It’s fantastic, I am usually skeptical of alternate history as they tend to be lazy and are often masturbatory, but this book is great.

Yeah, I was trying to be careful with my comment not to imply the reason for secession was “states rights” since there are still plenty of idiots who are happy to bang that drum.

They didn’t secede because they were told to stop slavery. They seceded because it looked that the national consensus was moving against the expansion of slavery to new states and territories, which would have limited slave states overall power in the long run.

They were very explicit that they were leaving to protect slavery as an institution, but to be fair nobody in power was threatening to abolish it when they did so.

I think I have seen Central America referred to as a sub continent, but that doesn’t really make sense other than to create a formal differentiation between them and USA/Canada.

North America is a continent.

I agree with you, but it would not have been within the margin of fuckery that allowed Florida to happen had Nader not be on the ballot. Gore did run a shit campaign though, all he really had to do was ask people if they were better off than they were in 92 and promise a continuation of the core of the Clinton policies and he would have won. Instead, he focused on distancing himself from a still very popular president and not being charismatic and largely allowed himself to be put in the position he ended up in.

It was my first election as an adult, Nader came to my college and gave his “both parties are the same” speech and I bought it because I was a dumb ass at the time and in fairness it was a lot closer to the truth then than it has been since.

To what end? Him running ultimately only helps the GOP. If the green party wants to advance progressive policy, they should focus on creating infrastructure to become an actual block that democrats need to work with. Siphoning votes away only helps republicans, Ralph Nader got George W. Bush elected as much as Gore’s shitty campaign did.

What does running as a spoiler actually accomplish? They are doing nothing but taking away votes from the democrat candidate* with no chance of being elected to national office. If you want better environmental policy, and actually want to accomplish it then the democrats are your only realistic option.

*I understand and respect that a good portion of Greens would not vote for the Democrat, but anyone who is likely on the fence is vastly more likely to vote D than R. I am also very happy to acknowledge that our voting system sucks and we should implement ranked choice nationally. I would like to the Green party as a viable option in the future, but it is not in 2024, all this candidacy is accomplishing is helping the republican nominee. I am still bitter that my first time voting was for Nader because I was dumb. I would honestly love to see examples of the Green party working to actually build up their base in local elections as that is the only way they are going to ever be viable and not just a spoiler.