Open Thread: Kill or Cure? [WeirdDave]

Alright, this one is a game for you history buffs. The Traveler suddenly shows up on your doorstep, fresh from observing the Eloi that are the descendents of today's Progressives. Exhausted from his trip, the Traveler begs a bed from you and falls asleep. You notice that in his weary state, the Traveler forget to pocket the keys to the time machine. You figure that you have time for one quick jaunt before the Traveler awakens. Grabbing your Barrett .50 cal rifle and one round, you hop in the machine and are delighted to see that he's already stocked the thing with Dr. McCoy's medkit. Your hand reaches forward and....

Here are the rules. You can make one trip and one trip only. You must travel somewhere in American history, no going back to kill Hitler.* When you get there, you can either kill someone, or save someone's life. Who do you kill or cure, and why, you must explain what you are hoping to accomplish. We played this game at a party I went to last week (right after the Madam Curie look-alike contest and just before we tried to jump Stephen Hawking's wheelchair over a row of schoolbuses. That's right, I party hearty). One person said he'd kill Jefferson after he wrote the Declaration of Independence. His reasoning was that the DoI was Jefferson's last great contribution to America. He basically hid in Virginia during the Revolutionary War and afterward he had a head filled with nonsense about a nation of gentlemen farmers. With Jefferson dead Hamilton becomes the third president and can implement his vision of the US as a mercantile powerhouse.

I, on the other hand, decided that I would travel back to July of 1924 and use the medkit to cure Calvin Coolidge Jr of the blood poisoning that killed him. Jr's death really took the heart out of his father, if he survives, my hope is that Cal runs for reelection in 1928. He would have won easily, and when the crash comes in 1929, he would have done the proper thing-nothing (I believe this because that's what Harding and Coolidge did in response to the post WWI depression that was every bit as bad as the 1929 one. The result was the Roaring 20s). Within six months the economy would have recovered and we'd be off and running into the Roaring 30s. No Great Depression, No FDR, no New Deal, none of that garbage that's ruined the country. (If I had to kill someone, I'd have shot TR in 1912. With him out of the way Taft beats Wilson, strangling the “progressive” movement in it's cradle and really saving the country).

*It's actually impossible to time travel and kill Hitler. Studies have shown that every single person who invented or stole a time machine tried to do this, and the collision of all those different time lines over Germany created a temporal interference wave that makes it quite impossible for any time traveler to get there. Doctor Who couldn't wedge the TARDIS into wartime Germany.

....firmly pushes the start button. With a roar, the Time Machine springs to life and you're off to the year.........

Open thread

posted by Open Blogger at 09:49 AM

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