I'm imagining up a world where, through incredible science, the soviets successfully develop genetic engineering, the west develop psychic powers, and such things. Lots of inspiration from the metal gear solid series. I want to include some cool interesting real life people, like Ted Kaczynski, and make them even more interesting, like him becoming president or something. Then I also need cool locations, like an east german state run gay disco club. Any suggestions?
a deranged terrorist is probably best yeah. Also it's worth keeping in mind that he was antisocial and reclusive so becoming president would be a bit inexplicable.
on an unrelated note a potentially interesting piece of alternate history would be a black nationalist breakaway state in the south coming to be in the 60's led by the black panthers which was at one point a real concern for the US establishment particularly as while there were never that many black people in America as an overall demographic they were highly concentrated in the south