Federal Land Theft Prevention Act of 2012

[M Fnord]

My main quibble of note was that Guiliani apparently gets a second term? I had no real belief that he'd get one--Fen or not he's still Rudy Guiliani, to know him is to hate him and after four years I can't imagine anybody but hardline anti-Fen types particularly liking him all that much.

So, rework: Guiliani takes a dive in the '12 elections but his anti-Fen base holds on to power in the House and Senate. The support is broadly bipartisan--a rarity in OTL or FTL--and nobody's explored the consequences of HR 451 yet so there's no immediate groundswell to repeal. Meanwhile the new President (D-somebody, are we looking for someone more optimistic or do we uphold the nobility of the scumbag? Got a couple options if we feel like it...) has their own agenda and the anti-Fen bloc is still there so no sense in rocking the boat, right? At this point things proceed as written: the environmentalists make their move, the mining industry loses their shit & the anti-Fen bloc gets launched into orbit on their own petard. The pardons would shake out a little differently depending on who's President, but hardline anti-Fen tactics die out with the Land Theft Act's repeal.

(Timeline note: around the same time Greenpeace makes their first moves is also around the same time the Artemis hearings are happening in DC. Coincidence? Probably, but you never know...)

However, I'd expect that once the bill is tabled, the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lucasfilms, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Paramount would remind Congress of the First Amendment

Let's not forget the Holy Rodent Empire. Imagine heavy-handed political advertisements featuring doe-eyed children asking their folks why they can't sing along with Elsa anymore, daddy? Why? >

This, incidentally, would not necessarily stop such a bill from going forward. American law has always been very flexible when it comes to "subversive literature" under the right conditions. Those conditions probably don't exist here.

Would there have been an Occupy Wall Street>Progressive Stack>Gamers are Racist Transmisogynists!>"It's {CURRENT YEAR}!" progression?

I think so. Some would certainly migrate upstairs and never look back, but in all honesty that upswell wasn't and wouldn't be driven by Fen. There's a large confluence of events that led to these things and if anything they might be stronger and angrier after four years of Guiliani and another four of, idk, Cuomo just to keep the "fucking REALLY?" train running. And of course just because the Fen are active in Fenspace doesn't mean they're not meddling downstairs as well: the Soviets naturally, various corpers have their interests in etc.

(Also, though we're often loath to admit/remember it, a good chunk of the unpleasant people on the other side of that equation would be upstairs as well. So there's that too.)
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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