*MY* hot take is that the Scots-Irish suspicion of authority is the reason why Americans disastrously chose primaries over PR in the late 19th century. I think the causality chain is pretty thick, considering that the Borderlands were a locus of conflict since Roman times, but its thinnest part is probably the religious persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries.
In other words, if you make Martin Luther slightly less of a self-righteous asshole, maybe he plays ball more with Mother Church and becomes a famous reform bishop or even Pope, the Reformation happens more peacefully, no explosion of sects of religious fanatics happens, no persecution of Puritans and Ulster Protestants driving them to populate the Americas, leaving the South and Mid-Atlantic colonies too weak to overcome an alliance of pirate republics and the Iroquois Confederacy, and America probably ends up a pluralistic confederation with radically progressive/socialistic politics.
From The Comments: The Arrrrrrroquois Confederacy
From The Comments: The Arrrrrrroquois Confederacy
From The Comments: The Arrrrrrroquois Confederacy
Meh. I’m actually agnostic on American independence.
*MY* hot take is that the Scots-Irish suspicion of authority is the reason why Americans disastrously chose primaries over PR in the late 19th century. I think the causality chain is pretty thick, considering that the Borderlands were a locus of conflict since Roman times, but its thinnest part is probably the religious persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries.
In other words, if you make Martin Luther slightly less of a self-righteous asshole, maybe he plays ball more with Mother Church and becomes a famous reform bishop or even Pope, the Reformation happens more peacefully, no explosion of sects of religious fanatics happens, no persecution of Puritans and Ulster Protestants driving them to populate the Americas, leaving the South and Mid-Atlantic colonies too weak to overcome an alliance of pirate republics and the Iroquois Confederacy, and America probably ends up a pluralistic confederation with radically progressive/socialistic politics.