History Headscratchers / Victoria

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[[folder: The Alternate History Novel]]
* How does Retroculture, where computers and automation are strictly banned, coexist with Victoria's resurgent industry and end-story scientific preeminence?
** Computers aren't banned, just socially discouraged. Rumford says it was about 80 percent of the people who joined the anti-tech pledge, so the remaining fifth or so are free to use them if they like, and presumably do. As for whether that's enough to make the country scientifically advanced--Well, maybe, maybe not. Most of the rest of the world is seemingly post-apocalyptic, so they might be ''relatively'' advanced. Though you'd still think this setting's huge, ultra-high-tech Imperial Japan would be far ahead. Possibly the Victorians just specialize in some rather narrow fields (like cold fusion) and dominate those--kind of like the Swiss do with watches, or the Swedes with ball bearings?
** Also, the anti-tech pledge does not apply to medical or military industries. Since those will necessarily require a broad support base, one imagines that there is room for significant technology use even by those who adhere to it.
** About the "20% of Victorians still use computers" thing: how long would that be allowed to continue? In RealLife, tyrannical governments ban or severely limit internet access to keep people from plotting against them, or just learning things their leaders don't want them to know. Not only that, Victorian society is based on reviving the GoodOldWays through strictly (and violently) enforced conformity. Wouldn't most Victorians come to see computer users as a threat?
* Why does the federal government just back down on the blockade of Victoria when Russia sinks one of their ships?
** Because this future United States was a shadow of its former self, with the economy tanked and literally half the country in open revolt by then. President Warner realized that his weakened regime was in no shape to bumble into a serious and potentially nuclear conflict with Russia at that point. His only chance was to defeat the secessionist governments in detail one by one while playing for time, hoping for more assistance from Japan (the new global power that [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld replaces]] US hegemony in this future history). He was playing the hand he was dealt, and his strategy even seemed to work for a while, so his judgment was very arguably better than that of the Navy (who wanted to escalate) in that case. Their plan would most likely have seen the Japanese subsidies withdrawn, which would spell near-instant doom for the zombified American economy. Indeed, that's pretty much ''exactly'' what happened later when General Wesley (who was a better military tactician, but less politically savvy) took over and tried to play hardball.
** Even in that context, it makes no sense for the United States to simply bend over and accept the deliberate sinking of a U.S. Navy warship in U.S. waters. Unless Russia was willing to escalate to nuclear war over the United States exercising sovereignty over ''its own waters'', how much could Russia possibly do to threaten the United States militarily? Did the Tsar somehow build a Navy to surpass the wildest dreams of the Red Fleet in just a few years, one not only capable of controlling the transatlantic/transpacific SLOCs but with the sealift necessary to attack the mainland United States? Why would Japan withdraw its support - do they ''want'' Russia to succeed in their competition for global power? Would not the murder of hundreds of Navy servicemen right off the coast of Maine be a powerful tool to unify the nation against a foreign power and its New Englander proxies?
** Much or most of the US population (and certainly in the secessionist states) no longer identifies with the Federal military by that point in the story, but views it simply as the mercenaries of the regime. So to them, Imperial Russia sinking the ''Gonzalez'' is less murder of servicemen and more an ally landing a blow against the hated enemy and making sure the reverse Lend-Lease gets through. Meanwhile, the international grand politics as presented are somewhat muddled (the POV has only limited intelligence on the Federal Government's privileged diplomacy), but the implication is that the Czar ''is'' willing to play for keeps, or at least bluffing convincingly to that effect, and so the Japanese are leaning hard on the Old US remnant not to call his threat (because nuclear war will mean bad things for them, too). Also, with the Feds having lost effective control of most of the CONUS, along with the relevant bases and most of their more capital-intensive military capabilities, they might not even have enough intact delivery systems left to be a credible "MAD" threat to Russia in a hot nuclear showdown scenario.
** As for naval stuff, we never get an OOB for the Imperial Russian Navy, but in roughly the same timespan, Japan has several operational [=CSGs=] (with US-style fleet carriers, not the helicopter carriers the present-day JMSDF uses), and even the Islamic coalition has the logistics to launch intercontinental expeditions. The details are vague, but clearly something (possibly connected to the crises that brought the Czar to power in the first place) happened to massively increase naval building across the board in the setting's recent backstory. So it's very probable that the Russians, too, are much more powerful at sea than in real life, at least in absolute terms.
* Why stop the bombing campaign because a handful of pilots and their families were taken hostage?
** The book says it was pilots and air crew who were taken hostage, not families IIRC. More to the point, this ''doesn't'' make the government give up the bombings; President Warner explicitly orders that they should continue. It's just that they're sabotaged by secessionist sympathizers in the Air Force who dump the bombs off target or just refuse to fly, so they are ineffective and eventually peter out. Though only temporarily at that; the Joint Chiefs prepare a new bombing offensive to commence only weeks later, presumably having replaced the disloyal pilots by then.
* Whatever happened to Snidely Hokem? Last we saw the Governor of Vermont, he was kidnapped and held captive in a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico, apparently with the intent of keeping him until his term ran out, which could be years.
* If everything is fine and dandy in the South, why is Rumford thrilled over the resurgence of the KKK?
** Everything ''isn't'' fine. It's laid out at length how the "New South" is causing chaos, disaster and racial strife, with full-blown civil wars in Florida and Louisiana. When the Klan makes its reappearance, it's basically just one more faction in the apocalyptic chaos.
* The story seems to just kind of forget midway through that half the South seceded from the New Confederacy and set up their own government.
** That's actually addressed in-story. The "New South" faction was effectively decapitated when its leaders were killed in Operation Sherman (the bombing of Atlanta). After that, loyal Confederate troops mopped up the demoralized remnants and reoccupied the whole Confederacy with relatively little effort. There's a speech by President Yancey announcing the pacification.
* So ''every'' woman pilot panics and bails at the first sight of the enemy?
** No. It's really exactly the opposite that happens in most of the air battles with Azania: their female pilots stay and fight it out to the bitter end, even with cannons after the missiles are used up--and so get chewed up by the more experienced dogfighters in the Confederation's air legion, with only a few survivors getting away. Whatever their other faults, the Azanians are not ''cowards''.
*** Actually, the NCAF has no more real dogfighting experience than the AZAF. We are never told about any NCAF air-to-air engagements before Azania; the closest they get is running away from the Royal Saudi Air Force over Boston. The USAF has only shot down one enemy jet in combat since 1999, so they can't be relying any veteran dogfighters from the old days either. We're even told the F-16 NY Air Guard wing which forms the core of the NCAF is trained for ground support, not as air superiority specialists. The Boys from Utica should at best have the same level of experience as Azania's cadres of ex-USAF female pilots. The AZAF sucks simply because Lind believes girls cannot think in three dimensions.
*** The impression Rumford gives is that whereas most NC pilots are still USAF veterans, Azania needs to train new ones in a hurry. This would also make sense in a semi-realistic scenario, assuming military demographics in the alternate history ''Victoria'' timeline are similar to real life, since even in the Air Force (the most "gender-equal" service IRL) women make up something like 20 percent of the officer corps as a whole at most as of today, and considerably less than that when it comes to combat-qualified pilots. So Azania's initial trained manpower base is likely much smaller, even assuming that close to 100% of the former female officers want to get behind their "Feminazi" politics (which is not necessarily a given, either), and quite inadequate if they "inherited" USAF equipment and personnel in roughly equal proportions before phasing the men out of the service. (Even more so, of course, if they keep building new planes themselves.) They will have a cadre of former regime personnel, but most of their pilots will still be new, and so less experienced (and most likely also less well trained) than Rumford's people. Also, his force's doctrine heavily emphasizes dogfighting along with other old-school things, which high-tech Azania probably doesn't to the same degree.
* When the bishop is burned at the start of the book, it's made clear she could choose exile at any point by renouncing her episcopal status or her Christianity. At the end, we see her trial in which she explicitly denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, so why did she burn?
** She still claimed she was a Christian, though. Just a heretical Christian who worshiped [[LoveGoddess Astarte]] and did not believe in the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ.
* At one point Cuban troops are mentioned being brought in to Florida to reinforce the Hispanic gangs/communities against the Blacks. It seems unlikely in the extreme that any Florida Hispanic (themselves largely Cuban ex-pats) would welcome Cuban troops as protectors.
** In a ''civil war to the death'' against the Haitians, with hundreds killed every week? It seems on the contrary, rather probable that they would dearly prefer Fidel Castro III (or whoever) to Papa Doc wannabes--assuming the fictional Cuba is even still communist in the 2030s, which it might not necessarily be.
* Exactly no government in the history of the world has ever agreed to something like the dual-sovreignty deal where Mexican citizens can move freely within the South-Western US and Mexican law will apply equally, besides the feds arguably not having the authority to make that call on behalf of the states. So why try this grand social experiment, apparently unprompted by Mexico, while everything is already falling apart?
** Since that's literally a continent away from Rumford's POV, we don't get all the details, but the impression is that the government had already lost effective control over those areas and was more or less just acknowledging a fait accompli. Those states were over 50 percent Mexican by population by then, and the federal government seemed to enjoy only very weak authority over them. President Warner probably couldn't have taken back control if he'd tried; even Azania, the wealthiest and most advanced of the post-American states, had to give up southern California as a lost cause after the Mexicans there revolted in roughly the same timeframe.
* So the various Christian church heads forgive each other and reconcile, somehow, but... the Catholic and Orthodox churches have a rather specific and incompatible hierarchy, and it's difficult to imagine many sects embracing the "Whore of Rome." How does that work?
** That's at the very end of the book, and it's really only the beginnings of the negotiations that are mentioned, so it's never elaborated, but if you want to speculate, it's probably aided by a combination of less steep sectarian divides in a more secular future on the one hand, and post-apocalyptic chaos generally upsetting the status quo on the other. When you have WMD wars against a MiddleEasternCoalition and literal Barbary Pirates raiding the Mediterranean, some kind of reaction based on shared Christian heritage becomes relatively more likely.
* Why would Muslims specifically crucify Christians? Its not something they have a particular history of doing.
** Crucifixion is a legitimate punishment for "those who wage war against Allah" in traditional Islamic law, and is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion#Modern_use still on the books]] in several Islamic countries today. Of course, Ayatollah Ghorbag's men use it rather more indiscriminately than most real-life, present-day Muslim states, because they are violent religious extremists in a dystopian future history.
* More for the author than the story, but why would Lind choose to open to one of the evil feminist Cultural Marxists walking serenely to her death (burned at a stake)? Especially since we're then introduced to Rumford as he makes a heroic stand by... refusing to allow a woman to participate in a Marine ceremony honoring their war-dead, thus disrupting the ceremony.
** From a Doylist perspective, presumably he wanted a shocking opening scene to draw in the reader's interest. It might also be pandering to the right-wingers in the fan base. For instance, the notorious Creator/VoxDay wrote that this scene was what made him support the book:
--->'''Vox Day:''' And let's face it, no book that begins with the burning of a female Episcopalian bishop at the stake is uninteresting. That's what made me read it in the first place.
* Antismoking laws are what start the general uprising? Or was it gangs seizing Newark, getting displaced by angry citizens, only for the army to come and restore order in favor of the gangbangers?
** In Maine, it started with the mass rape/massacre of a class of schoolchildren by paroled felons moved into a housing project in Bangor by the Federal Government. The first de jure secessions by various State governments came just after the Newark episode, following hyperinflation, pandemics and escalating general tyranny.
* Rumsford is desperate for William Kraft to assume leadership of the Northern Confederation, and is delighted when he realizes that Kraft will agree to do so if the King of Prussia (or rather, the Hohenzollern pretender to the vacant throne) commands him to do so. This begs the question: Why is Rumsford, or anyone, okay with their arch-libertarian free republic being governed by a man who considers himself the loyal subject of a foreign monarch?
** The issue basically just never comes up. Rumford and the other rebel leaders simply have such confidence in Kraft that they trust him to do what is best for the Confederation. Though realistically, Kraft's close relations with the Russians and Prussians could arguably be part of his ''appeal'' as a prospective Governor, at least within the rebel leadership, since he can use those high-level connections to increase support for the NC (and has done so already, at that). Sort of like how, say, if you're a pragmatic elder statesman in real-life Great Britain, you'll probably want a Prime Minister who sees eye to eye with the POTUS of the day, even if the "Special Relationship" isn't very popular with the masses.
* Early in the war, a loyalist F-35 is shot down by a Russian "advisor" armed with a Strela MANPADS. A few paragraphs earlier, it was explicitly stated that the F-35s were conducting their bombing runs at high altitude in order to avoid the rebel MANPADS - indeed, this is the reason their bombing runs kept missing their targets (Lind does not believe in the concept of precision-guided munitions). This particular F-35, however, ''after'' its failed bombing run, zooms straight over the advisor and is promptly shot down. Why did the pilot decide to descend to inside the enemy's air defense envelope when he was trying to RTB?
** To be pedantic, it was an Igla (SA-18 "Grouse"), not a Strela. As for the plane... possibly trying to dodge radar and more serious Northern Confederation anti-air by flying low? Rumford, of course, knows they have precious little of that, and none in that area, but Fed intelligence might not. Or it might be technical issues forcing it due to decaying maintenance, or even pilot error. Rumford acknowledges the whole incident is basically a fluke; downing an F-35 with a single SA-18 is somewhat unlikely at best, no matter how low it flew.
* Why doesn't Azania operate any form of AWACS in 2040? Airborne radar is a hard counter to the nearly 100-year-old Vietnamese interceptor tactics which Rumsford's F-16s use against the Azanian Air Force's F-35 raids (why were these strike packages flying unescorted in the first place...? why do the enemy immediately revert to ALCM fires instead of trying again with an escort to pick off the lone trailer F-16s with AMRAAMS...? how to the F-16s even maneuver up behind the strike without being engaged at BVR...?). A JSTARS or Sentry would inevitably detect the F-16s trying to position themselves high behind the strike force (especially high, considering this strike is flying over the Rockies) - far more efficiently than the ramshackle GCI Rumsford describes coordinating the defense. The Azanians are otherwise described as an extremely high-tech force which was able (somehow) to preserve a large fleet of F-35s, F-22s and even B-2s. Why were they somehow unable to preserve, acquire or build an AWACS platform, the linchpin of the USAF for fifty years?
** To take the last first, acquire from whom? The significant high-tech powers (Japan, Russia, perhaps Germany and such other Euros as survive and remain somewhat functional) are all more or less on board the Retrofuturist train by then, and so friendly to the NC (and likely hostile to Azania; certainly they don't protest the war against them). Maybe China, but they are strongly implied to stay out of the Americas after their fiasco in Cascadia. As for building... Well, that may actually be more probable; we aren't specifically told if they can put together military-grade aircraft from scratch, but this should be at least somewhat likely if they can maintain their large air force and throw around cruise missiles like candy (as well as given the state of their economy in general). Leaving the original question. It might be that they ''do'' have airborne radar platforms offscreen, but aren't willing to risk them to support their air raids on the frontline states in the Rockies, and then they end up not mattering much anyway when the NC ground invasion blitz snowballs and Azanian command and control starts breaking down. True, O'Hearn doesn't mention them in his briefing, but the tally of planes he gives in that scene probably isn't meant to be comprehensive, since he lists only fighters and bombers by type.
*** They certainly are not flying AWACs, even over their own frontier airspace - otherwise the whole "ambush an F-22 and replace it with an F-4" operation would have been impossible,[[note]]of course it ''is'' bafflingly implausible on multiple levels to start with[[/note]] since the F-16 ambushers and the F-4s all would have been visible setting up the attack.
** More generally, while Azania is high-tech and at least relatively successful economically, the one resource they ''are'' indisputably short on is (no pun intended) military manpower. At the time of the war, they've been scrambling to build up their forces as fast as they can for some time, and so a lot of their personnel are newly (and given the emergency rushing things even more, very likely inadequately) trained; presumably, this will be that much worse with technical specialists and higher-ranking officers. Such shortages explain a lot of their displayed examples of tactical ineptitude (which Rumford's biased POV otherwise tends to ascribe to intrinsic female inferiority).
** On mission-specific force composition specifically, it's also worth noting that at least most of the F-35 sorties in the early phases of the war ''were'' air supremacy missions with combat configurations, sometimes escorting recon or insertion flights. Most of the cruise missiles were either drone-launched, or else longer-range ground-based stuff stationed outside the AO.
* Why do the Azanians never conduct SEAD missions to destroy NC radar sites? If for some reason they don't have antiradar missiles, why don't they ever use their extensive EW capabilities to jam the NC's radar? Rumsford's low-tech early warning system depends on only a few radars, all imported from the other side of the planet, which makes it laughably fragile. He had ''just read'' about the Vietnam War to prepare himself for this campaign - what led him to assume an air force following the doctrinal tradition of the USAF would not conduct Iron Hand runs to suppress enemy IADS? Did he forget that the USAF learned its SEAD doctrine from operations against exactly the kind of Soviet air defense radar he just bought?
** The radar stations are mobile and kept activated only in brief spurts to make identification and targeting more difficult. Moreover, Rumford's SIGINT unit has access to at least a lot of the Azanians' internal military communications more or less in real time--how realistic ''that'' is is another question, with Azania said to have good computer and commo systems by in-setting standards, but it's there--and so he and his staff know in advance where their strike forces are going, and use radar only to supplement that intelligence when they coordinate the interception flights. Conversely, they can presumably also use that advance warning to avoid SEAD strikes, or at least render them less effective.
* How exactly do "Formation Effects" defeat Azanian AIM-120s? In order for this to work as described, the F-16s would have to hold a formation tighter than the fire control radar's target resolution - so that it confuses the group for a single object - but also loose enough that the formation centroid is further away from the F-16s than the proximity fuse of the missile. Otherwise, the missile will explode in the center of the formation, damaging everyone at once. Specific figures for the target resolution of the F-35's AESA radar the AIM-120's active seeker and the lethal radius of the AIM-120's warhead are not publicly available, but we know target resolution for terminal guidance must be at least high enough to put the missile ''somewhere'' near that radius of the target before the proxmity fuse triggers. Even if the formation works as advertised, there will be a dozen 40kg warheads passing through in close proximity to the F-16s - and they aren't going to pass exactly through the centroid, but within a circular error probable around it, which means the formation must loosen up further to avoid detonating the proximity fuses - at what point are they going to be looser than the target resolution of the seekers? What if the F-35s launch from closer than BVR range, where their AESA radars can provide more precise targeting? What if the formation is engaged from any position other than dead ahead or dead behind, or from multiple directions at once?
** Technical specifics aside (which as noted will depend both on classified information about RL systems, and/or how those stack up to the fictional upgraded future versions the Azanians use), the tactic doesn't have to be foolproof to be worthwhile if it still ''reduces'' the danger from missiles. Though picking the battlefield is more important; Rumford is at least smart enough to try to force most of the air battles at low speeds and altitudes in the mountains, where long-range weapons and sensors are less useful and his force's advantages (experience and pilot skills) are maximized.
*** It doesn't reduce the danger from missiles. An AIM-120 detonating in the centroid of a tight formation will damage, if not destroy, the entire group. Rumsford also isn't forcing the action at low altitude or at low speed - the text explicitly says both F-16s are flying in trace "high and behind" the F-35s (granted one of them actually is there to draw off the escorts, so it is true that there at least were escorts involved), so they're actually running a high-altitude pursuit. And this still does not explain how these interceptors, which are flying with "a couple miles separation" are not engaged by the escorts' AIM-120s at standoff distance, since obviously they are not holding a diamond formation here. Are we meant to assume that every NCAF pilot successfully evaded every AZAF radar-guided missile and still managed to close the distance and engage on favorable terms?
*** As Rumford explains it in theory, the missile is supposed to pass through the center of the formation without detonating. I don't think we ever actually see it in action, though. More generally, the comment the previous one was responding to concerned the overall NC air strategy, not the specific incident in view here. Most of the attritional air battles, at least the ones described in any sort of detail, are low and slow affairs where tight flying about the mountains is required and most losses are apparently inflicted by cannon fire.
* Did the Muslim UN peacekeeping force which deployed to Boston forget to bring anti-aircraft artillery? Otherwise, how did the NC's handful of F-16s manage to penetrate an IADS comprising both surface warships and land-based SAM sites? We know their radar could pick up the inbound fighters with ample time to scramble the entire airbase, and we know that the mortars were targeting port facilities and runways, not air defense batteries. Did Rumsford - adoring fan of Van Creveld that he is - forget what Arab SAM batteries did to the IAF in Yom Kippur? Did the author forget that most Arab armies take their doctrine from the USSR, and tend to rely on ground-based IADS over air superiority fighters? The F-16s are described ''strafing'' targets on the ground; how is this possible without a preparatory SEAD campaign, or without significant losses from ground fire?
** Friction between the different elements of the expedition is probably the best bet, with awful coordination and liaison work between those who command the fighters and the ground-based air defenses. It's often legitimately hard to make multi-nation coalition war work well between even "Western" forces (where most people involved will have reasonably shared assumptions, doctrine and NATO-standard commo protocols, and officers at least will probably speak passable English); here, it's Saudis, Iraqis and Iranians (and a smattering of others) working together and contributing separate component units each under their own leaders and staffs. Even with a joint overall command supplied by the Islamic Alliance, realistically that won't be very good at all for their [=C3I=]. So it's not too implausible that you could have the Saudi fighters (who'd be using USAF-derived doctrine, or at least they do IRL) react reasonably quickly on first radar contact and launch, while the relevant AAA unit that was handled by someone else (Syria?) was left out of the loop for a little while and so left the field open for a surprise attack.
*** The Limited Interoperability explanation doesn't hold up because we are told in detail which Muslim nations are doing what in Boston. Although the Muslim fleet is a polyglot mishmash of Indonesian, Iranian and Arab warships, the air and ground elements are relatively uniform: the fighter wings basing out of Logan are two Egyptian squadrons and one Saudi squadron. The 20,000 combat troops are Egyptian and Iraqi divisions. All of these troops speak Arabic natively, so language would be less of a barrier than it is for NATO. Their command interoperability may be significantly worse than NATO's, but the Saudis have held multinational joint exercises including Egyptian and Iraqi forces since 2016, so they should not be totally incompatible by the time the story takes place. The Iraqis, admittedly, may have very poor air defenses (as of 2018 they operate only a handful of SAM systems), but Egypt has a robust air defense corps down to the brigade and battalion level, and we have no reason to believe that the Egyptian Air Force would fail to notify the Egyptian division HQ of an inbound air attack.
*** Rereading, that does seem mostly accurate, yes. Perhaps the explanation then lies in internal Islamic Alliance politics. They are mostly a black box as far as Rumford is concerned, but what we see of them from the outside (what with crucifying people and their other atrocities) strongly implies that they are ruled by religious fanatics. That in turn suggests that some sort of violent revolution took place in their recent history that toppled the more or less secular dictatorships these states had before and replaced them with the new pan-Islamic theocratic coalition. If this worked out as such things usually do, the respective officer corps were presumably purged of their senior establishments... which would, in the short term, at least, have an impact on operations that could be anything from very significant to completely crippling, depending on how zealous the purgers were (and who was drafted in to replace the old generals and colonels).
* The precipitous Federal retreat from D.C. makes no sense. The entire point of the plan outlined by SGT Danielov is that blowing the bridges would buy time for the CSA to invade Virginia. But the NCSOF attack on the bridges fails to destroy all its targets - one truck broke down and they forgot about the railroad bridge, so at least two out of six were left open. Even if successful, the operational effect of blowing the D.C. bridges is unclear. The Loyalists would lose the southern end of Virginia, of course, but Rumsford does not explain why losing the bridges would prevent the Loyalists from holding the Rebels back from the Potomac itself for at least a few days with their forces in the area. There are at least three other major bridges over the Potomac within an hour's drive of D.C., including the I-81 at Williamsport, which is traversable by armor, and is probably the easiest axis of advance for any units coming from Pennsylvania. We are not told where the loyalist maneuver units are stationed, but we know that they exist, because they feature in the Joint Chiefs' plan to crush the NC later in the same chapter. There is no major Army base on the north bank of the Potomac, but Fort Belvoir, on the south bank, is a Division HQ - so any garrison in the area is likely to be stationed on the Virginian side of the river to start with. This doesn't even matter, because two bridges survived the attack, so there is nothing stopping any loyalist units in Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania rapidly redeploying to reinforce the defense.[[note]]especially not if any airmobile units are still loyal[[/note]] The approaches to the Potomac in the DMV area are dense, heavily urbanized terrain. It is a military impossibility that any Confederate flying column could capture this ground without intense fighting, even against an inferior force. Given the enormous cost of withdrawing from D.C., which Rumsford acknowledges, why would DOD under any circumstances choose to abandon its command center and the national capital instead of staging a defense of Arlington with all available forces?
* Why is the Azanian Air Force lining its planes up "wingtip to wingtip" in wartime? Rumsford claims this is something all Air Forces do "war after war," but even at Camp Bastion - the USMC airfield where six AV-8 Harriers were lost to a Taliban raid in 2012 - there were basic revetments protecting the flight line from mortar fire.[[note]]The fact that the Taliban had to physically penetrate Camp Bastion's perimeter and destroy the jets with direct fire should cause perceptive readers to wonder why Lind thinks mortars are so devastatingly effective against the average flight line...[[/note]] USAF Airbases which are expected to come under aerial bombardment have more extensive fortifications - Misawa AB in Japan, or Osan AB in Korea, are liable to be targeted by ballistic missiles from China or Korea, and accordingly have hardened hangars to accommodate the wings stationed there. We are told explicitly that the Azanians "think symmetrically" about warfare, and build their facilities on the assumption that their enemy will be attacking them with long-range precision fires. Why does this doctrine not apply to their airbases?
** Perhaps it was a backup/emergency field they had switched to recently, with insufficient time to prepare better protection.
* Okay, so this is more of a meta headscratcher than anything else, but...why in the world does this book have such a robust tv tropes page? Like...cards up front, I have just learned of this book's existence, almost ten years after publication, and it sounds utterly ridiculous. It literally has Mexican cartels worshipping Aztec gods. It seems way more like satire or something in a Marvel/DC comic than genuine alt history political entertainment. So why in the world has it been so thoroughly edited on tv tropes? What audience is it attracting? It seems to be a mix of people who ackowledge it's unrealistic and bonkers in practically every way mixed with just genuine face value entertainment. Does it just have surprisingly good prose that makes it a great read regardless of political affiliation? Or does tv tropes just have a massive number of enthusiastic right wing Christian fascists? Why does this book have such an expansive trope lost over anything else (say, for example, the tv series with the same name on which it shares a page)? Like it doesn't seem that popular otherwise, it has less than 150 reviews on goodreads and a similar amount on Amazon suggesting only a few hundred people have even read the thing, While there's another book on goodreads called Victoria that has almost 3,000 reviews. What makes this book uniquely popular here, of all places? Was it all edited by just one person? Was it the author himself who filled out the page (despite his apparent disdain for technology)? I just don't get it.
** Administrivia/ThereIsNoSuchThingAsNotability. Worse works like ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'', ''TabletopGame/RacialHolyWar'', and ''VideoGame/EthnicCleansing'' still have trope pages because people found them interesting enough to catalogue regardless of the works' repugnance and lack of quality. Meanwhile, the more ridiculous story aspects wouldn't be too out of place in a DividedStatesOfAmerica ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' mod like ''VideoGame/RedWorld'' or ''VideoGame/{{Kaiserredux}}''. The difference is ''Victoria'' uses those elements for RightWingMilitiaFanatic wish fulfillment instead of actually interesting plot or gameplay. If problems arise, the page can be locked or taken to DarthWiki/DarthWiki.
** Don't forget BileFascination. Just from reading the trope pages, this book sounds ''utterly deranged''. It's the ramblings of an elderly fascist who seems to think that every racial, sexual and religious stereotype he's ever heard is literally true. It's a power fantasy about how a bunch of gun-toting fundamentalists could take over part of America, kill or convert everyone they don't like, and almost literally turn back the clock. William S. Lind really believes the world would be a better place if social and technological progress stopped at 1930, with an occasional witch burning to keep everybody in line, and that most people would be okay with it. The book promotes a vile, delusional worldview, but it's one that a substantial minority of humans actually agree with. No wonder so many people want to read about it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The TV Series About Queen Victoria]]

The second season concludes with the resignation of Sir Robert Peel, which in real life occurred in June 1846. The third season picks up with the overthrow of Louis Philippe I, in February 1848. The latter introduces Peel's successor Lord John Russell to the cast and has the Queen celebrating the return of her Whig ladies. The impression given to the viewer is that Russell's government has come to power only quite recently, rather than nineteen months ago. This leaves some [[AmbiguousSituation ambiguity]] over who was supposed to have been in power during the Christmas episode, logically set in either 1846 or 1847, which omits the political side of things.
[[/folder]]

** Don't forget BileFascination. Just from reading the trope pages, this book sounds ''utterly deranged''. It's the ramblings of an elderly fascist who seems to think that every racial, sexual and religious stereotype he's ever heard is literally true. It's a power fantasy about how a bunch of gun-toting fundamentalists could take over America, kill or convert everyone they don't like, and almost literally turn back the clock. William S. Lind really believes the world would be a better place if social and technological progress stopped at 1930, with an occasional witch burning to keep everybody in line, and that most people would be okay with it. The book promotes a vile, delusional worldview, but it's one that a substantial minority of humans actually agree with. No wonder so many people want to read about it.

** Don't forget BileFascination. Just from reading about it, this book sounds ''utterly deranged''. It's the ramblings of an elderly fascist who seems to think that every racial, sexual and religious stereotype he's ever heard is literally true. It's a power fantasy about how a bunch of gun-toting fundamentalists could take over America, kill or convert everyone they don't like, and almost literally turn back the clock. William S. Lind really believes the world would be a better place if social and technological progress stopped at 1930, with an occasional witch burning to keep everybody in line, and that most people would be okay with it. The book promotes a vile, delusional worldview, but it's one that a substantial minority of humans actually agree with. No wonder so many people want to read about it.