[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by patchwork

I really like the core idea. I don't think you get a viable civil rights movement without TV though. Televised images of Bull Connor and the like were what roused the North to understand and care about segregation.

A good deal of desegregation got done because the South was in a panic. The Black Fever got to Savanna Georgia. The death toll was high. When FDR (with Senator Truman for an ally) pushed for socialized medicine, even with Adam Clayton Powell's demands, they had to say yes. In our world, Powell's demands (which were reasonable, even conservative, just ill timed) allowed the Dixiecrats cover to sink the bill. Which wasn't politically viable in this world.

Because the South was the area of the USA vulnerable to the Black Fever the South played a reduced role in the US power structure. The Civil Rights Movement met little practical opposition. Which would provide groups of people bitter at the world the plagues left behind in America as well as Europe.

How did India's independence go, and who has it picked for friends?

For awhile it didn't go. Gandhi, Jinnah, and Nehru, all died of the plague. The cause of Indian Independence was preserved by B. R. Ambedkar. Britain was forced by the crisis of the plague to ask America to administer India, which should let you know how badly they suffered. Ambedkar, cut a deal with Truman. Basically both Truman and Ambedkar thought that British rule in India should end soon but peacefully. They pretended to argue to slip the project past the Brits. Ladejinsky ran a major land reform which both eroded the caste system and politicized the peasants.

India became "oficially" independent in 1955. But pragmatic independence came much sooner. There was no partition in this world.

Because Russia and China aren't players, and Europe is only now recovering, India is friendly with the USA. Truman and Ambedkar friendship has kept a tradition of American, respect for a fellow republic that escaped British rule, strong. And India feels much the same way. Both cultures tend to root for the Irishman when an Anglo-Irish quarrel breaks out. This tends to hurt British feelings.

The occupation of Japan?

The Black Fever was harder on Japan than twenty a-bombs could have been. In many ways the occupation worked out the same. However the USA has a better reputation in this Japan than in ours.

And, well, I don't think the death of Mao is remotely sufficient to stop Communism in China. It may be a different and better Communism though.

What killed Communism in China was the collapse of the USSR. Plus the land reforms forced by the USA took away the communists best selling point.

I'm also skeptical that devastating all of Europe by plague leads to the global triumph of liberal American values - if anything, it gives Nazis and Stalinists both an out to say their ideas were not given a full and proper test.

The USA is the only power that escapes devastation, plus this USA kept on doing its best to save the world form the plague. Yes, both Stalinism and Nazism still have adherents, they are your main foes. Centrum, Reich-5, and the Cabal, use these groups, and others like them even in the USA, to destabilize this parallel.