Summer 1989- Wave Beginnings
Voyager 2 picture of Neptune
President Askew was finding his feet over regarding the presidency as well as what he was wanting to do with the nation. Beyond continuing with the long-term processes like electrifying the expanded American public rail system and the creation of new nuclear power station, much of the work had been relatively small for the most part, with one piece of legislation going through Congress just clarifying on abortion and birth control, namely to ensure actual legislation was in place on legalization and using the 27th Amendmet to support it. Askew did note that besides maintaining the prosperity, he would be aiming toward reform of the political system. One aspect he did was a pretty strong executive order to bar and restrict lobbying within the US government. President Askew noted that in his time as Vice President, he saw that there were than a few more broken systems or problems that needed to be addressed politically, especially with the election system and he hoped his administration can fix those problems. Other aspects was formulating executive orders to enable financial transparency over in Congress, having heard some concerns from activist groups and the newer Congressfolk over a conflict of interest over House Rep members, Senators and others holding stock in office along with that of term limits for Congressfolk and even Supreme Court Justice members. In the meanwhile, the Askew administration was also dealing with a bit of an economic downturn caused by some of the failures of savings and loans association. While the newer regulations helped mitigate the damage, especially regarding fraud, forbearance, the end of inflation and other issues still caused some trouble that the Askew administration had to deal with. Beyond some finetuning of regulations and investigations into fraud, another action done was another stimulus package to help the people affected by this along with the economic slowdown that could've happened.
Abroad though, the signs of a massive wave was coming. Poland would see their Soldarity party triumph over their communist party. For alot of people, they were seeing this as the beginning of an anti-communist revolution of sorts going on over in Central and Eastern Europe, with more and more nations that were held in the confines of the Warsaw Pact. In fact, with this, President Askew would be finding himself having to travel more over in Europe, such as Poland and Hungary to establish further Americnan relationships with the cracking of the Warsaw Pact. Poland itself would reestablish connections over with the Vatican after fifty or so years.
[1] Over in the Baltics, Two million indigenous people of
Estonia,
Latvia and
Lithuania join hands to demand freedom and independence from
Soviet occupation, forming an uninterrupted 600 km human chain called the
Baltic Way. And in a more surprising one, a crowd over over 250,000 Hungarians gathered at
Heroes Square in
Budapest for the historic reburial of
Imre Nagy. Nagy was a former Hungarian Prime Minister who had been executed in
1958. What made this more prominent was that Nagy was actually a devoted communist, just one who believed more in reform. He admitted non-communist politicians, dissolved the
ÁVH secret police, promised democratic reforms, and mot of all, would withdrew Hungary from the
Warsaw Pact. This would lead to the Soviets invading Hungary in the 1950s and eventually resulting in his death as a supposed traitor.
[2] It served to provide that the anti-communist wave going on in Central and Eastern Europe could be better described as a response against forced Soviet hegemony rather than communism.
Beyond all of these developments in the national front, other innovations and phenomenon were going on. The world's first
high-definition television (test) broadcasts commence in Japan over in
analogue. A new television sitcom that would grab America's attention would be aired known as
Seinfeld. Nintendo would change the industry once more with the release of the original
Game Kid*, the name being a shoutout to Sony's "Walkman", with the latter making music on the go and so the Game Kid now puts games on the go. The satellite
Voyager 2 would venture closer to the edge of the Solar System, getting a picture of
Neptune and its largest moon
Triton. The G7 summit served to check on the progress of further issues, including with the environment and climate change. And over on the borders of Austria and Hungary, the Pan-European Picnic would be held, a peace demonstration, done to try and see the USSR's response and promote greater unity for the various European powers.
[1] Overall, it seemed that there was a growing wave of reforms desired and that peaceful protest was starting to get more attention.
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*= Yup, the OTL Game Boy is called Game Kid ITTL!
[1]- Information and phrasing from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989
[2]- Information and phrasing from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Nagy
Though you can probably already guess not like OTL.
