Kent State in Warrior's World

[DHBirr]

There's a question -- not really important, but it's been nagging me for a while now. A reference in DWII seems to indicate that the U.S. never got into the war in Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos. Toward the end of Chapter 3 he compares the Knight Sabers' hardsuits to other local products:

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every other battlesuit that I'd seen or read about here had been a huge thing that reminded me of the old walkertanks from the French-Indochina Conflict of the 1960s

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So what I've been wondering is: what, in Warrior's World, ticked off all those students to produce the demonstrations that led to the Kent State shootings? What differing cause led to a near-identical result (including a near-identical protest song by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young)?
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[robkelk]

That reference doesn't necessarily imply that the US never got involved in the 'Nam. In the early 1960s, the unpleasantness in that part of the world was a French-Indochina conflict, even in our world - it wasn't until the mid-1960s that the US got involved.

-Rob Kelk
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[DHBirr]

True, but there's another quote I couldn't find, and wasn't sure I'd actually seen, when I posed the question. From Chapter 7, when Doug gives Lisa the quick look at Warrior's World history:

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Richard Nixon attempts to cancel the 1972 elections and fails; Indochina explodes in blood and rain as the French walkertanks crush all resistance

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All the other images at least seem to be in chronological order, which implies that the French victory in Indochina occurred after or in 1972.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, I'll fess up. It's a glitch.
I invented the Indochina details simply for the "alternate world" flavor -- and when I decided to use "Ohio", I simply wasn't thinking of those details.
Maybe I should set a challenge for a DW "No-prize" -- come up with a believable explanation for the WW Kent State.
-- Bob
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Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[DHBirr]

Oops, sorry.
I feel like Hyman Kaplan bringing in the word "eumoirous."
Right off the top of my head, I'd suggest that since the WW USA wasn't tied up in 'Nam, they were getting into similar trouble somewhere else -- likely the Middle East or Central America, but maybe a clash with somebody (like WW Japan) who wasn't a problem in our universe.
It might be fun, though, to work out a 'verse in which what they protested at Kent State had nothing to do with war and everything to do with a president trying to increase executive power at the expense of citizens' freedom. Perhaps there was an earlier version of Watergate, and it blew up in their faces even worse than the one we know.
G. Gordon Liddy once admitted in an interview that he would've been willing -- distressed, but still willing -- to murder an innocent bystander (the example was if a beat cop caught him during a break-in) to cover up one of his operations in support of the President. Suppose he did kill a policeman -- and got caught anyway, and somebody like Haldeman or Ehrlichman was stupid enough to demand that charges be dropped in the name of executive privilege, and the local law wasn't willing to play along ("The bastard murdered one of our boys!") and raised a nationwide stink.... There's an irony there, 'cause it raises the image of cops siding with the protesters.
Was the Trickster forced to resign in WW?
I know it doesn't really matter -- I'm looking into this too deeply -- but alternate history is possibly my favorite aspect of science fiction.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Bob Schroeck]

Hmmm. You know, there's possibilities there... cops + college students on one side, National Guard and government supers on the other... A bigger crowd might explain the larger number of deaths, too.
-- Bob
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Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[Ebony]

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A bigger crowd might explain the larger number of deaths, too.

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Not to mention the presence of armed protestors (i.e., policemen) would escalate the whole situation much faster and with much more dire consequences. Kent State was bad, but if the students had been shooting back, it would have been a massacre.Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Valles]

Another possibility:
France was one of the 'Free Powers', stet? An American ally. If it had been deemed neccessary by the French government that Indochina was a winning proposition in power terms, they would at least have tried to keep it. And the US would have helped, because, hey, stronger ally vs. Those Damned Filthy Commies.
Imagine how well that situation would go over with the peace movement.
Ja, -n

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"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to kill you quite horribly now."

[Bob Schroeck]

So there would still be a draft, and an American presence, but it wouldn't be an American war. That would give us much the same social dynamic as the "real" 60s but leave the war in the symbolic hands of the French. Hmm.
-- Bob
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Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[Kokuten]

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Not to mention the presence of armed protestors (i.e., policemen) would escalate the whole situation much faster and with much more dire consequences. Kent State was bad, but if the students had been shooting back, it would have been a massacre.

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IIRC, one of the points of the Kent State protest was that it was a _Peaceful_ protest. It's not beyond the pale for the policemen involved to have laid down arms (symbolicaly or literally) as a part of participation in this, which keeps your escalation back to 'normal'Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Ebony]

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IIRC, one of the points of the Kent State protest was that it was a _Peaceful_ protest. It's not beyond the pale for the policemen involved to have laid down arms (symbolicaly or literally) as a part of participation in this, which keeps your escalation back to 'normal'

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Oh, I get that completely. My point is that if cops crossed the protest line and joined the protestors on site, rather than in advance, when the National Guard starting shooting, there would be armed cops among the protestors that would shoot back. Not to mention unarmed cops who would do their damnedest to get weapons from the Guardsmen. Idealists who believe in joining a peaceful student protest probably also believe in "To Protect and Serve." Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Acyl]

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France was one of the 'Free Powers', stet? An American ally. If it had been deemed neccessary by the French government that Indochina was a winning proposition in power terms, they would at least have tried to keep it. And the US would have helped, because, hey, stronger ally vs. Those Damned Filthy Commies.

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I rather like the idea of the WW's version being strictly a French-Indochina conflict... and one with a bloody French victory, at that.
I mean, consider the attitude with which France approached its colonies. President De Gaulle, yeah? He said it was not possible for France to recove vigour, self reliance and consequently her role if she gave up the colonies. And that France excluded any idea of autonomy, all possibility of evolution of the empire outside the French bloc; the eventual constitution, even in the future of self government in the colonies is denied.
Which is pretty harsh terms. Of course, we know what eventually happened - they didn't manage to hang on to any of those colonies...and large-scale disasters in Indochina and Algeria when they tried to use force. That eventually doomed the Fourth Republic.
Couple of things here, though. The French government was pretty much a multi-party system, and hence...not really all that strong. Opinion polls from the period seem to indicate the French people themselves weren't all that commited to the Empire. They believed it was a good idea to hang on to the colonies, sure...but...y'know, is it really worth all that?
But if, say, there was a stronger French government, greater resolve among the French public, and a heckova lot stronger French military (WALKERTANKS WIN!) ...
As for the US supporting that kind of conflict in Indochina... it isn't terribly farfetched. I mean, many people like to think that the United States was all rah-rah about granting independence and self-government to the old European colonies after WWII. Democracy and all that, right?
But really, the US didn't do that much to promote decolonization. For a while after WWII, a lot of folks in Britain and France believed they still needed to cling onto the colonies, onto, y'know, power. For as long as they could. And the US didn't seem particularly inclined to hurry 'em.
After all, you need strong allies against the Commies...
-- Acyl

[DHBirr]

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As for the US supporting that kind of conflict in Indochina... it isn't terribly farfetched.

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And if the U.S. supported the kind of brutal racist suppression Acyl suggests -- the equivalent of My Lai as openly stated policy -- it might even have been a contributing factor to the hardliners in WW Japan coming to and holding power -- a revulsion against anything to do with the U.S.A., including democracy.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Bob Schroeck]

Mm. I like that. I could work with that, if I'm ever needed to explain that whole thing.

-- Bob
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The Internet Is For Norns.