Vote!

[kengr]

It's bad enough here.

But consider that on another timeline this is the 6th anniversary of the election of Nemiah Scudder as President.

Comments

[seawasp]

So you're saying Heinlein was only off by four years.

[kengr]

*So far* Trump isn't as bad as Scudder.

[crossing fingers & praying to $deity_of_choice]

[seawasp]

I suspect that SCUDDER wasn't as bad as Scudder in his first two years. Takes time to convert your country into a fanatical religious dictatorship.

Trump, of course, is at most a puppet for the religious groups; he doesn't give a crap about that himself.

[kengr]

Thing is, I've seen documentaries on some of the folks who were the inspiration for Scudder.

He'd have been fairly bad from the *start* simply because he'd won on the basis of his religious and social views.

Folks like Aimee Semple McPherson and Father Coglin are *scary*.

So we are talking about a radical televangelist who got elected *because* of his views and radicalism.

[fayanora]

I don't know much about Scudder. By the sounds of it, I don't want to. But it made me think "Who was worse, Furbish Lousewart V or Trump?" And Trump is definitely worse than Furbish Lousewart V. (President of Unistat in one universe of the Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy). Which makes sense, in a weird sort of way. While that timeline predicted a very gloomy world, Wilson was an optimist at heart, even when predicting doom and gloom.

[kengr]

Welll, even Heinlein couldn't bring himself to write the story of Scudder's rise to power (It's on his Future History timeline as "The Sound of His Wings")

But Heinlein's first non-short-story (If This Goes On... 1940) is set more than a century after Scudder was elected. It ain't the Republic of Gilead, but it's not at all good.

Heinlein did *way* too good a job of describing the sort of nation that would result from something like that.

I can loan you an ebook of it, or you can check the library for a copy of one of the books that includes the novella. Revolt in 2100 is one of the collections that has it.