As Mal is fond of saying, actions have consequences.
And, the US is most definiately not centrist, but hard, hard right. Why? Because of the devil's deals that Regan made during his time in office with the fundamentalist right. And 2001, and 2008, and the times in between.
Handwavium can't change those events. 2008 was goig to happen no matter what, because Bush got distracted by 9/11. The Tea party was born of that, and the government response. Aka: The guys who think that defaulting would be the best thing to ever happen to the US. Nothing has changed enough to stop that. If anything, the 10-30 milliom who got the hell out of the US and other countries removed a pretty major counterbalance to the hard rightists who toom over the republicans here.
A lot of fen would be the ones who helped with balancing that out. With them gone, their absence lets the Tea Party and others pull even harder right, likely leading to the government willingly defaulting. That wouldn't break the US up, but we would be looming at its power projection utterly gutted in the wake of that, and economic collapse within the year. Ahich would prevent the US from interfering, and with the near embargo on Fenspace business in the US, it wouldn't recover nearly as fast as the UK and its commonwealth, nor several other countries that would do business. And it lets the fen put the US over a barrel and bring it back to an actual centrist or hard left position.
And, the US is most definiately not centrist, but hard, hard right. Why? Because of the devil's deals that Regan made during his time in office with the fundamentalist right. And 2001, and 2008, and the times in between.
Handwavium can't change those events. 2008 was goig to happen no matter what, because Bush got distracted by 9/11. The Tea party was born of that, and the government response. Aka: The guys who think that defaulting would be the best thing to ever happen to the US. Nothing has changed enough to stop that. If anything, the 10-30 milliom who got the hell out of the US and other countries removed a pretty major counterbalance to the hard rightists who toom over the republicans here.
A lot of fen would be the ones who helped with balancing that out. With them gone, their absence lets the Tea Party and others pull even harder right, likely leading to the government willingly defaulting. That wouldn't break the US up, but we would be looming at its power projection utterly gutted in the wake of that, and economic collapse within the year. Ahich would prevent the US from interfering, and with the near embargo on Fenspace business in the US, it wouldn't recover nearly as fast as the UK and its commonwealth, nor several other countries that would do business. And it lets the fen put the US over a barrel and bring it back to an actual centrist or hard left position.