Counterfactuals Killed The Bloggio Star

what_if_01_28.jpgCounterfactuals are usually the historical turf on which reactionaries tread. As AJP Taylor lectured more than once, “what if?” is not a proper question for historians to address.

Which is why “historians” like Victor Davis Hanson and Niall Ferguson love them so: after all, what’s better than going back into time to make the Lefties lose all the fights they actually won?

Playing with counterfactuals is wanking as a historical exercise. Yet, as a moral exercise, maybe there’s something to it?

Because morally, one doesn’t have to deal with the Hegelian problem of contingency in the same way: The ripples caused by a moral counterfactual aren’t, I don’t think, as problematic as the ripples that must be addressed by counterfactuals in a historical context.

Or, I dunno, maybe they are. Maybe I’m just warning you that I’m wanking, too.

Regardless, my following counterfactual isn’t meant as such to re-write an historical and moral event; my aim is not revision. Rather, it’s to explore whether a certain historical ripple (with which we are discontented), in reaction to an indisputably evil historical event, would have been any different had the first event been of a different causal nature. You’ll see what I mean, I hope:

Let’s say that since 9/11/73 there has been, in Chile, a paramilitary group that has sworn revenge on the US government for its instigation of, and participation in, the toppling of democratically-elected President Salvador Allende and the subsequent installation of the fascist (but Friedmanite neoliberal!) junta of Augusto Pinochet.

Let’s say that, post-Pinochet, this group has existed with little disapproval coming from the Chilean government. Yet, officially, the Chilean government does not recognise it as legal.

Now let us say that this group decided to exact its vengeance on 9/11/2001 on the United States by hitting the Pentagon with an airplane of kamikazes. This plane had no civilian hostages on it, and aside from what the United States likes to call “collateral damage” in instances when it dispenses death, in the Pentagon (secretaries and security guards and vending-machine repairmen, let’s say), there are no civilian casualties from this operation.

What would the reaction have been? Would the wingnuts demand we make war on Latinofascism? Would we have said that the real nexus of evil was not in Chile but in oil-rich Venezuela, so that’s where we must take the war to the terrorists?

Would such an attack even be reasonably considered terroristic by the American Left? Would certain Leftists gloatingly proclaim that the attack gave them a rush, with the knowledge that a war of civilizations that they’d always wanted was now a fact (as Hitchens did)? Would other Leftists such as the Chomsky-hating brigade rush to condemn anyone who insisted (as Chomsky and the late Susan Sontag did in the real event) that we not lash out stupidly, but rather consider why these attacks happened in the first place?

How much of a difference does it make that the real 9/11 was a terrorist act — in the strict sense of an act of violence against civilians? Is it possible that, no matter what the justification, wingnuts will feel that any attack, caused by blowback or not, is worth Empire in reaction?

Just wondering.

 

Comments: 45

 
 
 

Well, wanking is pretty fun. Speaking of which…

 
 

You’re confusing the goal (Empire) with the excuse (11 Sep 2001).

And you’ve stolen the first chapter of my novel, haven’t you?? The one where Ernesto Cardinale is elected Pope.

 
 

Am I a geek for finding counterfactual history just incredibly fun? Not necessarily educational (except in the most roundabout of ways), but fun.

 
 

I don’t think so, Jillian. After all, it’s fun as art or as a reverie.

It’s just that, when it’s practiced by professional historians, there tends to be a creepy aspect to it.

 
 

I used to find speculation fun; I don’t anymore. Maybe once all the wingnuts and fascists are safely interned in humane, resort-like camps with proper psychotropic medication regimens and appropriate sex therapy to wean them gradually off the masturbation, I’ll find it fun again.

 
 

Not exactly on-topic, but a large fraction of the country DOES believe in something like Latinofascism – i.e. that illegal immigrants are swarming into the country with the goal of bankrupting local and state governments, making us all learn Spanish, and eventually taking back the western US for Mexico. I’ve heard this quite a bit recently in arguments with my family out west – that there is a nationalist Latino group that wants to take back California (kinda like those Islamic militants that “want” to destroy the US).

My typical counterargument is typically along the lines of “well, I ‘want’ a yacht but that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to get one,” but they usually don’t get it. But it is somewhat disturbing to see the war-on-terror rhetoric applied to immigration issues lately…

 
 

Huh, what a coincidence. I happen to have a yacht I need to get rid of, fast. Just let me know where to mail it, RJ. Hope blood stains aren’t a problem.

Yours — Ally

 
 

Oh, go, Johnny, gonna fight the war
Shotgun in the morning at the local liquor store

You know it’s hard to keep the fighting clean

 
 

Everyone here has the best taste in music.

Seriously!!

 
 

What if Napoleon had a B-52 at the Battle of Waterloo?

That’s one of the best, in my opinion. But to address your point, I’d say that it would have made no difference whatsoever. Cheney, Inc. was determined to invade Iraq, and your scenario (no civilian casualties) would have provided the pretext, just as the actual events did. After all, Saddam didn’t have anything to do with 9/11.

As for taking the wingnut contingent along, just look at how willing they were to eat up the Santorum (ewww) of 1980s vintage chemical shells = da WMDzzz!!111!

 
 

Now that I’ve gone past the musical references and read the post…

Counterfactuals go exactly as far, and to the exact location, that the author desires them to. Only ‘ripples’ that trigger events leading to the desired conclusion are considered, with the rest washing out in a kind of universal negation (all of This doesn’t matter, so we’re left with That).

Just like the old What If? comics — they almost always proved that the storyline went in the right direction: ‘Why, if Jean Grey hadn’t died, Phoenix would have consumed the universe! See? We just proved it!’

 
 

The one counter-factual I always bring up is “What if… Spain had not been Christian when it invaded Mexico?”.

One of the popular defenses of past Christian atrocities is, “Oh, well that’s just the way things were back then; If it hadn’t been Christians, some other religion would’ve done the same thing”.

But, I’m honestly not sure that’s true. You’ve probably all seen me explain that previously in comments so I won’t re-tread it here.

 
 

What if the state of Israel had been planted in southeastern Nevada instead of Palestine?

 
 

Then Las Vegas would be one hell of a happening religious center.

 
 

The one counter-factual I always bring up is “What if… Spain had not been Christian when it invaded Mexico?�.

One of the popular defenses of past Christian atrocities is, “Oh, well that’s just the way things were back then; If it hadn’t been Christians, some other religion would’ve done the same thing�.

But, I’m honestly not sure that’s true. You’ve probably all seen me explain that previously in comments so I won’t re-tread it here.

Well, if Spain hadn’t been Christian, it would probably have been Muslim. And, thus, not driven by Muslim domination of the Mediterranean to find a cheaper, Atlantic route to the “Indies.”

But even then, had our plucky conquistadores been Muslim, and had they not been quite as nasty to the natives as the Christian Iberians were … well, Muslims carried smallpox, too. And epidemic disease was the big killer of Native Americans.

Probably we’d not have quite so many pictures of Our Lady of Guadeloupe in Los Angeles, though.

 
 

More to the point of this thread, though, it’s dead true that “counterfactual history” is to “history” as “wanking at the keyboard” is to “hot, steamy, sex with another live human.”

Niall Ferguson is one of the more insidious bastards practicing this kind of craft, insidious because his works tend to be very long and well-sourced. Which doesn’t make them “good.”

By far the most wankeriffic work in this genre I’ve ever encountered was Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South, as read by Dick Estell, the Radio Reader. Good God, was that book crap. Some wingnut from 1992 ships AK-47s back in time to the Confederacy and Massa Robert wins the Civil War for the South. Dick Estell’s flat delivery just added to the bizarreness.

“Why, Massa Robert, them newfangled muskets just done mowed them Yankees down!”

Ugh.

 
 

completely OT, but most assuredly FOUL….

CHICKEN RICE BAKE
1 (8 oz.) jar Cheez Whiz
1 1/2 c. rice, cooked & hot
2 c. chicken, cooked & chopped
1 (10 oz.) pkg. frozen peas, cooked
1 (2.8 oz.) can French fried onions
Combine Cheez Whiz and rice; mix well. Add chicken, peas and half of onions; mix lightly. Pour into casserole and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Top with the remaining onions and continue to bake for 5 minutes or until onions are lightly browned.

Could only be made better by adding Ranch Dressing mix and Miracle Whip….

 
 

Good god, did you get that recipe from Amber Pawlik?

 
 

Cooking for Pets: CHICKEN RICE BAKE
1 (8 oz.) jar Cheez Whiz
1 1/2 c. rice, cooked & hot
2 c. chicken, cooked & chopped
1 (10 oz.) pkg. frozen peas, cooked
1 (2.8 oz.) can French fried onions 2.8 oz carmelised onions
Combine Cheez Whiz and rice [with]; mix well. Add chicken, peas and half of onions; mix lightly. Pour into casserole and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Top with the remaining onions and continue to bake for 5 minutes or until onions are lightly browned. Yields four servings for Chihuahas or one serving for Labradors.

Phew. Disaster averted.

 
 

Remember when Kirk Douglas was on Saturday Night Live and they did a segment called “What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?”

Maybe I dreamed that. Either way, it was pretty funny.

 
 

Stickler, no question that Guns of the South was a silly book. But Turtledove’s other “alternate histories” — including a separate series in which the South wins the (first) Civil War and successfully secedes without the help of time traveling white supremacists — are actually pretty good. In that series, he traces a very credible history of the USA and CSA up through World War I, following a raft of characters and their families and descendants through the decades.

My biggest objection to his work, though, is that there is no end. He just keeps extending the history further and further forward. Which is interesting for a while, but eventially you just want a denouement.

Of course, there’s always the “What if aliens had invaded just as World War II was breaking out?” series. Or his series that parallels WWII in a fantasy setting. Both of which suffer from the same neverendingness.

 
 

Christopher – I had always thought that much myself, but I’m keen to hear a few creative arguments to that effect. Mail me?

 
 

Dan:

No, Guns of the South was not a ‘silly’ book. It was dreck. It poisoned the minds of our youth.

And, more to the point, counterfactual crap like that just does nobody any good. The South lost for a few good reasons — the best of them all being that the South had no economic basis with which to wage modern war.

If I gave the Hurons two dozen M-1 Garands, the French and Indian War would turn out differently, too. And if I gave Genghis Khan two B-29s and a couple of Tall Boys, then Western Europe would be speaking Uighur today.

And if I opened this bottle of Vaseline and called up a few disreputable websites …

 
 

Maybe I’m just warning you that I’m wanking, too.

Oh.
My.
Gawd!!one!
Young man, you put that back in your pants, right now!!1!

 
 

I agree that counterfactual history is a bad idea. But althistorical fiction can be fun, and it’s not all right-wing. Just check out Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (what if the Black Death had wiped out Europe before it could infect the New World?)…..

 
 

I agree that counterfactual history is a bad idea. But althistorical fiction can be fun, and it’s not all right-wing.

Put down the Vaseline. Althistorical fiction is crap. Period, full stop. Worse than Star Wars novels. People who read it should take up masturbation as a hobby. Seriously. Right wing, left wing, right hand, left hand … same difference.

If the Black Death had wiped out Europe (hey, here’s a thought: it almost wiped out half of Europe in real life!), then Asia would have discovered America and the Aztecs would have died from the same damned smallpox the Spaniards actually brought.

 
 

In fact, stickler, Robinson gets into that–it’s not utopian (for utopian, check out the Mars trilogy). If you don’t want to read it, don’t. He uses this silly reincarnation trope to get him through 500 years of world history and like all his novels it’s really talky and long. But it’s not crap. (I heard the same can’t be said for Steven Barnes’s stuff on slavery, unfortunately.) Anyway, who said crap can’t be fun? (Yes, I do enjoy historical fantasies like Gaiman’s American Gods and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sailing for Sarantium-and-after novels, which is probably even worse in your book.)

You sound like an ex-smoker on this one, stickler! What other forms of fiction do you propose we exclude from our ideal republic?

 
 

Your counterfactual’s got a lot of points of departure – it’d be easier with only one. If it’s meant for a metaphor for our current situation, it’s not a very good one.

I suppose historians of a certain cast of mind might dislike counterfactuals because they believe in great historical trends and inevitability, rather than contingency. So “What if Mason-Macfarlane had carried out his plan of shooting Hitler in 1935?” would be answered “Goering would have taken over as Fuhrer and the war would still have happened – German economic weakness and the reaction of the factory-owning classes against the workers made it inevitable”. For a Marxist-type historian, counterfactuals are just boring. For someone who believes in contingency and/or the Great Man theory, they’re fascinating.

 
 

I think the value of anhistorical fiction depends on what the author does with it. As an example, Eric Flint uses his 1632 series to explore the issues of just what it is that constitutes technology (organizational techniques are just as important as gadgets), what makes America successful (hard to explain in a short space — sorry), how we “moderns” differ from previous generations (a lot, but not because we are better or smarter), etc. In sum, he turns American society into a fish out of water and watches it adapt.

Having said that, Flint’s analysis is sometimes facile, and his writing style is a bit too “genre” for my liking. But it’s not just an exercise in justifying either the writer’s or the reader’s preconceptions, which is (I think) your complaint about Turtledove.

As for Turtledove, I find his stuff unreadable.

 
 

Hoosier X said,

June 27, 2006 at 4:21

Remember when Kirk Douglas was on Saturday Night Live and they did a segment called “What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?�

Maybe I dreamed that. Either way, it was pretty funny.

Yes, and the main joke was Spartacus going ‘wow!’ and the pilot deadpanning, ‘never been up in a plane before, huh?’

The comments about the Civil War remind me of that e-mail that circulates, threatening would-be visitors to the South with violence if said visitors fail to show the proper respect. There’s something in there about how much more genteel we’d all be if the South had one.

I always want to answer, ‘whatever you say, but the fact is I wouldn’t be reading this e-mail, dipshit, because your insistence on fetishizing the past means that if you’d won I’d be lucky to read anything from you out here in California, within six months of your writing it. Via Pony Express.’

 
 

I think the comment about marxist – vs. – Great Man historians is spot on. I’m much more interested in economic forces (don’t know if I’m a Marxist), so the Great Man counterfactual stuff is tedious to me. Crap, even.

Though I’ll sheepishly admit that I read Fatherland and enjoyed it.

There. I said it.

But even that book was crap.

 
 

I like Marxist ahistorical fiction myself. “What if the Mensheviks had prevailed over the Bolsheviks?” The mind boggles!

 
 

I disagree with most of you: counterfactual history isn’t anything like wanking; masturbation doesn’t hurt anyone and has some, like, health benefits or something.

Although I must say Retardo’s opening post has an excellent point. It’s quite disturbing to think about, as a passing conjecture. However, when one makes a career off of playing “What if?” it’s a bit creepy.

 
 

Although I’m not a fan of Niall Ferguson, his ‘virtual history’ book (the one he edited and wrote a chapter for) had a fairly strict definition of what you could call counterfactual: it had to base its point of departure from a specific decision or situation that could well have gone the other way.

 
 

Yes, because questioning our assumptions and national myths is *always* bad, bad, bad, and a bad thing to do no matter who executes it or what their ideologies are. Lords of Kobol forbid we ever engage in speculation, and the research necessary to do AUs properly! Let’s *never* ask “what if?” because that would be soooo uncool and utterly useless as a mental exercise…

The anti-fandom self-righteous smugness that’s starting to take over around here to the exclusion of all common sense is itself *extremely* wankeriffic. Don’t y’all dislocate your arms patting yourselves on the…backs, let’s say in the interests of politesse, in your mutual, um, admiration circle.

 
 

One of the popular defenses of past Christian atrocities is, “Oh, well that’s just the way things were back then; If it hadn’t been Christians, some other religion would’ve done the same thing�.

But, I’m honestly not sure that’s true. You’ve probably all seen me explain that previously in comments so I won’t re-tread it here.

I must call bullshit on this one. With imperialism, there’s going to be atrocities. That is a feature of imperialism and war even today (how many African con. Remember that Arabs engaged in the African slave trade long before white Europeans did, and that while Islam does preach tolerance towards Christians, Jews and Zarathustrians (a doctrine occasionally ignored by various Muslim rulers or mobs), I doubt Mexico’s indigenous people count. Under pagan Roman Spain, it’d probably be worse, though Rome might have let the natives keep their religion.

This article contained an interesting take on things:

“A really provocative question, not addressed by any historian I know of, is this. How much of the imperialism that was so prevalent in European history since 1500 is grounded in the fact that Europe was itself a target of imperialism for much of its history? First we have the imperialism of Rome and the Germanic invaders. Then Arab imperialism overwhelmed the Greek-speaking Levant, the Romanized coast of North Africa and advanced into Spain. The Vikings and Magyars harassed Europe from the north and east. Turkish invasion of Byzantine Anatolia was a root cause of the Crusades, and the Mongol invasion of 1241-2 barely avoided exterminating Europe altogether. Finally, even as Europeans were planting empires of their own, the Turks were advancing in the Balkans. Is it entirely inexplicable that Europeans, once they got the upper hand, would assume that imperialism was natural and become imperialists themselves?”

 
 

“If the Black Death had wiped out Europe (hey, here’s a thought: it almost wiped out half of Europe in real life!), then Asia would have discovered America and the Aztecs would have died from the same damned smallpox the Spaniards actually brought.”

But would the Chinese have declared war? Would they have burned every book they could get their hands on? Would Mayan writing have been wiped out?

I don’t know nearly enough about Asian history in that period to answer that question.

I’m actually starting to wonder if counterfactuals ARE entirely wanking; There’s a prevalent myth here in America that the European conquest of the country was inevitable, but it really wasn’t; It was the result of several different factors, and removing any single one would signifigantly change history.

The writing systems of central America were destroyed for exclusively religious reasons; Mexican scholars were interested in them, and the constant efforts to translate and communicate native histories show that they weren’t destroyed to demoralise the populace.

Eliminate Christian views on heresy and there’s a VERY good chance that Mayan writing would never have been lost.

You can do this with all kinds of other things, too; Eliminate Spains Tarascan allies and it’s quite possible the Aztecs would’ve won.

The same kind of thing applies all over North America.

 
 

Yes, because questioning our assumptions and national myths is *always* bad, bad, bad, and a bad thing…

Bellatrys, in future please try READING the post before commenting. Pretty please?

 
 

“Bellatrys, in future please try READING the post before commenting. Pretty please?”

I’m sure Bellatrys thanks you for your wise guidance.

I think he/she/it is spot on – the condecension dripping from stickler is positively cloying. Counterfactuals are but one tool among many as a means of exploring various ideas. Try to avoid an aneurysm expressing your disdain for the concept.

 
 

I think he/she/it is spot on – the condecension dripping from stickler is positively cloying. Counterfactuals are but one tool among many as a means of exploring various ideas. Try to avoid an aneurysm expressing your disdain for the concept.

I don’t think I’ve had an aneurysm … no, not so far as I can tell. And I don’t mean to cloy. Cloying people really suck.

But counterfactual history is, for the most part, utter crap. That’s not cloying, that’s just a fact. And when it’s done by allegedly-mainstream historians like Niall Ferguson, counterfactual history is even crappier.

 
 

Did anybody read Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream?

Adolf Hitler migrates to America after World War I and becomes a science fiction writer.

WOW! I love this book!

 
 

I think one point of good counterfactual historical fiction (it does exist–read Robinson before denouncing him) is to raise questions about the writing of history. Obviously as author you get to make things turn out as you want, so the quality of the ideas about history that you’re dealing with matter. Robinson engages different theories of historical causation and determination, debates in historiography, different forms of writing history, and a host of specific debates among historians. (Just to highlight the historical angle–there’s lots on ethics, religion, science, and much more….) Moreover, as a novel, The Years of Rice and Salt is open for readers to compare and contrast his version of the past several hundred years of world history with the real history, and in so doing, learn some real history, but more important, interpret the way the history is narrated and consider its implications.

That said, to get back to the counterfactual presented here, I’d say a quick read of Kinzer’s Overthrow and Klare’s Blood and Oil suggests that where there’s oil, there’s any number of ready rationales for U.S. intervention. So the Chilean-financed attack would have had to have ties to Venezuela or Colombia or Mexico–no wait, Cheney would have had to make ties to one or both to justify an invasion–perhaps some convenient conspiracy among the Latin American Left , from the Zapatistas to the Colombian narco-rebels to Chavez….

In any case, the main issue the original counterfactual raises for me is, why this shift into U.S. militarism and almost-imperialism this century? What was so dangerous about ’90s neoliberalism’s workings to U.S. elites that led the neoconservatives to repudiate it so strongly? Why the return of the imperial presidency this century?

 
 

In any case, the main issue the original counterfactual raises for me is, why this shift into U.S. militarism and almost-imperialism this century? What was so dangerous about ’90s neoliberalism’s workings to U.S. elites that led the neoconservatives to repudiate it so strongly? Why the return of the imperial presidency this century?

Best question posed on all of the Internets yet this year.

It’s not like Clinton somehow posed a mortal threat to capitalism, General Motors, or Exxon.

If I had to guess, it was a combination of greed and carelessness. Remember, big money capitalists helped put a certain partially-mustachioed loon in charge of Germany a few decades back. And that turned out swell for the big capitalists, at least at first. And after a while, the big capitalists were along for the ride and not calling the shots. And then the US Army Air Force bombed the crap out of their factories. (And a lot of people died, too.)

Anyhow, I would wager that many people took Lyndon Baines Bush to be a different fellow on first inspection than he’s turned out to be. There’s business-friendly, and then there’s stupid-as-a-post. Businessmen in the USA do not exactly have a sterling record at predicting the way the future will work (see, for example, General Motors). Enormous power does not equate to wisdom.

 
 

At least with WWII you could use a combo of ‘worldwide crisis of capitalism,’ ‘competition among rising powers,’ and ‘weakening of world hegemon’ scenario to explain the turn to national socialism (Germany) and imperialist expansion (Japan) among the challengers to the UK’s system versus state socialism (USSR) and social democracy (FDR’s US) among its defenders. Now I maybe see the third (Wallerstein’s The Decline of American Power is making a lot more sense to me in 2006 than it did in 2003), but where are the other two?

On the world economy side, I see a lot of crisis management going on (central banks around the world actually coordinating on raising interest rates and tightening money supplies, perhaps as a step to doing something about the massive imbalances in finance and trade between the US and Asia; economies around the world adjusting surprisingly well to higher oil prices…), but no crisis. And although I’ve read some about a possible Asian-Latin American political coalition (bringing Russia, Brazil, India, and China closer together as a counterweight to US, EU, and OPEC), such coalitions seem pretty ad hoc and defensive to me right now. Everyone still needs the US to be what William Greider has called the ‘buyer of last resort’ in the world economy and seems to be willing to use the US’s own tools (WTO, especially) to contest American economic policies through institutional means.

So what am I missing? Why is the world’s leading power acting like a trigger-happy rising power? Is there a lot less oil out there than the DOE is letting on? Are US elites really scared of major social upheaval in the wake of a major economic crisis or terrorist attack, and field testing their militaries’ urban warfare/counterinsurgency tactics for potential future use in U.S. cities? (Google “domestic militarization” and think about the rapid expansion of the US prison system in the last generation.) Everything I try to come up with sounds to me like the plot of a bad airport political thriller or a paranoid conspiracy theory. It comes down to the fact that I really don’t get the extremism of the Bush administration (Yoo/Addington/Cheney). Maybe it’s time to reread Silko’s Almanac of the Dead…..

 
 

I just found this page by searching for “Spartacus +’Piper Cub'” … just sayin’.

And to this long dead conversation, I will suggest Phillip K. Dick’s “The Man In the High Castle.”

It’s an alternative history, and I finally got to it some 20 years after first reading PKD. I don’t know why I kept skipping that one. It’s actually a crazy, beautifully written book about Eastern philosophy and American culture … I think.

 
 

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