The Cosmic Filter

Where Is Everybody?

A long-standing paradox in astronomy is sometimes called the Fermi Paradox after the famous physicist Enrico Fermi, who is the first person known to have posed it. If extraterrestrial civilizations exist, where are they? Anything that grows exponentially quickly gets very large, very fast. Something that doubles ten times is a thousand times as large. Actually 1024 times. The fortunate accident that a thousand is a round number in decimal, which humans use, and very close in binary, which computers use, is why we speak in terms of mega-, giga- and terabytes. (Nothing comes in kilobytes any more except tweets.)

So twenty doublings gets you to a million, thirty gets you to a billion, and nine more gets you to half a trillion. There are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy. So it would only take 39 doublings of a star-faring civilization to colonize every star in our galaxy. If it takes ten thousand years for a colony to take root and develop its own interstellar capability, that would be 390,000 years. That's an eye-blink in cosmic terms. So why isn't there massive evidence for interstellar societies? Or if they existed in the past and went extinct, why don't we see evidence of them? Why isn't there a global layer of extraterrestrial residue in the Ordovician or Jurassic?

Maybe we're first, or all alone (the same thing). That seems hard to believe given the rapidly mounting evidence that all (or nearly all) stars have planets. It also seems like special pleading. Scientists really don't like assuming we occupy a privileged place - it's proven false so many times in the past. Others object that we shouldn't try to read human psychology into aliens. Maybe they don't expand exponentially, or have a drive to explore. That's special pleading in reverse. It amounts to assuming we're uniquely aggressive or inquisitive, or so unusual that other races that develop science won't think anything like us.

Maybe there's some obstacle. Maybe civilizations don't stay viable for very long, or there's a technical obstacle too great to overcome. Or maybe they're out there, but keeping a low profile. Maybe they avoid pre-interstellar races, or maybe we're of no interest to them. We can barely read humans, much less try to head-shrink extraterrestrials.

Is it possible that there could be extraterrestrials that have the desire and means to colonize other stars, yet are free of the potentially fatal flaws we see in ourselves? There's one supremely important consideration. We don't see evidence of a widespread galactic civilization. That's serious evidence that such a combination of traits may not exist.

Oh, wait, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Well, yes it is. If a hypothesis predicts large and easily observable effects, and we don't see the effects, that's evidence the hypothesis is wrong. I can't argue that, because there are no arrowheads in my flower bed, that Indians never walked across my (to them) future lawn. The probability of finding an arrowhead anywhere is low. But if you say that Indians a few thousand years ago had technology comparable to ours, that hypothesis predicts we should find ubiquitous advanced artifacts. We don't. Therefore the hypothesis is wrong.

But since we're the only intelligent species we know, it makes sense to start here. To begin with, we're really not all that inquisitive. The fact that we remained hunters and gatherers for a quarter of a million years doesn't inspire optimism. During recorded history, how many societies engaged in active, serious exploration? Renaissance Europeans, the Ming Chinese (but only for a short time), Polynesians, the Vikings. Maybe the Mongols and the Arabs, or at least individual adventurers. And that's it. The Romans, a society whose survival depended critically on knowledge of the world outside their borders, had almost no interest in geography. They never explored Ireland, or the Baltic. Black Africans never discovered Madagascar. The languages of Madagascar are Malayo-Polynesian, a fact that has been called "the single most surprising fact of human geography." Even today, with the world of knowledge at their fingertips, most people use the Internet for social messaging, games, and other less savory interests.

Space Travel

It's so much fun to watch science fiction from the early 1950's. The space program consisted of a wise old fatherly senior scientist, a young virile junior scientist, the senior scientist's beautiful daughter (can you see where this is going?) and a gangly kid from Texas or Brooklyn to provide assistance or comic relief or pathos (or all three). They worked in a basement lab at a university, or a back hangar at an Air Force base, and that's it. The sum total of the U.S. space program. Nobody pictured it would take the resources of a superpower to get into space, or that the impetus would be superpower rivalry. But we did, to the background beat of people complaining about "spending all that money on problems here on earth." But we persisted thanks to the virtues of being a republic, where decisions are (ideally) made by people smarter than the voters who elect them. And now that the technology has matured, minor powers like North Korea, and private companies, can orbit satellites. Barring catastrophe, that technology is here to stay. But resources were never an issue. Propellant is cheap. It was learning how to do it that was the problem. The vast majority of the cost of a satellite is skilled labor.


The next step is going to the moon. There are two important questions here. First, would civilizations on a world lacking natural satellites ever travel deep into space? Or would that first step be such a huge one that they decided it was impractical, impossible, or not worth it? More fundamentally, can civilization itself exist on a world lacking a large natural moon? Our moon stabilizes the earth's axial tilt within moderate limits because its gravitational effects overwhelm everything else. Mars, with only two tiny satellites, is much more affected by Jupiter, Earth, and Venus, and undergoes much larger changes in its axial tilt. It may be that the lack of large natural satellites is the real cosmic filter, that planets without large satellites undergo such huge environmental oscillations that life doesn't advance beyond primitive levels.

And once we got the the Moon, the geopolitical justification was gone. The people who wanted to "spend all that money on problems here on earth" got their way. Anyone else remember the Seventies? How we took all that Apollo money and eliminated poverty? Tore down the slums? Crime dropped to near zero? Me neither. Anybody care to tell me what we did get for it?

After the Moon, the next step is to Mars or Venus. Both would require a ship that can protect its passengers for many months, a lander that can get passengers to the surface and back, and a surface habitat that would provide protection for months while the party explores and waits for the planets to reach the right configuration for the return trip. We can do that for Mars, at least in theory. Venus is too hostile to venture to the surface now. But going to Mars will be a huge venture. We can do the logistics, provided we have the will as a society, and it will take years. We simply don't have the will as a society. The money needed to go to Mars will be an irresistible target for people who want to divert it to other purposes, or simply pocket it. More likely, incremental improvements in space technology will close much of the gap, just as private entrepreneurs are talking about returning to the Moon. The old conspiracy talk about all the blueprints for Apollo being gone is bunk. The blueprints don't exist on paper, but they do on microfilm. There are Saturn V rockets at Cape Canaveral and Huntsville. And we wouldn't recreate Apollo technology to go to the moon today any more than we'd run the Indy 500 in a Stutz Bearcat. Not when a cell phone has more computing power than Mission Control in 1969. (That said, do go to Cape Canaveral and take in the Apollo 8 launch re-enactment. Pay for the full price experience. It is money well spent.)

Much of the lure of venturing beyond the Moon is due to Mars being at least slightly earth-like. It has an atmosphere and evidence of a watery past. And there's that legacy of canals and imaginary Martians, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. If there were nothing between us and Jupiter, or Mars were an airless planet like Mercury, or a lethal place like Venus, would we go? So maybe civilizations need the right planets nearby to have a motivation for long distance space travel.

So imagine we can eventually travel at will between the planets. Now for the stars. Now if we postulate things like artificial gravity or faster than light travel, all bets are off. On the other hand, if you can travel faster than light, the Fermi Paradox becomes even more acute, because it becomes so much easier to colonize the galaxy. So let's go to Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away. We need something that can keep a large crew alive - and sane - for many years. It will have to have room, the ability to grow food, its own space program (to land and come back), and the ability to fabricate everything it needs. I can't see anything smaller than an aircraft carrier, and that's being absurdly conservative. So let's say it weighs 100,000 metric tons (100 million kg) and gets to 1% of the speed of light. That's small enough that we don't have to worry about relativity. Energy = 1/2mv² = 1/2 x 100 million kg x (3,000,000 m/sec)² = 4.5 x 10²⁰ joules. That's U.S. energy use for 50 years. That's not counting the internal energy needs to keep the ship lit and heated, keep plants growing, and so on. Then you have to spend an equal amount of energy braking once you get there. Unless you want to doom the crew to fly on forever. At 1% of the speed of light, the trip will last 430 years, or the time since Queen Elizabeth. The First. Can people keep a sense of mission and purpose for that long? Maybe they'll decide they prefer the ship instead. Or maybe they'll regress to pre-scientific levels and believe the ship is all there is. Although that theme has been used in a number of novels (and the ill-fated 1973 TV series, "The Starlost"), it seems far more likely that outcome would eventually - most likely very quickly - lead to a catastrophic breakdown of life support. If you up the speed to 10% of the speed of light, the round trip will take 86 years, maybe enough for someone who leaves as a child to come back. But multiply the energy needs by a hundred - velocity squared, remember? And then double it again, because now you have to accelerate back to Earth, and slow down once you get here.

There may be a relatively small historic window for us on Earth to travel into deep space. We saw one window open and close with the Apollo Program. There may or may not be another one. But why go to the Moon? Apart from scientific needs like building an observatory on the far side free from Earth's radio emissions, most of the things we can picture doing can be done better on earth. Mining? Well, almost all mineral deposits on Earth required water for their formation. The geology isn't the same. Mining metal rich asteroids may be more practical, and a lot of that can be done robotically. Then you do have the problem of getting thousands of tons of metal back to earth. Think of Chelyabinsk, multiplied by thousands. Drop it in the oceans? Tsunamis. Not to mention huge amounts of vaporized metal in the atmosphere during re-entry. Maybe we could fabricate the metal in space into aerodynamic landing bodies. On the other hand, using the metal in space to build spacecraft and space stations would be eminently practical. Why go to Mars? There may be some usable minerals in those deposits from Mars' early oceans. But there's the energy cost of getting it off Mars and getting it back to earth.

Libertarian colonies? Any libertarians who join lunar or Martian or asteroidal colonies will soon find themselves yearning for those regulation-free days back on Earth. Life in a colony where you can't survive five minutes unprotected outdoors will be regimented beyond belief. You don't waste anything. You don't pollute in the slightest. You will have to get permission for anything out of the ordinary. And you will work. I'm not even going to address Venus, where your habitat has to protect against 400 C temperatures and 90 atmospheres of pressure. We don't even have sub-sea habitats that can handle those pressures.

The only imaginable reasons to go to the moon or Mars for the foreseeable future are scientific, intellectual, and adventure. Any economic payback will be very far down the road. And human history doesn't offer a lot of hope that societies will engage in purely intellectual exploration for very long. To have regular travel to the moon or Mars will require travel simple and cheap enough for individuals and small groups to do it on their own. It's far from clear the economies of scale will ever permit that. Even taking a balloon to 25 miles and parachuting out required some pretty massive financial support.

If we can find habitable planets the equation may change, but seeking habitats for population growth is not an option. In fifty years we have launched about 500 individuals into space, or several thousand if you count people with multiple trips. Human population growth is about a quarter million per day. That means you send Birmingham to Alpha Centauri today, Fresno tomorrow, Tacoma the next day... just to stay even.

And incremental growth won't cut it. We didn't send ships ever farther into the Atlantic. Columbus went across in one shot. We didn't go a quarter of the way to the Moon, or halfway. (Actually, our first few probes did, but only because we didn't give them enough velocity) Once the technology exists for a long voyage, the only sensible approach is to do it all at once. But we won't go to the stars until we have the capability: propulsion, life support, all of it.

Collapse

We've dodged a bullet in terms of nuclear apocalypse, at least for now. That's not to say we won't have a future superpower ruled by suicidal lunatics. Picture Brazil, say (just to pick a current non-nuclear major power) ruled by a North Korea style government and possessing a nuclear arsenal. Or ruled by an apocalyptic religious cult. But at least we aren't currently preoccupied with nuclear annihilation. What seems more likely to cause our collapse is environmental: exhaustion of resources, mass extinction, resurgence of epidemics, collapse of agriculture, and so on.

It's not inevitable that an alien race would suffer collapse. But it is all but inevitable that a race that has a blind faith in unceasing growth will collapse. If they have our brand of technological optimism, they won't take action until absolutely necessary, confident that new technology will present a solution to their problems. And they'll always be right. Until that one time they're wrong, and they make that one fatal miscalculation. After all, you can run a hundred red lights in a row without harm. It's that one time that causes the problem.

There's an argument called the Doomsday Argument that holds that the end of the human species is probably near. Any given person has an equal likelihood of being born at any point in human history, and the average position would be halfway through. Since about 100 billion people have already lived, we should expect roughly 100 billion more to come after us. Since global births now number about 134 million a year, it takes about 7-1/2 years for a billion people to be born, or about 750 years for the next 100 billion people to be born. There are tons of things wrong with this argument, chief among them the fact that we are where we are, and if we're at the 10% or 90% points, no amount of probability will change that. It's like arguing that most cars run fine, so the probability is that yours does too, and that clanking sound is just your imagination.

It might well be that the real Cosmic Filter is cultural. Once a civilization accomplishes what it can easily do in space and acquires most of the easily available knowledge, any further improvement might require such a huge additional investment that the effort seems unwarranted. 

An additional collapse scenario is that sufficiently advanced civilizations may have their needs taken care of by machines so well that they lose the ability or desire to do things for themselves. Think of the progression of starship captains portrayed in Wall-E, each progressively tubbier and less motivated than the last. Imagine a civilization with holodeck technology but no interstellar travel. If they can visit any imaginable world without leaving home, why leave home? Our own concern with the environment and preserving history is laudable, but it bears an ominous resemblance to the renewed affection a child feels for an old toy just before giving it up forever. If you can see a tiger or a panda in virtual reality, why do we need the real thing? If you can go to Mars in virtual reality, why go for real? In short, they become Eloi. And watch the 1960 version of The Time Machine (the good one) to see just how contemptible the Eloi were.

Things the Internet Needs to Lose

No point in railing here about pop-ups, slide shows, and the like. Those are driven by ad revenue, for which my cure is to tax the bejeebers out of advertising. These are stupid things web sites do for which there is no excuse. They're simply annoying and are the result of dumb design.

User Accounts

They're not keeping out trolls. They're not keeping out spam. Those bot catchers have merely led to paid trolls posting ads on their personal accounts. They're not keeping the discourse civil. So what's the point?

Oh, yeah, selling those precious demographics.

This is doubly inexcusable on government sites. I paid for the information with my tax dollars. There is no valid reason for me to have to set up a user account with, say, the U.S, Geological Survey (a major offender).

Bait and Switch

"Log in with your favorite social account." So you do. Then, at the end, you get shunted to "One last thing, now create an account with us."

Better idea: Don't tell us we can log in with a social account unless we actually can without any additional steps.

Even worse are sites where there's nothing to indicate there's a login. You have a bare comments box. So all those sites with "hello" for a comment? Well, that's me, checking on whether or not I need to jump through hoops before writing something lengthy.

Identity Crisis

So you actually do go to the trouble of creating an account just to make one lousy post. Then you see "That e-mail is already in use."

That's because it's me, you idiots! If I already have an account there (because I posted something six months ago), let me in! Especially if you already have my identity from a social account.

Do It All Over Again

"We've changed our log-in procedures so we need to have you re-enter your account information."

The only change worthwhile is to junk the log-in. But if you must switch things around, don't ask me to do your housekeeping for you. You export the account data to your new system.

This also applies to sites that mysteriously and spontaneously lose your login info. So I create a user account and a password, and dutifully store it in a password manager. And it works. Then mysteriously, it stops working, even if I logged in an hour earlier. Even if I have my browser remember and input the password automatically. If you can't store my password in a stable fashion, how about scrapping the whole process?

Hidden Paywalls

So you click on a link to a story, only to find the story hidden  by a paywall pop-up, or faded out after a couple of paragraphs.

You have nothing I'm willing to pay for. Raise your advertising rates by a factor of ten. A New York Times opinion piece? You have to be kidding. This is the Internet. I can read all the stupid opinions I can stomach for free.

Vertical Video Complaints

I have no problem with vertical video. For some subjects it's appropriate. How about web site managers get off their lazy butts and create pages that accept vertical video? You detect the format of the video, and if it's vertical, you scale it to fit on screen, and rearrange page elements to fit alongside. That wasn't so hard, was it? I'll get a high school kid to help you.

Talking Head

Don't expect me to care about your story if you don't care enough to write out a transcript. This means you, too, Upworthy. Video is to show things that are in motion, and that does not include a reporter's lips.

A Few Simple Questions

Since I'm asking questions here, Comments on this page are enabled.

However, this is not a page on urinalysis. Specifically, "your analysis" of the issues. You can set up your own blog for that. The only comments that will be accepted are those strictly limited to the specific questions posed.

For Foodies

There are many articles on line describing how the food industry analyzes the way people respond to sugar, salt and fat, and use that information to make their products more attractive. The information is open and nobody is making the slightest effort to conceal it.

So why don't healthy food advocates, instead of criticizing peoples' tastes or the food industry, devote similar efforts to devising healthy foods with the same attractiveness? Instead of telling us that we need to learn to like healthy food or "re-educate" our palates, why not develop stuff that tastes better than, say, potato chips or Big Macs, as determined by people who actually eat potato chips and Big Macs? (You can get beet chips, which are very good, but between the sugar content of beets, the deep frying, and the salt, they're probably not much better for you than potato chips.)

(This is a bit unfair because, however appetizing healthy food is, you can always add fat, salt or sugar to it. But there's also the idea of "good enough." I love fruit but I don't put sugar on pineapple.)

Also, if vegan living is so good, why are so many vegan dishes meat surrogates? If you come up with something that looks and feels as much like meat as possible, why not just eat meat?

For Libertarians

I consider anybody who has the power to curtail my liberty a threat, whether they're government or private. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to use your money ends at my rights.  You have no right to use your money to gain an advantage over me in any political or legal proceeding.


So, libertarians, tell me what you plan to do to curb abuses of private power. And since this doesn't require any significant restructuring of the government, there is no reason at all not to do it right now. So tell me what you're doing.

For Conspiracy Believers

You believe 9/11 was an inside job, JFK was killed by a conspiracy, the global economy is run by secret organizations, and FDR knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened.


Okay, tell me exactly what first hand knowledge you have to justify those beliefs. Not what you read on line, or someone told you, but things you have seen or experienced first hand. If the facts just "don't fit," you must have had some experience to convince you the world works that way. So what was it?


I've asked this question in numerous forums and so far I have no responses. All the evidence I've been able to collect indicates that nobody who believes in conspiracies actually has a real basis in personal experience to justify it. Most of them have never faced a moment of real danger or discomfort in their whole lives.

For Climate Denialists

You claim that remedial measures to curb carbon emissions will cost vast amounts of money and wreck the economy.

Okay, prove it.

Show me the math. Show me your computer code that models the U.S. economy as well as any climate modeling software, and show me that it has successfully predicted changes in the economy. 

Oh, and if the atmosphere is so vast that humans can't possibly affect it, as some denialists claim, why can't we say the same for the U.S. economy?

And is global warming happening, or not? Some people say it is but it's purely natural, driven by solar cycles, some people deny any change at all, some people say it's actually cooling. So which is it?

For Believers in "Rights"

You believe that gay marriage, Internet access, food, and health care are rights.

Okay, prove it.

"Proof" does not mean using the Caps Lock key and lots of exclamation points, or calling names or using invective. Anyway, "Fascist" proves nothing except your emotional response to an issue.

No, proof means starting from basic axioms and reasoning, step by step, using logic that can be demonstrated to be valid. See an old-time geometry text for how it's done.

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Well, that's the Declaration of Independence and those rights exist because they are "endowed by their Creator." That, by the way, is the only theory of rights in any of our founding documents. So those sentiments have been nullified by separation of Church and State. Talk about your law of unintended consequences.

For Pro-Lifers

Psalm 139: 13-15 (NKJV):

For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,

There it is: a favorite quote to show that unborn babies in the womb are human beings. Only.... what comes next?

And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

How come we never hear this part? If "day" in Genesis means a literal 24-hour day, how come Psalm 139 doesn't mean babies form in the ground?

For Democrats

We hear endlessly the question "why do conservative voters vote against their best interests?"

So why do you vote against your best interests? Why do you speak on behalf of criminals and alienate the 90% of the population that avoids crime? Why do you side with atheists' petulant attacks on religious gestures and alienate the 90% of the population that either supports public religious gestures or sees no harm in them? 

If you believe abortion or gay marriage are important enough to promote, despite the blowback, why is it a surprise that opponents feel they're important enough to oppose despite the costs?

On Productivity

"Worker productivity has tripled in he last few decades but wages have remained flat."

The machines we use produce things three times faster. But that's the owner's productivity, and the people who invented and built the machines. Tell us exactly how your productivity has tripled. Can you work three times as fast? Do you speak three times as many languages? Can you use three times as many software packages? Do you have three times as many college credits? Do you have three times as much knowledge as you did twenty years ago? Are you skilled in three times as many occupations?

For Pot Advocates

Can you produce anyone, who is not a user himself, that is willing to testify that using pot makes you a better, more responsible, more creative person?

If pot had the beneficial effects its advocates claim, I'd suspect at least a few employers would have caught on and would be actively recruiting pot smokers. Are they?

For Gun Control Advocates

After the latest mass shooting, an editorial asked "Now will the NRA talk to gun-control advocates?"

No.

Now here's a question for you. Tell me one concession you'd make to gun owners to get them to agree to gun control. An end to court challenges to the death penalty? Limiting appeals strictly to matters of factual guilt or innocence? A ban on criminals suing for harm as a result of their criminal act? Is there anything you're willing to give up to persuade gun owners to give up some of their rights?

Patton's Alternative Histories

On December 9, 1945, General George Patton was on his way to a hunting trip when his car had a minor collision with an Army truck. Patton hit his head on the glass divider between the front and rear seats, suffered a broken neck, and died on December 21. Naturally this is too fortuitous not to have been a conspiracy. So what if Patton had gone to war with the Russians, or had not had his accident?

Timeline 1: World War 2.1

As World War II drew to a close, General George Patton grew increasingly frustrated at the lingering tensions left behind. He particularly despised the Russians, felt it was only a matter of time before we were at war with them, and advocated launching an attack on them, remobilizing German soldiers for the purpose. His superiors quashed the plan.

Patton initially drew upon all his military discipline to follow an order he detested, but mulled over ways to violate the order without really violating it. Finally, he formulated a plan. He issued an order to border sentries, under strictest secrecy, with a solemn promise of life in Leavenworth to anyone who even hinted at the order's existence. The order was that sentries who witnessed any Soviet atrocity against civilians were to take unilateral action. Perpetrators were to be taken alive if possible and summarily hung. Sentries had already seen plenty, and many of them were enthusiastic about the chance to do something about it.

It took only eighteen hours. A patrol along the border of Bavaria and Czechoslovakia saw five Russian soldiers rape a Czech woman and, when her father attempted to intervene, they shot him. The patrol took advantage of the Russians' preoccupation to bayonet one and capture the other four. A spool of field telephone wire in the Soviets' truck served in place of rope. Signs were hung on the bodies explaining their crime.

An angry Soviet field marshal berated Patton a few hours later and demanded that the Americans be punished. Patton retorted that the Russians, from the lowest private to the field marshal himself, were all criminals and that he had every intention of hanging every Russian war criminal he saw. The field marshal stormed off.

Next day another U.S. patrol saw a Soviet squad line up and shoot a family on the Soviet side of the cease-fire line in Germany. The Americans charged in and were cut down in a company-scale ambush. Patton ordered a battalion to smash the Soviet company and arrest its officers. The Russians responded with a similar assault on a U.S. unit. It was on.

A blizzard of cables and phone calls began between the President, the Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Allied Headquarters in Europe, and the Kremlin. The Russians insisted the Americans had attacked unilaterally and Patton insisted the Russians had attacked. Patton's plan was to slice up into the soft underbelly of the Soviets. The mountain frontier with Czechoslovakia was easily defensible but the cease-fire line in Germany was little more than an accident. Insisting his forces were under heavy Soviet attack, Patton launched his forces northeast toward Poland. His plan was to cut off the Russians in Berlin, while putting higher command in a position of having to support him. Meanwhile, shooting erupted all along the cease-fire line.

President Truman knew perfectly well that Patton had launched his own private war, but stopping it would be a lot harder than starting it. The Soviets would certainly demand massive concessions as the price for ceasing hostilities, maybe even a complete Western withdrawal from Germany. Recovering any Americans taken prisoner would be all but impossible. Meanwhile, FDR's hard-line opponents on the right were ready to pounce on any indication that Truman was selling out American soldiers to Communism. They would whip the public into a frenzy if American POW's languished in Soviet captivity. They were already mounting a mass public relations assault on Truman's failure to confront Soviet betrayal and demanding reprisals against purported Soviet sympathizers at home. Some were demanding a declaration of war against the Soviet Union.

Truman reluctantly concluded he had no choice but to support Patton, at least as long as it took to achieve some sort of stability. After that he'd have him before a firing squad, but that would have to wait. Truman ordered Allied Headquarters to develop plans to repel Soviet attacks and occupy a stable defensive line. The plans were to stress holding actions or modest advances and preventing Patton's troops from being overwhelmed. He also ordered Patton to halt immediately and withdraw to defensible positions. Patton denied ever receiving any such orders. Truman also realized that this could easily escalate into a protracted conflict. He ordered a halt to outprocessing of troops in Europe, ordered recently returned war materiel shipped back to Europe, and stopped all reassignments to the Pacific. Troops home on leave were ordered to report immediately to embarkation stations for return to Europe.

Patton despised the Russians and derided their primitive supply system. Why, he sneered, they even drove pigs and chickens along to feed themselves. But the Russians had bought back their country with 20 million lives and now here they were at war with their supposed allies. Whatever feelings any Russian had about Stalin or Communism, they were furious at the betrayal. Nobody would need to worry about American POW's. There wouldn't be any.

Patton, meanwhile, was having a romp to rival his rapid advance across France. Within a week he was between Leipzig and Dresden, halfway to the new border of Poland. Elsewhere, the British were slowly falling back under Soviet pressure on the North German Plain and the Russians had punched a large bulge into American lines around the Fulda Gap. Patton, true to form, believed his rapid advance was due to his boldness and strategic genius. Actually, the Russians were letting him extend his lines. On D+10, they sprang their trap. Soviet forces pushed south from Germany and west from Czechoslovakia, threatening to pinch off the base of Patton's advance. Meanwhile Soviet forces poured from Hungary into lightly defended Austria, rapidly overrunning the plains of eastern Austria. Then they sliced north into Bavaria. On D+19 they bypassed Munich and by D+25 the three Soviet counterattacks met near Nurnberg.

Patton suddenly was surrounded. Again, true to form, he decided the best defense was a counterattack of his own. Continuing northeast toward Poland would just put him in more danger. Trying to retreat back to Germany would be an admission of defeat and a sign of weakness. The only way out was northwest to threaten the Soviet lines from the rear and try to hook up with American forces. Meanwhile the Russians were invading Germany by a completely unanticipated route, from the south. Neither side was quite sure what to do, but for the Russians, the default choice was to move forward. Stalin and the General Staff, amazed and delighted by this turn of events, poured a flood of tanks and troops across Hungary to support the new Southern Front.

Patton began to have a bad time of it. The word was out among his troops that the Soviets were not taking prisoners and anyone who somehow defied the odds had life in Siberia - probably short - to look forward to. So his troops fought desperately but they began running low on ammunition, food and fuel. They weren't able to capture enough Soviet supplies to meet their needs and the ammunition they did get was incompatible. Squads, then platoons, and finally companies began to be overrun after desperate hand to hand battles. Commanders began giving their men permission to try to make their way back to friendly lines. The vast majority would not, of course, but it was a chance. Patton was furious and ordered a couple of them shot. Increasingly, Soviet small units penetrated Patton's lines and roamed at will. On D+38 a Soviet company overran Patton's headquarters, taking the top officers captive and shooting everyone else. But not Patton. He had pulled the pin on a grenade and held it to his chest.

Stalin communicated with Truman and Churchill on D+50. His terms: unconditional surrender of all Allied forces in Europe. He pointed out to Churchill that British forces were doomed anyway, but he would stop at the Channel. American lines in Germany, even with reinforcements from the States, were crumbling as commanders shuffled forces to meet attacks from both the east and the south. Truman conferred with Congressional leaders who informed him in no uncertain terms they would seek impeachment and trial for treason if he gave in. By D+60 the Russians held everything east of the Rhine and were advancing through Belgium. Total U.S. losses since the war began exceeded the total for all of World War II in Europe. The Italian Communist Party launched an uprising in Italy, while the Communists in Greece overwhelmed the small British forces there. Meanwhile the war in the Pacific ground to a halt. Japan was eventually able to impose a negotiated cease-fire that left its military junta intact and its forces in China in place.

By now, the Manhattan Project had finished work on three atomic bombs and the first test was set to be held in New Mexico. Truman's advisers pushed him to forego the test and use all three bombs on the Russians. Others pointed out the weaknesses of the plan. The bombs would utterly destroy an area a few miles across but wouldn't have much effect on an advance a hundred miles wide. If used on concentrated targets like cities, the bombs would have to be used on targets in Western Europe. Attacks on Russia itself would require one-way suicide runs with a high probability of being shot down and allowing the Russians to capture and reverse engineer a bomb. And the Russians hadn't been intimidated by the Nazis pushing to the outskirts of Moscow. They wouldn't stop after three atomic bombs, and then it would be obvious that the U.S. had no more. Truman was in the frustrating position of having the world's only nuclear arsenal and being unable to use it effectively.

In the end, Truman opted to use all three bombs on Moscow, hoping to decapitate the Russian political and military leadership. Any independent country that allowed an attack to take off from their territory would surely invite the wrath of the Russians, so that left Britain, occupied Italy or Egypt as the only takeoff points even remotely capable of reaching Moscow. Three B-29's were readied in Italy, modified to carry extra fuel and cargo, and painted and modified to resemble Soviet aircraft. Taking off from Italy ensured the aircraft would not overfly some neutral country that would then be a target for retaliation. The volunteer crews were told only that they were carrying extra-powerful bombs and would attack the Kremlin in Moscow. They were told their chances of survival were nil. They were not told that the bombs had self-destruct devices set to go off if the air speed of the plane dropped below a certain level or if the plane went into a steep dive. The planes took off late in the afternoon of August 5, 1945. The plan was to fly at low altitude at night and hit Moscow on the morning of August 6. One plane exploded in flight near Kiev for unknown reasons. The other two made it to Moscow and dropped their bombs, devastating much of central Moscow and killing Stalin, the Politburo, and most of the General Staff. The planes headed west, hoping to make it at least to Finland or Sweden. They actually ditched in the North Sea and were picked up by the British navy.

The Soviet Army was quite capable of fighting this war without higher leadership. In fact, without micromanagement from above, they fought better. They had been relenting somewhat in their treatment of prisoners, sparing those who were obvious non-combat troops or who fought bravely. The destruction of Moscow ended all that. There would be no more quarter. They crossed the Rhine and drove into France. French civilians fired on retreating U.S. forces, accusing them of saving their own skins while leaving them to face the Russians. A series of pincer movements enabled the Russians to sweep up vast numbers of American prisoners. Soviet planes, surface ships and submarines patrolled the English Channel, sinking everything that tried to cross. They even attacked ships in British ports, strafing and bombing disembarking soldiers. Other Soviet submarines, many recently surrendered by the Germans, prowled the Atlantic, sinking troopships headed to and from France. By September, the war was over. Almost all U.S. forces in Europe had been killed or taken prisoner and the Russians ruled to the Atlantic. Truman was impeached and accused of failing to support Patton's attack properly. The plan would have worked, his accusers said, if Truman had ordered an all-out attack. Truman countered that all the forces in position to support Patton were already commanded by Patton and committed to the attack, and diverting more troops would have left the rest of Germany undefended. Neither the troops nor the supplies were in position to launch an offensive elsewhere in Germany, and had they tried, the outcome would have been the same. Congress convened hearings where almost all top military leaders testified that the U.S. simply did not have enough forces in Germany to stop a Soviet attack. A majority of Congress voted to remove Truman, but well short of the two-thirds required.

Truman may have been acquitted by history, but not by the voters. A furious anti-Communist backlash erupted. College campuses were attacked and leftist professors beaten and killed. Truman announced he would not seek re-election in 1948. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia won the nomination, but lost to the Republican nominee, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. McCarthy's first offical act was to recommend General Patton for the Medal of Honor.

Timeline 2: The Patton-McCarthy Axis

Despite warning that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, and even urging a pre-emptive attack using re-armed German troops, General George S. Patton was rebuffed repeatedly. Sensing that he was becoming increasingly marginalized, and his future prospects were nonexistent, he decided to retire from the Army. On December 9, 1945, he was on his way to a hunting trip when his car stopped at a railroad crossing for a train. When the train passed, his driver stepped on the gas and stalled the car. While trying to restart it, the car was passed by an Army truck en route to a supply depot. The truck made an abrupt turn and, had the car not stalled, there might have been a collision (1). Patton had an enjoyable hunt and left the next day for Christmas leave in the U.S. He submitted his resignation on January 2, 1946 and spent the next several months relaxing, speaking, and beginning his memoirs.

In May, Patton was approached by Democratic Party leaders from Maryland with an offer to run for the Senate in the 1946 election. Patton had spent enough time at Fort Meade to pass for a Maryland resident, and the current senator was a weak candidate (2). Patton eagerly accepted, relishing the chance to engage in public life and even more, relishing the idea of a campaign battle. Patton unseated the incumbent, George Radcliffe, and won the election handily. In that same election, in one of the biggest ideological turnarounds in U.S. history, Progressive Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin was upset by Joseph McCarthy (3). Patton quickly saw through McCarthy's tissue of lies about his war service, but McCarthy had served in the Marines and flown combat missions, so Patton regarded McCarthy mostly as a slightly distasteful lightweight. Patton had become wearily familiar with phony war heroes by this time, but at least McCarthy had actually seen service.

A series of high profile espionage cases, the Soviet development of the atomic bomb in 1949, and the fall of Eastern Europe and China to Communism moved Patton to near apoplexy. He began asserting loudly that America had been betrayed from within, and that his plan to attack the Russians after the end of the war had been vindicated. He was initially highly supportive of the conduct of the Korean War, especially MacArthur's counterattack at Inchon and march to the Yalu River. When Chinese forces entered Korea, Patton called loudly for the use of nuclear weapons both against the invaders and against supply centers in China itself. But when McCarthy launched his crusade against internal Communism, Patton became concerned that McCarthy's buffoonery would undermine rather than aid the cause. He warned McCarthy that any actions that discredited the anti-Communist cause would have dire consequences.

The emergence of Dwight Eisenhower as a Presidential contender drove Patton to new heights of anger. He utterly despised Eisenhower for, among other things, being promoted over him. He considered Eisenhower hesitant and ineffective as a commander and blamed him for the Russians reaching Berlin first, and still harbored resentment for being denied the chance to attack the Russians. On the Democratic side, it looked like Adlai Stevenson would get the nomination, an alternative that Patton liked even less. When President Truman sacked General MacArthur in October, 1951, Patton launched a rhetorical blitz in Congress and in public, flatly accusing Truman of selling out U.S. forces in Korea.

Patton began to think the only way to save America was to be President. Patton harbored a deep strain of racism that would play well in the South, but the South by itself couldn't win the White House. His chances of winning  the Democratic nomination were poor. There were too many liberals who would oppose him. A third party campaign? That might act as a spoiler for one side or the other, but wouldn't win the election. A coup? The U.S. wasn't a banana republic where occupying the Presidential palace was enough to topple the government. Eisenhower, George Marshall, maybe even MacArthur would remind the armed forces their Constitutional obligation was to the President. But something had to be done.

Patton's first act was to call MacArthur and urge him - "order" was the word he used - not to resign just yet. He hinted that he was contemplating a Presidential run and that if he succeeded, he would have a job for MacArthur. So Truman was stuck with a cashiered general who refused to resign. He found a paper command for MacArthur, tasked with drafting plans for the land defense of the U.S. in case of a hypothetical Soviet invasion. MacArthur's first report urged adoption of General Pershing's idea from thirty years earlier for a national system of defense highways.

Patton met on numerous occasions with McCarthy, MacArthur, and J. Edgar Hoover regarding the Communist threat to America. He offered McCarthy the vice-presidential slot and told MacArthur he would be much more valuable as Army Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or Secretary of Defense. Hoover provided the juicy tidbit that Eisenhower was rumored to have had an affair during the war with his secretary, Kay Summersby. Patton himself had already heard the rumors, which were common knowledge among the high command during the war. Patton changed parties and announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination. McCarthy was given free rein to launch attacks on real, suspected, and imaginary Communists in an effort to swing the hard-right vote to Patton. The Summersby rumors seriously hurt Eisenhower's chances. The much more experienced conservative Robert Taft found himself sandwiched between liberals and hard right wingers, and when the convention deadlocked in a near three-way split, gradually saw his support drain to Patton. He finally released his delegates and Patton won the nomination. Patton picked McCarthy as his running mate. Eisenhower, torn between the choice of supporting Democrat Adlai Stevenson, or the Patton-McCarthy ticket, gave lukewarm support to Patton, gave a few generic speeches that dealt more with the threat of the Soviet Union than the virtues of Patton, and generally sat out the campaign.

Patton postured as a clean campaigner and avoided personal attacks on Stevenson, whom he professed to respect highly, and he kept McCarthy on a short leash. But lower level campaign operatives were under no such restrictions. In the North, they attacked Stevenson as soft on Communism, and the Democrats in general as pushing for many of the goals of Communism. Also, the Korean War had ground to a stalemate and Patton campaigned against what he considered a feckless strategy by the Democrats, arguing that a career military man was needed to bring the war to a successful completion. In the South, Patton's speeches were generic patriotic platitudes but his underlings made it clear that Patton was the only hope for states' rights. Stevenson predictably won the Northeast but Patton pulled off the first Republican sweep of the South as well as carrying the Midwest and West. He carried a solid Republican majority into both houses of Congress.

Patton appointed MacArthur Secretary of Defense, who immediately began planning a counterattack in Korea, involving amphibious landings on both coasts plus an airborne invasion. Hoover was given a free hand to root out Communists and anyone with even a trace of pink in their politics, while McCarthy worked with hard-liners in Congress to draft anti-Communist legislation. One of the first acts was legislation denying the vote to anyone identified as a Communist sympathizer, more or less guaranteeing a permanent far-right majority. Patton, meanwhile, drew up a list of possible Supreme Court nominees he could count on to back his policies.

Conclusion

I don't see any reason to assume Patton's death was anything but an accident. But if it was a conspiracy, it was one of the best things that ever happened to us. If "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the OSS, had come to me in 1945 and tried to recruit me, I'd have joined in a heartbeat. He'd have lost Europe for us if he'd gone to war with the Russians, and he'd have made the McCarthy Era ten times uglier if he'd lived to go into politics. McCarthy was a stupid, clumsy, venal drunk. Patton was shrewd, intelligent, disciplined, and every bit as vicious as McCarthy, and therefore, ten times as dangerous.

Notes

(1) In real life, Patton's vehicle collided with the truck and Patton sustained a broken neck, eventually dying (or being murdered by the OSS and NKVD, if you prefer) on December 21. The OSS needed the NKVD to poison Patton because they hadn't had that class yet at Hogwarts.

(2) In real life, the incumbent Radcliffe was defeated by Herbert O'Conor, who was elected to the Senate.

(3) LaFollette actually served only one term as a Progressive, the rest of the time as a Republican. McCarthy narrowly defeated LaFollette for the Republican nomination, attacking LaFollette for his lack of war service (LaFollette was 46 when the war broke out) and accusing him of war profiteering. Actually, McCarthy made more money from investments during the war than LaFollette. In the supreme irony, McCarthy was backed by a Communist dominated union who resented Lafollette's anti-communist stance.

The Constitutional Convention Does the Right Thing

Alternative History

Alternative histories have an annoying tendency to say "X happened instead of Y, therefore rainbows, puppies and unicorns." A few people, like S.M. Stirling in his Drakian novels, dare to imagine much darker alternative histories. His thesis was "what if history turned out in the worst possible way?" I suspect a lot of alternative histories would have ended up a good deal less rosy than we like to imagine.

The rainbows, puppies and unicorns machine kicked into high gear when James W. Wagner, president of Emory University, praised the 1787 three-fifths compromise, which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person in determining Congressional representation for slave states. Wagner apparently had good intentions, hoping to show how even sharp polarization can be eased by compromise, but detractors of the three-fifths rule weren't having any of it. The three-fifths compromise wasn't inspired. It was one of those clumsy, ugly compromises with evil we sometimes have to make, like allying with the Soviet Union during World War II, backing nasty regimes during the Cold War, paying for a defense attorney for a serial child molester, or pretending that protecting the rights of Charles Manson protects anyone else's rights. So what if we hadn't made it? An outcome like the one below is at least possible.

No Compromise

As discussion of the new, and completely unauthorized, Constitution of the United States proceeded, representation in Congress became a sticking point. Northern states wanted the slave population of the South excluded in determining Congressional representation, on the grounds that slaves had no rights, and therefore they should not be counted toward the voting power of the South. Southern states wanted slaves counted, because they would then have greater strength in Congress. Northerners were convinced the South would have too much power, especially Virginia, the most populous state. Some delegates proposed a partial count, with slaves given one-half or three fifths representation, but those proposals were angrily dismissed. Since there were seven non-slave states and six slave states, the final vote on representation was rammed through. Slaves would not be counted.

When the new Constitution was presented to the states, all the slave states except Delaware quickly voted against ratification. Although Delaware was a slave state, slavery was relatively unimportant there (there were even handfuls of slaves in other northern states, too.) Since nine states had to ratify the Constitution for it to go into effect, the Constitution was dead in the water. Attempts to reconvene the Convention failed when the southern states insisted that the Constitution explicitly preserve slavery.

As 1787 dragged into 1788, the southern states called a convention of their own for the purpose of drafting a constitution. Their Constitution was closely aligned with the original, which most agreed had been a good piece of work, but it did include an explicit protection of slavery and strict prohibitions on the central government regulating internal affairs of the States. The Southern states, except Delaware, which had already ratified the original Constitution, ratified it immediately. They invited the northern states to join but none did. The southern Constitution allowed the ratifying states to convene a convention to declare the Constitution in force, which was done in mid-1788. Since the Southern States adhered to the notion that they were simply reforming the Articles of Confederation, they styled their union the Confederate States of America. The northern states waited until most of the states had ratified the original Constitution, then voted in Congress (still under the Articles of Confederation) to declare the new Constitution in effect. The few stragglers climbed on board by 1790. The US, bound by its obligation to create a separate district for its capital, selected a tract on the Niagara River, with a view toward encouraging settlement inland and commerce on the Great Lakes. The CS chose Charleston, South Carolina for their capital.

One proviso from many of the northern States was that Congress would draft a Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution. Congress drafted a set of thirteen amendments protecting freedom of religion, speech, the press, the right of due process, and abolishing slavery. Most of the amendments were ratified swiftly, including the abolition of slavery. The handful of northern slaveowners were compensated for their slaves. The southern states had already incorporated a few rights guarantees into the Confederate Constitution, mostly property rights, but specifically permitted individual states to regulate speech and the press as well as set up established churches. Eventually, Confederate states banned all anti-slavery advocacy, as well as publication of anti-slavery literature. They also made escape, and harboring escaped slaves, capital offenses. Kentucky and Virginia militias patrolled the border regions, making escape nearly impossible.

The question arose immediately what to do about the territory west of the Appalachians. Since Virginia extended to the Ohio River (1), the Confederacy claimed all territory south of the Ohio River. There was already an extra-legal state of Franklin west of North Carolina, which was admitted to the Confederacy in 1789. Slave owners settled Kentucky, which was admitted in 1792. The Confederate presence in Kentucky was too strong to challenge, and indeed the United States moved rapidly to encourage settlement north of the Ohio to forestall Confederate expansion northward. With the Ohio forming a western boundary, the Appalachians preventing easy movement in the center, and the Potomac on the east, both countries had eminently defensible borders. Maryland, though part of the CS, recognized uneasily that it would not be defensible if it ever came to blows. On the other hand, Philadelphia was within easy reach of the CS.

Both the US and CS eyed the territory west of the Mississippi. When Napoleon offered to sell the Louisiana Territory, the US and CS entered into a bidding war, to the delighted surprise of Napoleon. With scant knowledge of the geography of the region, Napoleon simply offered the CS everything south of 37 degrees latitude, roughly the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and the US everything to the north. For $5 million each. The CS snapped up the offer with glee, since it gained control of the mouth of the Mississippi. The US realized to its horror that the interior was now landlocked, and took Napoleon up on his offer. The US and CS hammered out a treaty guaranteeing free navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi.

Both the US and CS sent expeditions to map out their new holdings. The US Lewis and Clark Expedition found a route to the Pacific, laying the foundation for a territorial claim extending to the Pacific. The CS sent out an expedition headed by Zebulon Pike, who reported a formidable mountain barrier and no easy route through. The only easy southern routes lay across Spanish territory.

Meanwhile a slave revolt in Haiti embodied all the worst fears of the CS. Even in the US, initial sympathy turned cool as reports of atrocities against white French settlers poured in. In the CS, the fury could only be described as incandescent. Private organizers raised volunteer brigades that offered their services to the French, who cheerfully accepted. CS settlers were better used to heat and humidity than Europeans, and some European troops had already gone over to the Haitian rebels. Pro-slavery Americans would have no such qualms. Over 100,000 volunteers signed up. The pay was paltry, but most were motivated by a belief they would be able to bring back their own slaves, or even acquire a plantation in Haiti.

The Haitians, having been in battle for several years, gave the upstart Confederate volunteers some solid drubbings at first. It was frontiersmen from Franklin and Kentucky, used to fighting Indians, who gave the volunteers some skills, aided by a few officers from the Confederate military academy in Richmond. Once the Confederates could hold their own in battle, the war became one of no quarter on either side. Night raids by masked CS troops massacred entire villages. The Haitians were fighting for survival and the Confederates were driven by a desire to teach blacks once and for all what happened to slaves who dared resist. With no non-slave territory in the CSA, and opposition to slavery suppressed, there was no countervailing public opinion in the CS. Non-CS observers were barred from Haiti, and so the CS press reported Haitian atrocities in gruesome detail, but CS atrocities went unreported. More than half the population of Haiti was wiped out before the exhausted and terrified survivors surrendered. Napoleon had by now decided an American empire was not in the cards, and was also glad to distance himself from CS actions in Haiti, so he ceded Haiti to the CS. Its new masters ruled with an iron fist, determined not to make the same mistakes the French had.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the US fought a naval war with Britain over the right to trade freely with Europe, and mounted a botched invasion of Canada. The CS, on the other hand, openly cheered Great Britain. Most of their trade was with Britain's Caribbean colonies and their new territory of Haiti, many CS traders were cheerfully supplying slaves to Jamaica, and they were delighted to see the US weakened economically. The only thing that saved the US was the fact that, from the British perspective, the War of 1812 was a series of trivial skirmishes on the outer fringe of the wider conflict with Napoleon. At the conclusion of the War, the US and Britain agreed to disarm the Great Lakes and the border with Canada, a surprisingly good ending to a badly run war.

When revolution broke out in Mexico in 1819, the US cheered on their fellow revolutionaries, while the CS was a lot more ambivalent. They already had ambitions in the Caribbean and wanted to see Spain weakened, but were not enthusiastic about a strong, independent Mexico, either. The CS had already purchased Florida from Spain, and, with Spain occupied by Napoleon, the CS occupied Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico in 1814, ostensibly to protect them from the French and British. Cuba was now effectively surrounded by American possessions, but the CS held out reassurances to the slave-holding Cuban elite. Cuba entered into an alliance with the CS, then progressively deeper trade relations, and soon became effectively a CS satellite.

By 1820, the CS had created the new States of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as admitting Santo Domingo. CS settlers coveted the lands of the settled Cherokee, and launched a campaign of terrorism that sent the Cherokee fleeing west beyond the Mississippi. Ostensibly the CS deplored the violence, but turned a blind eye to it, although they did supply military escorts to the refugees. Soon after, CS settlers streamed into Texas, and the enlightened dictator Santa Ana outlawed slavery specifically to discourage them. The enlightened Santa Ana had also managed to provoke rebellions in about half the states of Mexico. In 1836, Texas declared independence and defeated Santa Ana's forces. It immediately petitioned to join the CS and was admitted as a state in 1838. Santa Ana declared war. Instead of mounting an invasion, the CS held a defensive line along the Nueces River while offering volunteers to the breakaway Republic of the Rio Grande and Republic of Zacatecas. The CS plan, as it had worked in Santo Domingo and was working in Cuba, was to achieve economic dominance over its allies and eventually absorb them. The separatist revolts succeeded, leaving Mexico as a rump state with only a narrow waist in the west connecting the settled south with the nearly vacant north. The CS occupied the far north and declared itself owner of a strip between 37 and 42 degrees north, extending indefinitely far west. With almost no settlement or military presence there, Mexico was scarcely in a position to challenge the CS. The US insisted everything north of 37 degrees was theirs by virtue of the Louisiana Purchase, but there had been no US exploration of the territory, whereas the CS had been actively exploring. The CS had little trouble enforcing its claim.

In 1849, gold was discovered in California, which was still part of Mexico. Gold seekers from both the US and CS poured in, the latter with slaves. US settlers had no sympathy for Confederates whose slaves escaped, and openly encouraged them. There were frequent pitched battles between US and CS camps, and any blacks taken in arms against the CS were summarily executed. Both US and CS settlers declared rival Republics of California. Mexican forces in California mostly confined themselves to protecting the Mexican population. At roughly the same time, Mormons fleeing persecution in Illinois settled by the Great Salt Lake and proclaimed the state of Deseret. The CS was scandalized by Mormon polygamy but delighted with the Mormon belief that blacks had inherited the curse of Cain. Since the Mormons were fleeing persecution in the US, their loyalty to the CS was assured. The CS decided polygamy was an internal state matter, and Deseret was admitted to the Confederacy in 1863.

In 1858, gold was discovered near Pike's Peak, triggering the Colorado Gold Rush. Control of both Colorado and California would give the CS control of most of the gold between Mexico and Canada and give them economic dominance. The US decided such a state of affairs could not stand. It declared the CS annexation of Colorado and Deseret to be invalid, and the US-leaning California Republic to be the lawful government of California. US Marines landed in San Francisco and the Army marched south into Colorado. About a quarter of the Marines were lost when pro-CS settlers, using seized Mexican artillery, sank a steamboat taking Marines upriver to Sacramento, and fierce ambushes forced the Army to retreat from Colorado. The CS settlers in the West included large numbers with battle experience in the Caribbean and the Mexican separatist republics. The short California War was a resounding debacle for the US. The US awakened to the shocking reality that they shared a transcontinental border with a totalitarian slave state that was both richer and militarily stronger.

With a vast swath open to slavery, the expansionist drives of the CS were temporarily sated, but the Southwest was too arid for slave-intensive agriculture. Individual adventurers still dreamed of carving out their own states in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of these was William Walker, who led a coup in Nicaragua in 1860 (2). Not only was Nicaragua a fertile territory, it commanded the easiest route across the continent. Although longer than the route across Panama, most of the route across Nicaragua was easily navigable, and the only barrier was a mere 150 foot high range of hills. Walker launched a company to build a canal. Supported by the CS monopoly on gold and inexhaustible slave labor, the canal was completed by 1870, at a cost of 75,000 lives.

One beneficiary of the North American military stalemate was the independent Kingdom of Hawaii. As the 19th century drew to a close, it was obvious that some foreign power would see Hawaii's strategic value and annex it. US and CS settlers both established landholdings in Hawaii, and both eagerly desired annexation, but both the US and CS feared that a conflict over Hawaii might spill over into a general war. So in the Treaty of Honolulu (1892), Hawaii, the US and the CS jointly agreed that Hawaii would remain neutral and the US and CS would protect it from external aggression. So Hawaii remained independent, and the US and CS warily watched each other. The US annexed Midway and the CS annexed several other outlying atolls for naval bases. The CSA had become a bit more refined in its foreign policy and realized that pliant client states could be as useful as actual possessions. Cuba and the Mexican republics began to breathe a bit easier.

Since the CS constitution allowed states to support established churches, most did. These evolved into denominations that emphasized the legitimacy of slavery and social hierarchy, and the importance of obedience to authority. Slaves were kept illiterate and had only a fragmentary knowledge of the Bible, so slave churches preached a random mix of Christianity and folk beliefs. Slave owners encouraged superstitious fear of punishment for disobedience. When Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859, any concern over the non-literal interpretation of Genesis was offset by the ease with which evolution could be used to legitimize slavery. Also, interpreting Genesis figuratively opened the door to figurative interpretations of Christ's social teachings, as well. But the philosopher who really struck a chord in the CSA was Nietzsche, who cited the CSA in his writings as an example of a society evolving toward the ubermensch.

Although in theory the CSA was a democratic republic, the scope of its democracy was limited to white male property owners. Citizenship and free status was limited to full-blooded whites. The CS Congress was prohibited from limiting free speech, but states and local governments had a free hand, so anti-slavery agitation and even journalism were suppressed. Slave revolts generally remained unknown outside the local area. Trial by jury was guaranteed for whites, but slave owners dealt with blacks summarily. The only limitation was that capital offenses (murder, attempted escape, plus pretty much any violent crime against a white) had to be reviewed by a judge and sentence carried out by law enforcement. In practice, slave owners needed do little more than inform the sheriff. Along its long land border west of the Mississippi and its short land frontier in the Appalachians, the CS established a no-mans-land where slaves could be shot on sight. These fortuitously furnished shelter for wildlife. The last surviving flocks of passenger pigeons survived in these strip refuges after being driven to extinction elsewhere (3). Despite radically different ideologies, neither side felt a desire to attack the other, apart from cross-border raids by pro- and anti-slavery hotheads. For all its abhorrence of slavery, the US felt no desire to take control of millions of blacks. Neither the US nor the CS felt any eagerness to assimilate large numbers of hostile whites. 

As the race for colonies intensified in the late 19th century, sentiment in the CSA was unabashedly pro-imperialist. Meanwhile, slavery was coming to be seen as gauche, so the CS "abolished" slavery in 1878, but replaced it with a system of indenture that was every bit as difficult to escape. Mostly the abolition consisted of replacing "slavery" with "indenture" in the laws. It dawned on the CS that indentured servitude had no racial connotations, and could be applied to whites as well as blacks. Increasingly, poor whites in the CS found themselves in virtual slavery. They could buy their way out with a stint in the military, a source of easy manpower for the CS. A large pool of indentured labor also had the advantage, from some points of view, of keeping wages rock bottom.

During World War I, the US favored Britain and France while the CS favored Germany. Neither especially wanted to become embroiled in a European war, so both observed a semi-neutrality where each traded with its preferred partner and fired back in self defense. US volunteers flew aircraft for France, and CS volunteers flew for Germany, and occasionally faced each other in aerial combat. The war ground to an exhausted end in May, 1919. Meanwhile, Russia had dropped out in 1917 and been overtaken by the Bolshevik Revolution. Between its persecution of religion and its attacks on property, Bolshevism whipped the CS into a fury not seen since the slave revolt in Haiti a century earlier. 20,000 CS volunteers went to Russia to fight for the Whites, but only 5,000 returned.

As new armed camps began to coalesce in the 1930's, public opinion in the US favored neutrality, but leaned toward the democracies. In the CS, public opinion favored Japan in its invasion of China. The Japanese were seen as civilized, industrious and disciplined in contrast to the corrupt and moribund Chinese government, and the openly racist Japanese attitude toward China was admired strongly in the CS. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, the CS welcomed them with open arms. To the CS, anti-Semitism was no sin, and indeed was widespread and open in the CS, but the real appeal of the Nazis was their hatred of Bolshevism, and the Nazis in turn approved of CS policies toward blacks. When Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France unexpectedly declared war, CS diplomats in Germany cautioned the Germans to keep their focus on the East, and allow the Western Sitzkrieg to continue to sitzen. When the US stopped shipments of oil and other strategic materials to Japan in protest of its aggression in China, the CS gleefully continued to send Japan whatever it wanted. When Germany invaded Russia, even though it technically faced a two-front war, it had no real threat in the rear. The US signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to supply food and munitions, and the CS did the same with Germany. The difference was the US convoys ran a gauntlet of German submarines, while the CS convoys were escorted by the German navy. And there was a steady stream of CS ships carrying supplies to Japan. (4)

Not only was Germany well supplied by the CS, but with Britain only formally at war, but not inclined to do anything rash, Germany's infrastructure and industrial plant remained intact. The CS also manufactured armaments for Germany, allowing the CS to copy the most advanced tank designs as well as prototype Messerschmidt jets. By 1944, Russia was reeling and in headlong flight. The Germans decided to hold at the Urals. Meanwhile, Japan saw its opportunity and invaded eastern Russia as far as Lake Baikal (5). Russia's orphan province Alaska, which it had tried a number of times to sell to the US or Canada, was now in danger of invasion by Japan. As Japan gobbled the Aleutians, the US and Canada jointly occupied the rest. The war ended in 1946 with Germany occupying Poland and Russia west of the Urals, Japan occupying eastern Siberia, the Aleutians and southwestern Alaska, and Russia reduced to central Siberia. The former non-Russian Soviet republics became independent. Japan imposed puppet regimes in eastern China and took on a leadership role among the former central Asian Soviet republics, who feared both Russia and China. Japan and Britain vied to assume the role of protector of Tibet. Britain and France reigned supreme in Africa, the Middle East and south Asia.

After the war, the world settled into an armed peace. Neither Nazism, Japanese or British imperialism or CS quasi-slavery were ideologies that lent themselves well to foreign export, and Bolshevism, blamed for Russia's defeat, had been purged from what was left of Russia. Petty dictatorships around the world styled themselves followers of one brand of totalitarianism or the other, depending on personal taste and strategic convenience. The only voices for democracy and human rights were the US, Canada and various countries in Western Europe, including, ironically, Britain and France, which considered themselves as civilizing forces in their colonies. Colonial rule by Britain and France in Africa and Asia was infinitely superior to what the Nazis would have done. But the overwhelming balance of military force in the world favored the totalitarian empires. Both the CS and Germany dreamed of colonizing Africa. They were not pretty dreams.

Notes

(1) Virginia originally included present West Virginia, which rejected secession and seceded from secession. West Virginia was admitted as a state in 1863. This and the splitting of Maine from Massachusetts in 1820 are the only two times states have been split in US history.

(2) In our world, Walker ended his days before a Honduran firing squad in 1860. In this alternate timeline, his occupation of Nicaragua took hold. Moreover, with the Caribbean and Central America in the CS sphere of influence, he was able to avoid the fatal mistake of making an enemy of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

(3) Why not? The former East German frontier zone served as an inadvertent wildlife refuge, too.

(4) In this alternative time line, the Japanese, with no oil or strategic materials shortages, see no need to seize oil fields in Burma or Indonesia. With no reason to go to war with Britain, they see no reason to seize Hong Kong or Singapore, and though they're irritated by the US, they have no strategic reason to invade the (still Spanish) Philippines, Wake, or Guam. With Hawaii neutral and protected jointly by the US and CS, there is no Pearl Harbor to attack.

(5) Before our World War II, Japan was divided between a northern plan, to seize eastern Russia, and a southern plan, to seize the oil fields of Burma and Indonesia. In August, 1939, at Khalkin Gol, the most important battle most people have never heard of, the Japanese probed the Russians and got mauled. They then decided on the southern plan, which inevitably meant war with Britain and eventually the US, hence, Pearl Harbor. But in this scenario they don't need the southern plan and by 1944, whatever had happened in 1939, Russia had been bled white.