just the first to arrive and was waiting for others. Or did they just feel the need to get away from everyone and decided to use that sandbar for a short, self-imposed exile from the world?

I can’t overstate the urge I felt to slam on the brakes and stop to take a picture of the scene below me. But we were on I-95 with oodles of traffic behind us, so it wasn’t possible. Now that I’m back in the real world, I think about that person on the sandbar sitting under a cabana drinking a cool beverage way too much to be healthy.