Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
How Will YOU Save America?
Where did it all start going wrong?
You look at what’s happened to our beloved country and despair of ever seeing America recover from the rot and decay that infests its once-proud institutions. You wonder if we’ll ever achieve the same prominence on the world stage. You mourn the loss of real civilizational progress that marked the United States and made us a world superpower.
You’d like to enjoy the decline, but even joy has been stripped from you. The future’s so blight you’re kind of dismayed.
Here’s the set-up, bub.
You’ve just stolen my time machine*, and now have the opportunity to go back in time and change the outcome of one historical event in the past in order to SAVE AMERICA in the present and the future.
Where/When do you go, what event do you change, and how does this fix everything?
Or, to put it another way, what’s the key moment in history that set us on this dread course, and how would a different outcome change things?
A trend is a type of event, and is called such sometimes, as a guinea pig is sometimes called a rodent or a mammal.
An event is a thing that happens. A trend is a thing that happens. See my previous comment.
No, a trend even as you describe it would be multiple events, no matter how similar they might be.
The OP was changing ONE event. If you stop just ONE event that’s part of a trend, it most likely remains a trend. Unless you can somehow show that a trend always fails if even ONE event that’s part of it, doesn’t happen. You’d have a hard time making that case.
By the way, I like your new name.
Bush was CIA, Reagan was told to take him.
I’d start by getting Burr into a duel with Hamilton before the whiskey rebellion.
It would be multiple events, the convergence of which is also an event.
Words have meaning. Is an event not a thing that happens? Is a trend not a thing that happens?
And you assume it means just one event? That’s a fine interpretation, in which case no trends. It’s an interpretation that would probably never have occurred to me, but it’s a fine interpretation.
I think he could have written “one event or series of events” etc, if that’s what he meant.
Indeed, the whole main point of the OP is that of changing ONE EVENT which leads to other changes, otherwise why bother? But still, it’s about changing ONE event, and not the same as changing a trend.
I don’t get that. Words have meaning, don’t they? Is an event not a thing that happens? Seems simple enough.
But if one means just one, then obviously no trends, and I would need a new answer. Also simple enough.
Right. And the OP specified a single event.
removed.
Username checks out.
VTK seems to be taking a break, so I’ll just go ahead and tell about Supernatural.
I didn’t watch much of it after the first couple seasons, it got pretty ridiculous to me. But there was one episode, what in earlier years I would have called a “fun romp,” where a demon goes back in time and stops the Titanic from sinking, because he can’t stand Celine Dion who became famous for that song.
Hilarity ensued.
“One” may reasonably be taken to imply “just one,” but does not specifically say as much. A trend is one thing that happens, and one thing that happens is one event.
Assuming the “just one” implication, I need a new answer. Tough call.
No federal education funding comes to mind.
So that probably becomes “prevent the establishment of the federal Department of Education.”
June, 1972. Untape the lock on the door at the Watergate. The burglars never get caught. No Woodward and Bernstein. No “journalists wanting to change the world”. Our entire media landscape and media culture would be different. Also, no “post-watergate” election reforms and campaign limitations. The parties retain their strength instead of becoming the empty shells they are today.
Shut off the Internet. There are many different dates that claim its birth (I was there for many of them, and many of them accrued to my career and financial benefit.)
But really, just pretend it never happened
Fascinating.
It’s really interesting that so many responses deal with individuals (winning, losing or being killed).
April 21, 1792, former Revolutionary War Soldier and soon to be Presidential Candidate, Elias Buford, runs into the egotistical President Washington in the Men’s room at the White Stag Saloon. Mr. Buford tells President Washington that if He really wanted to go down in history and cement His name for all ages He should retire after only two terms in office. I would have sacrificed Myself and had a few more rounds with President Washington and talked Him into one more….
My brother and I had this discussion last year. His modern day hinge moment – when Powell told H W Bush to stop the first gulf war after the highway of death.
If we keep going and depose Hussein, everything changes. Arguably, Clinton might still get elected (although I doubt it). But even if he does, you no longer have troops in Saudi Arabia, so no Bin Ladin forming Al Queda. Many terrorist attacks of the 90s don’t happen, and no 9/11. No second Iraq war, no Obama.
That’s a good one. Simple, too.
That sounds like more of an SA answer, a trend rather than single event.
How about the Mexican-American War ends with the US annexing all of Mexico – and continuing on down South. So the A in USA means all of A (except maybe Canada, but maybe them too). That would mean a huge domestic market which would economically insulate the US from events overseas.
That’s also pretty direct, and simple.
That seems like more of a trend again, but it’s certainly arguable. What would that mean, something like no treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, or whatever that was that ended the war?
The single event is to throttle Al Gore in his crib.
Obvs.
Definitely them, too. And Australia, just because. It starts with A, doesn’t it? And Antarctica. And Asia. And Africa. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
US troops were in Mexico City, I think, when the treaty was signed. Mexico was thoroughly defeated.
All of this courtesy wiki.
That might revert to the old “trying to stop Hitler is what causes Hitler” thing. But it’s a good joke!
Yep, it was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (I knew what it was, even if my spelling wasn’t quite right) of 1848. Instead of letting Mexico keep some land, make it an absolute surrender. Could work.