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Description
Another retro one. One even older than my Hundred Days writeup, so this makes it one that's been on my system for FIVE years. Semper Fi's being held up for three years is nothing compared to this. Anyways, it's a take on Al Gore's winning the election.

This world's divergence is the 1998 killing of Justice Antonin Scalia during an attempted bombing of the supreme court. The bomb was done by a quite fringe radical group and failed in it's intended goal of killing the entire supreme court. Within six weeks, the vacancy was filled by by Jose A. Cabranes, the first Hispanic justice of the supreme court. The end result of this, was a Bush v. Gore decision that went 5-4 in favor of Al Gore being the new president. This was accompanied by narrow democratic victories in Florida and New Hampshire. The reason for this is because the heat brought upon the Clinton Administration made Gore have to campaign harder and take a new tack -- he campaigned as promising to continue clinton's legacy but without the scandalous personal life. As the narrow wins in New Hampshire, Ohio and Florida showed, this strategy worked despite Bush's legal challenge over New Hampshire's returns and Gore entered the white house on January 20, 2001.

The first Gore administration went relatively smoothly. The tech bubble recession ended by the end of the years and America's ongoing news stories were the convoluted trials and tribulation of "The New York" 19 who were caught in August of 2001, a spate of summer shark attacks with an ongoing investigation into Chandra Levy's death. The cultural period of 1998-2002 continued unabated without various post-9/11 cultural shifts. This ensured a different cultural tone: instead of the brief period of liveliness/outgoing culture from 2003-2007, the cocooning of the modern west is more complete -- hipsterism rose 1999-2003 and has been dominant for the past ten years. Trends such as social networking and left-wingers harassing people for what they posted online started earlier, with changes like Myspace being the one to take off and Mark Zuckerberg ending up a penniless hobo who gets sold to an arab shiek after failing to pay off his debts. Without a social conservative like Bush in charge, the FCC remained quite hands off and even became looser than it's 1990s standards with the cable channels following this trend. Another cultural difference was better-funded, more competent enforcement and a more pro-hollywood government delaying the rise of p2p. The services like Kazaa or bittorrent which started getting big in the early '00s under the relatively lax watch of Bush were slowed and there is more authoritarian legislation on the model of SOPA or PIPA in place. The economy revived and did better than the Bush administration without the war on terror or bush tax cuts to raise deficits. There was no boom, but growth rates tended towards the 3-4% range for several years. There was a brief flurry of controversy after O'conner's retirement in late 2003 and gore's appointment of Diane Pamela Wood to replace her but it was not enough to give the McCain/Cheney ticket an entry into the white house. The summer of 2004 would provide yet another reason to rally around Gore as international issues reared their head in the form of Korea, along with the ongoing Iraq war.

Meanwhile, the fact that Gore was working with DLC democrats plus republicans led to the GOP's business getting more of what they wanted -- Bush's policies got implemented but without OTL's sunsetting. Also, various deficit-reduction measures were put in -- think the Cut, Cap and Balance Act minus the amendment. There was even an abortive attempt at social security and medicaid reform, which ended up failing. The fact that there's no longer the $120,000 cap on income for social security taxes was all that came of it.

With a vice president who practically campaigned for it on a regular basis, a war with Iraq under Gore's watch was probably even more inevitable than OTL's war under Bush. America's having a president who was more acceptable to both the Media and international opinion made the road to war smoother. Instead of Weapons of mass destruction, the rallying cry for the war was human rights and other humanitarian issues. This more vague and less falsifiable reason was better-able to hold water with more people since going to war to protect "human rights" in Iraq is much harder to prove is a scam than looking for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The war also had more support because, it was to be honest rather more competently handled than OTL. Beginning in November 2002, the United States started occupying Iraq and still maintains sizable numbers of troops there despite 2011's drawdown.

Another factor intervened to alter the outcome of the election in Gore's favor. Following the North Korean strike on South Korean troops in the DMZ, America and it's ally South Korea were at war with North Korea. Defeating the north korean troops on the DMZ took less than a year, and by summer of 2005, the two Koreas were reunited under one flag. However, there was lingering unrest from the chaos of the reunification. America's troop presence in Korea remained higher than pre-war levels, but the troops were now shifted to the north, as well as on the DMZ. Despite the two Koreas being reunified. Yes, the outcome wasn't perfect but the Second Korean war provided the rest of the planet with a salutory lesson about American power, as an ironic reversal of how OTL's 2000s failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars taught the opposite. Also, the Korean war of 2004-5, and the 'pacification' of 2005-8 combined with this world's Iraq war have only been 1/3 as costly as the real world's war on terror. However, unlike the war on terror of OTL it was not a failure, which means that America rallied around Gore and his successor for much longer than they did bush -- congress went Democratic back in 2004 and is still solid dem.

The current president Mark Warner managed to keep his head above water and to win the 2012 election with a decent margin. The ongoing drawdown of forces in Iraq continues. President Warner's choice of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor as justices has been controversial, but politics is still blander and content-free even compared to OTL. There was a real estate slowdown and near-slump in 2009-10, but the economy has perked up again, if rather limper than it was 2002-2008. Vice President Leiberman's constant calls for wars in Iran, combined with uprisings in early 2013 gave President Warner an opening to really leave his legacy on the world. The Iran war began with airstrikes, but by summer of 2013, US ground troops entered Iran. The Iran war is in a stage like the Iraq war was in OTL 2004 in terms of level of public support.

As of summer 2014, things are looking quite a bit like the Bush years of the mid-2000s of OTL, albeit with a Democrat in charge. Iraq's forces were defeated with quick "shock and awe" type raids whch have been responded to by starting guerilla raids, the economy is sort-of chugging along. All is going well, but this may not last forever (or much longer): The stock market is doing well if volatile, with the rare glitchy day and the 2014 tropical storm season has already produced three large hurricanes(granted neither went near the US but still..)

xxx

Overall, America is more conservative than our world in both neocon and to a much lesser degree(mostly on economics) paleocon senses of the word. This is naturally due to a mix of 8 more years of "triangulation", combined with the neocon foreign policy and economics looking visibly better since they haven't failed epically yet. Gay marriage is only starting to get on the rader with four states having it legal by now and there's 1/3 more people in prison thanks to another round of increasing penalties for Federal drug crimes. Immigration reform is leading to a backlash, as the population of illegal aliens has jumped, with some scaremongering sources saying it's doubled since the 2008 act which allowed illegals to stay in the country if they register as guest workers passed.

Without the blip of 2002-2006ish where America rallied around the flag, as well as enjoyed for an extremely short moment a taste of a more lively culture, America is more cynical, bitter and internally divided. Despite there being no economic meltdown to serve as a point of blame, the issues are more broadly-based and harder to defuse. Secessionism got visible as an idea one electoral cycle earlier than OTL. Yes, red state/blue state issues manage to be even worse than OTL even without Dubya.

Both parties resemble their 1990s selves in certain ways -- part of it is less "surprises" upsetting things while a second part has been the influence of the political side of the normie youth movement encouraging status-quo politics for of all things IRONIC reasons. Democrats are more interventionist internationally, while Republicans tend to be less interventionist. However, this is on a spectrum where interventionism remains significantly more credible and there have not yet been any major diplomatic black eyes for the US. Both are more conservative than OTL on social issues and economics, which translates into West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, ohio and Missouri being swing states. New Hampshire also has swung for the GOP a couple times since 2000. The Reform Party made further attempts in 2004 to win election, but were dissolved in 2008 after miserable showings in 2006 congressional and 2008 presidential elections.

The GOP in 2014 is much like OTL's 2014 republicans in everything besides being slightly more civil along with being significantly less neocon on foreign policy. Think the level of civility the republicans had before Obama. Compared to OTL, Republicans are at least having to LOOK like they're more pro-civil liberties.

Democrats went through another clintonian round of moving to the right and trying to at least look like they're not offensive to white suburbanites. As a result, the party is more moderate along with giving visibly less leeway to various lifestyle or racial minorities activism. The current Democrat who is the frontrunner for 2016 is a surprisingly spry Joe Biden -- there are rumors that this, surprisingly buff Biden may be using steroids...

A less costly series of wars, combined with an administration that at least tried to look like it wasn't being profligate spenders means inflation is a bit less than in our world which is part of why the economy has done visibly better. The effect is minor, but it's visible. This is further helped by slower rises in gasoline prices than OTL. Yes, it still rose to $3 by 2012, but it stayed at 90s prices for much longer.

There has been no Arab spring and it looks like there won't be one anytime soon.

Western Europe is simply muddling along. Think the pre-Great Recession EU, if no more integrated given the failure of multiple attempts to deepen the Lisbon treaty.

Korea's per capita GDP peaked with reunification and doesn't look like it'll react 2004 levels until 2040-60 if things go well. The reunification of Kroea was a massive shock for Seoul; think a hypothetical US-Mexican anschluss rather than OTL East/west german reunification for the level of social disruption and economic chaos involved -- the fact that most of North Korea fled south was a massive shock for the labor market. On the upside, Korean birthrates have had a massive jolt upwards that appears to be sticking to slightly above replacement.

Many of the former North Koreans are voters for the new "United Korea" party -- a nationalistic, authoritarian-leaning, isolationist, socialist-minded party. With the eonomic chaos of reunification, many South Koreans are convinced of this party's wisdom .

China is much like OTL except a bit more visibly anti-American -- The Gore administraiton's not having a 9/11 to take attention off of China put more attention onto the Pacific. China's government ha put diplomatic feelers out to both Japan("We'll censor people's complaints about WWII if you kick US troops out") and Korea("We'll leave you alone and not pressure you about elections".

Japan is feeling pretty uncomfortable and finlandized.

Russia is an open Chinese ally these days.

With another 13 years of continuous liberal rule with accompanying hectoring about language choice and other general 'politically correct'/social justice harassment, Generation Y is more conservative-minded than OTL. Think the apathetic or conservative or if they're techie shutins working in IT libertarian leanings of generation X, but turned up to 11. It's a bit more collective-minded than generation X but rather more cynical re: left proposals. This has had the upside of entirely butterflying OTL's energetic and vocal SJW harassment of people, since leftism in this TL is seen as more of an establishment thing and thus less interesting to young people.

The livejournal/tumblr "social justice movement" that anyone who goes on much of the internet is familiar with got butterflied out -- there are some but they're only a few isolated people rather than an organized subculture. This factor has had important implications re: young people's attitudes -- instead of being fellow generation y/millenials doing the tone policing it's clearly older people doing the shaming. This factor is the biggest one making people more apathetic and cynical re: left-wing mindset.

Without 9/11, the cultural era of the late 1990s to early 2000s continued all the way to 2007 before beginning a slow transition to something (surprisingly, from the POV of say someone in 2003 or 2006 of OTL) like OTL 2014 in many ways. There is even more trite 90s nostalgia than OTL. Popular culture in this world is even more influenced by both Generation X and the generation x-influenced bits of Gen Y -- as mentioned before there is much more nostalgia along with even more postmodernism.

A somewhat more hands-off FCC led to Saturday morning cartoons lasting into the mid or late 2000s before dying off. This same relative laxness lead to toy-based series experiencing a revival in the early 2000s that's continued to date.

The livejournal and tumblr-based "Fandom" cultural movement with it's scarily organized teenage and 20something fandoms is even bigger, more unified and more vocal than OTL. Part of why fandom is so big is the otherwise bland cultural environment, another part is that it's a safe way to rebel against a stifling mainstream rather than embracing icky non-mainstream politics and getting into deep trouble for it. One of the bigger fandoms is of course My Little Ponies: Bronies became a thing close to half a decade earlier than OTL. There are more young people and 20somethings acting like the Cutie mark crusaders or Derpy Hooves in real life. Superwholocks are just like OTL.

Internet culture is visibly worse than OTL -- think the unholy mix of OTL facebook moralizing authoritarianism, gawker/salon/slate style moralizing clickbait politics and tumblr-style "gotcha" witchhunts against Bad People. tHere is more of an effort to tie online culture with offline culture than OTL -- South Korea retains it's ban on anonymous commenting, a few european countries either have it banned or have experimented with bans and reversed them given impracticality.

Annoying image macro memes are even more dominant than in OTL online. The person who created ragefaces is now a multi-millionaire. He still wears a rageface fedora, though.

One of the biggest aspects of this culture that varies from OTL is the sidelining of "hipsters" in favor of Normcore as the new reigning subculture -- this has had unfortunate effects re: popular culture(It's cool and totally normcore to make fun of people who like obscure stuff. Indie types, nerds and remaining hipsters aren't doing well), style, fashion and even aesthetics. Normcore has grown and unified to the point where there is even a political side to it with manifestos such as "Voting the normcore way", "how to (ironically) vote republican and not feel like a bad person" floating around. The main substance of the manifestos is this: 1) the (current establishment is in power for a reason: it's doing things right 2) the best form of liberalism is centrist clinton-gore style liberalism. 3) If you're conservative be a good neoconservative and don't go and be bigoted(favoring status quo or slowed change is good! actualy trying to actually reverse liberal gains is a no-no). Think of it as smug hipsters reinventing buying into the status quo and presenting it as something new and hip. For mainstream normcore liberals this translates to a mix of clintonian triangulation combined with Bloomberg-style nanny statism and lots of nostalgic references to the Kennedys. Conservative normcore types tend to be moderate or neoconservative republicans -- think a mix of Giuliani and the mid 2000s Dubya GOP with the heartland corniness being expanded to new levels. There is an emerging split in the movement between those who are only "ironically" pro-establishment/elites and those who take this irony to justify worrying sorts of bigotry("feminism is for white women only!", "Transgender people aren't a health risk unlike gays or smokers", "Go to church, l-o-l", "Black people can't be normcore since they, like didn't invent fire or the wheel on their own!", "no more nonwhite disney princesses!", "Bring back the 80s. Get rid of black people on my TV shows" and other such "accepting" statements). There is yet another split within the subculture over whether or not to "ironically" believe in religion, with the second argument in favor being citing increased social stability. The churches that normies pick tend to be working class or middle-class ones -- roman catholic, various forms of evangelicalism, methodism, lutheranism and the like -- none of the ones that speak in tongues or mormonism because both would be too weird and therefore Un-Normcore.

Besides the majority of young people who've bought into normcore or the heretical minority there is an increasingly oppositional subset reacting to various aspects they don't like. These people tend to 'unusual' politics -- whether they're hardline libertarian of one sort or another, anti-democracy ex-libertarians, paleoconservatives, pick up artists/MRAs, tankie, Various flavros of green/red/black/iron "pill" types, deep green, neofascist, peak oil believers, neonazi, anti-civilization, monarchist or other fringe thing there are three things almost everyone can agree with 1) "Normcore" isn't just bad it's offensively bad since it's a mockery of social stability 2) the politics of the establishment have failed 3) If things keep on this way the world is going to get into deep trouble soon.

The baby boomers and generation X don't really know what to make of current youth culture -- on the one hand there is the majority of the normies, but on the other hand even some of the normies say worrying stuff re: women and minorities, then there are the REALLY icky types like the Autonomous Nationalist protestors. Besides the normies, there is also the fact that a surprisingly large chunk of youth culture has various childish elements. Sales of nightlights, pacis, stuffed animals and other baby-related stuff have been higher than OTL for a few years -- this last gets much snarking from the Boombers, Generation X and even Generation Y since it's the kids born in the 1990s doing this(granted, some people in generation Y date it to 1988 since 2006 was when the sales for stuffed animals and pacifiers jumped up. The recent release of the "Powder and Fluff" trilogy, an adult baby/ageplay-related novel series which is as successful as say 50 Shades of Grey was in OTL is Not Helpful.

The integration of muslims in western nations is a bit better without 9/11, but Europe's countries are still having difficulty trying to fit them in. This means that a rightist anti-muslim backlash in europe has begun like OTL, even if it's delayed a few years and doesn't mention 9/11. Our world's "Eurabia" tropes don't exist as talking points on the mainstream right in the US -- there are issues with muslims in Europe but nothing noticable enough.

Description
Another retro one. One even older than my Hundred Days writeup, so this makes it one that's been on my system for FIVE years. Semper Fi's being held up for three years is nothing compared to this. Anyways, it's a take on Al Gore's winning the election.

This world's divergence is the 1998 killing of Justice Antonin Scalia during an attempted bombing of the supreme court. The bomb was done by a quite fringe radical group and failed in it's intended goal of killing the entire supreme court. Within six weeks, the vacancy was filled by by Jose A. Cabranes, the first Hispanic justice of the supreme court. The end result of this, was a Bush v. Gore decision that went 5-4 in favor of Al Gore being the new president. This was accompanied by narrow democratic victories in Florida and New Hampshire. The reason for this is because the heat brought upon the Clinton Administration made Gore have to campaign harder and take a new tack -- he campaigned as promising to continue clinton's legacy but without the scandalous personal life. As the narrow wins in New Hampshire, Ohio and Florida showed, this strategy worked despite Bush's legal challenge over New Hampshire's returns and Gore entered the white house on January 20, 2001.

The first Gore administration went relatively smoothly. The tech bubble recession ended by the end of the years and America's ongoing news stories were the convoluted trials and tribulation of "The New York" 19 who were caught in August of 2001, a spate of summer shark attacks with an ongoing investigation into Chandra Levy's death. The cultural period of 1998-2002 continued unabated without various post-9/11 cultural shifts. This ensured a different cultural tone: instead of the brief period of liveliness/outgoing culture from 2003-2007, the cocooning of the modern west is more complete -- hipsterism rose 1999-2003 and has been dominant for the past ten years. Trends such as social networking and left-wingers harassing people for what they posted online started earlier, with changes like Myspace being the one to take off and Mark Zuckerberg ending up a penniless hobo who gets sold to an arab shiek after failing to pay off his debts. Without a social conservative like Bush in charge, the FCC remained quite hands off and even became looser than it's 1990s standards with the cable channels following this trend. Another cultural difference was better-funded, more competent enforcement and a more pro-hollywood government delaying the rise of p2p. The services like Kazaa or bittorrent which started getting big in the early '00s under the relatively lax watch of Bush were slowed and there is more authoritarian legislation on the model of SOPA or PIPA in place. The economy revived and did better than the Bush administration without the war on terror or bush tax cuts to raise deficits. There was no boom, but growth rates tended towards the 3-4% range for several years. There was a brief flurry of controversy after O'conner's retirement in late 2003 and gore's appointment of Diane Pamela Wood to replace her but it was not enough to give the McCain/Cheney ticket an entry into the white house. The summer of 2004 would provide yet another reason to rally around Gore as international issues reared their head in the form of Korea, along with the ongoing Iraq war.

Meanwhile, the fact that Gore was working with DLC democrats plus republicans led to the GOP's business getting more of what they wanted -- Bush's policies got implemented but without OTL's sunsetting. Also, various deficit-reduction measures were put in -- think the Cut, Cap and Balance Act minus the amendment. There was even an abortive attempt at social security and medicaid reform, which ended up failing. The fact that there's no longer the $120,000 cap on income for social security taxes was all that came of it.

With a vice president who practically campaigned for it on a regular basis, a war with Iraq under Gore's watch was probably even more inevitable than OTL's war under Bush. America's having a president who was more acceptable to both the Media and international opinion made the road to war smoother. Instead of Weapons of mass destruction, the rallying cry for the war was human rights and other humanitarian issues. This more vague and less falsifiable reason was better-able to hold water with more people since going to war to protect "human rights" in Iraq is much harder to prove is a scam than looking for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The war also had more support because, it was to be honest rather more competently handled than OTL. Beginning in November 2002, the United States started occupying Iraq and still maintains sizable numbers of troops there despite 2011's drawdown.

Another factor intervened to alter the outcome of the election in Gore's favor. Following the North Korean strike on South Korean troops in the DMZ, America and it's ally South Korea were at war with North Korea. Defeating the north korean troops on the DMZ took less than a year, and by summer of 2005, the two Koreas were reunited under one flag. However, there was lingering unrest from the chaos of the reunification. America's troop presence in Korea remained higher than pre-war levels, but the troops were now shifted to the north, as well as on the DMZ. Despite the two Koreas being reunified. Yes, the outcome wasn't perfect but the Second Korean war provided the rest of the planet with a salutory lesson about American power, as an ironic reversal of how OTL's 2000s failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars taught the opposite. Also, the Korean war of 2004-5, and the 'pacification' of 2005-8 combined with this world's Iraq war have only been 1/3 as costly as the real world's war on terror. However, unlike the war on terror of OTL it was not a failure, which means that America rallied around Gore and his successor for much longer than they did bush -- congress went Democratic back in 2004 and is still solid dem.

The current president Mark Warner managed to keep his head above water and to win the 2012 election with a decent margin. The ongoing drawdown of forces in Iraq continues. President Warner's choice of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor as justices has been controversial, but politics is still blander and content-free even compared to OTL. There was a real estate slowdown and near-slump in 2009-10, but the economy has perked up again, if rather limper than it was 2002-2008. Vice President Leiberman's constant calls for wars in Iran, combined with uprisings in early 2013 gave President Warner an opening to really leave his legacy on the world. The Iran war began with airstrikes, but by summer of 2013, US ground troops entered Iran. The Iran war is in a stage like the Iraq war was in OTL 2004 in terms of level of public support.

As of summer 2014, things are looking quite a bit like the Bush years of the mid-2000s of OTL, albeit with a Democrat in charge. Iraq's forces were defeated with quick "shock and awe" type raids whch have been responded to by starting guerilla raids, the economy is sort-of chugging along. All is going well, but this may not last forever (or much longer): The stock market is doing well if volatile, with the rare glitchy day and the 2014 tropical storm season has already produced three large hurricanes(granted neither went near the US but still..)

xxx

Overall, America is more conservative than our world in both neocon and to a much lesser degree(mostly on economics) paleocon senses of the word. This is naturally due to a mix of 8 more years of "triangulation", combined with the neocon foreign policy and economics looking visibly better since they haven't failed epically yet. Gay marriage is only starting to get on the rader with four states having it legal by now and there's 1/3 more people in prison thanks to another round of increasing penalties for Federal drug crimes. Immigration reform is leading to a backlash, as the population of illegal aliens has jumped, with some scaremongering sources saying it's doubled since the 2008 act which allowed illegals to stay in the country if they register as guest workers passed.

Without the blip of 2002-2006ish where America rallied around the flag, as well as enjoyed for an extremely short moment a taste of a more lively culture, America is more cynical, bitter and internally divided. Despite there being no economic meltdown to serve as a point of blame, the issues are more broadly-based and harder to defuse. Secessionism got visible as an idea one electoral cycle earlier than OTL. Yes, red state/blue state issues manage to be even worse than OTL even without Dubya.

Both parties resemble their 1990s selves in certain ways -- part of it is less "surprises" upsetting things while a second part has been the influence of the political side of the normie youth movement encouraging status-quo politics for of all things IRONIC reasons. Democrats are more interventionist internationally, while Republicans tend to be less interventionist. However, this is on a spectrum where interventionism remains significantly more credible and there have not yet been any major diplomatic black eyes for the US. Both are more conservative than OTL on social issues and economics, which translates into West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, ohio and Missouri being swing states. New Hampshire also has swung for the GOP a couple times since 2000. The Reform Party made further attempts in 2004 to win election, but were dissolved in 2008 after miserable showings in 2006 congressional and 2008 presidential elections.

The GOP in 2014 is much like OTL's 2014 republicans in everything besides being slightly more civil along with being significantly less neocon on foreign policy. Think the level of civility the republicans had before Obama. Compared to OTL, Republicans are at least having to LOOK like they're more pro-civil liberties.

Democrats went through another clintonian round of moving to the right and trying to at least look like they're not offensive to white suburbanites. As a result, the party is more moderate along with giving visibly less leeway to various lifestyle or racial minorities activism. The current Democrat who is the frontrunner for 2016 is a surprisingly spry Joe Biden -- there are rumors that this, surprisingly buff Biden may be using steroids...

A less costly series of wars, combined with an administration that at least tried to look like it wasn't being profligate spenders means inflation is a bit less than in our world which is part of why the economy has done visibly better. The effect is minor, but it's visible. This is further helped by slower rises in gasoline prices than OTL. Yes, it still rose to $3 by 2012, but it stayed at 90s prices for much longer.

There has been no Arab spring and it looks like there won't be one anytime soon.

Western Europe is simply muddling along. Think the pre-Great Recession EU, if no more integrated given the failure of multiple attempts to deepen the Lisbon treaty.

Korea's per capita GDP peaked with reunification and doesn't look like it'll react 2004 levels until 2040-60 if things go well. The reunification of Kroea was a massive shock for Seoul; think a hypothetical US-Mexican anschluss rather than OTL East/west german reunification for the level of social disruption and economic chaos involved -- the fact that most of North Korea fled south was a massive shock for the labor market. On the upside, Korean birthrates have had a massive jolt upwards that appears to be sticking to slightly above replacement.

Many of the former North Koreans are voters for the new "United Korea" party -- a nationalistic, authoritarian-leaning, isolationist, socialist-minded party. With the eonomic chaos of reunification, many South Koreans are convinced of this party's wisdom .

China is much like OTL except a bit more visibly anti-American -- The Gore administraiton's not having a 9/11 to take attention off of China put more attention onto the Pacific. China's government ha put diplomatic feelers out to both Japan("We'll censor people's complaints about WWII if you kick US troops out") and Korea("We'll leave you alone and not pressure you about elections".

Japan is feeling pretty uncomfortable and finlandized.

Russia is an open Chinese ally these days.

With another 13 years of continuous liberal rule with accompanying hectoring about language choice and other general 'politically correct'/social justice harassment, Generation Y is more conservative-minded than OTL. Think the apathetic or conservative or if they're techie shutins working in IT libertarian leanings of generation X, but turned up to 11. It's a bit more collective-minded than generation X but rather more cynical re: left proposals. This has had the upside of entirely butterflying OTL's energetic and vocal SJW harassment of people, since leftism in this TL is seen as more of an establishment thing and thus less interesting to young people.

The livejournal/tumblr "social justice movement" that anyone who goes on much of the internet is familiar with got butterflied out -- there are some but they're only a few isolated people rather than an organized subculture. This factor has had important implications re: young people's attitudes -- instead of being fellow generation y/millenials doing the tone policing it's clearly older people doing the shaming. This factor is the biggest one making people more apathetic and cynical re: left-wing mindset.

Without 9/11, the cultural era of the late 1990s to early 2000s continued all the way to 2007 before beginning a slow transition to something (surprisingly, from the POV of say someone in 2003 or 2006 of OTL) like OTL 2014 in many ways. There is even more trite 90s nostalgia than OTL. Popular culture in this world is even more influenced by both Generation X and the generation x-influenced bits of Gen Y -- as mentioned before there is much more nostalgia along with even more postmodernism.

A somewhat more hands-off FCC led to Saturday morning cartoons lasting into the mid or late 2000s before dying off. This same relative laxness lead to toy-based series experiencing a revival in the early 2000s that's continued to date.

The livejournal and tumblr-based "Fandom" cultural movement with it's scarily organized teenage and 20something fandoms is even bigger, more unified and more vocal than OTL. Part of why fandom is so big is the otherwise bland cultural environment, another part is that it's a safe way to rebel against a stifling mainstream rather than embracing icky non-mainstream politics and getting into deep trouble for it. One of the bigger fandoms is of course My Little Ponies: Bronies became a thing close to half a decade earlier than OTL. There are more young people and 20somethings acting like the Cutie mark crusaders or Derpy Hooves in real life. Superwholocks are just like OTL.

Internet culture is visibly worse than OTL -- think the unholy mix of OTL facebook moralizing authoritarianism, gawker/salon/slate style moralizing clickbait politics and tumblr-style "gotcha" witchhunts against Bad People. tHere is more of an effort to tie online culture with offline culture than OTL -- South Korea retains it's ban on anonymous commenting, a few european countries either have it banned or have experimented with bans and reversed them given impracticality.

Annoying image macro memes are even more dominant than in OTL online. The person who created ragefaces is now a multi-millionaire. He still wears a rageface fedora, though.

One of the biggest aspects of this culture that varies from OTL is the sidelining of "hipsters" in favor of Normcore as the new reigning subculture -- this has had unfortunate effects re: popular culture(It's cool and totally normcore to make fun of people who like obscure stuff. Indie types, nerds and remaining hipsters aren't doing well), style, fashion and even aesthetics. Normcore has grown and unified to the point where there is even a political side to it with manifestos such as "Voting the normcore way", "how to (ironically) vote republican and not feel like a bad person" floating around. The main substance of the manifestos is this: 1) the (current establishment is in power for a reason: it's doing things right 2) the best form of liberalism is centrist clinton-gore style liberalism. 3) If you're conservative be a good neoconservative and don't go and be bigoted(favoring status quo or slowed change is good! actualy trying to actually reverse liberal gains is a no-no). Think of it as smug hipsters reinventing buying into the status quo and presenting it as something new and hip. For mainstream normcore liberals this translates to a mix of clintonian triangulation combined with Bloomberg-style nanny statism and lots of nostalgic references to the Kennedys. Conservative normcore types tend to be moderate or neoconservative republicans -- think a mix of Giuliani and the mid 2000s Dubya GOP with the heartland corniness being expanded to new levels. There is an emerging split in the movement between those who are only "ironically" pro-establishment/elites and those who take this irony to justify worrying sorts of bigotry("feminism is for white women only!", "Transgender people aren't a health risk unlike gays or smokers", "Go to church, l-o-l", "Black people can't be normcore since they, like didn't invent fire or the wheel on their own!", "no more nonwhite disney princesses!", "Bring back the 80s. Get rid of black people on my TV shows" and other such "accepting" statements). There is yet another split within the subculture over whether or not to "ironically" believe in religion, with the second argument in favor being citing increased social stability. The churches that normies pick tend to be working class or middle-class ones -- roman catholic, various forms of evangelicalism, methodism, lutheranism and the like -- none of the ones that speak in tongues or mormonism because both would be too weird and therefore Un-Normcore.

Besides the majority of young people who've bought into normcore or the heretical minority there is an increasingly oppositional subset reacting to various aspects they don't like. These people tend to 'unusual' politics -- whether they're hardline libertarian of one sort or another, anti-democracy ex-libertarians, paleoconservatives, pick up artists/MRAs, tankie, Various flavros of green/red/black/iron "pill" types, deep green, neofascist, peak oil believers, neonazi, anti-civilization, monarchist or other fringe thing there are three things almost everyone can agree with 1) "Normcore" isn't just bad it's offensively bad since it's a mockery of social stability 2) the politics of the establishment have failed 3) If things keep on this way the world is going to get into deep trouble soon.

The baby boomers and generation X don't really know what to make of current youth culture -- on the one hand there is the majority of the normies, but on the other hand even some of the normies say worrying stuff re: women and minorities, then there are the REALLY icky types like the Autonomous Nationalist protestors. Besides the normies, there is also the fact that a surprisingly large chunk of youth culture has various childish elements. Sales of nightlights, pacis, stuffed animals and other baby-related stuff have been higher than OTL for a few years -- this last gets much snarking from the Boombers, Generation X and even Generation Y since it's the kids born in the 1990s doing this(granted, some people in generation Y date it to 1988 since 2006 was when the sales for stuffed animals and pacifiers jumped up. The recent release of the "Powder and Fluff" trilogy, an adult baby/ageplay-related novel series which is as successful as say 50 Shades of Grey was in OTL is Not Helpful.

The integration of muslims in western nations is a bit better without 9/11, but Europe's countries are still having difficulty trying to fit them in. This means that a rightist anti-muslim backlash in europe has begun like OTL, even if it's delayed a few years and doesn't mention 9/11. Our world's "Eurabia" tropes don't exist as talking points on the mainstream right in the US -- there are issues with muslims in Europe but nothing noticable enough.