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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?
Anatolia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Andhra Pradesh
An eccentric but consistent approach to expansion.
LOL. That’s the kind of storytelling I like.
Kind of like the story where Adolph Hitler is just a young artist on the verge of starvation until driven into deranged antisemitism after narrowly escaping a series of time-traveling Jewish assassins.
But Europe, we let England have them. Even Austria (Endonym with an O) and Andorra.
There’s a story where a time traveler is sent back in time to assassinate Adolph Hitler. He returns from his mission and reports to his superior. “The time machine malfunctioned. I assassinated President Wilson instead of Hitler.”
“Who the hell is Hitler?” his superior replies.
That’s about right. All the worst ideas of the Nazis came from American Progressives.
That would really help! But maybe something earlier would do more. I’m not sure.
Yep, that’s one of the “trying to STOP Hitler is what CAUSES Hitler” things that pops up in sci-fi occasionally. Another was an episode of one of the reboot “Twilight Zone” series-es, where the lovely Katherine Heigl goes back in time to kill baby Hitler, and when she does, one of the other housekeepers replaces the previously-normal baby that was killed, with the bastard child of her psychotic sister or something.
Which means, really, that Germany takes England (or perhaps Russia takes them all)?
I should also relate the other Niven story for your enjoyment, briefly.
“The Return Of William Proxmire” postulates that the senator known for the “Golden Fleece Awards” finds a scientist who has discovered time-travel. Proxmire wants to reduce wasteful spending, such as the space program, and has found that many space scientists credited sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein with their career path.
Heinlein became a sci-fi writer after being discharged from the Navy when he got tuberculosis.
So Proxmire decides the fix for that is to – as someone else said about a past president – present Heinlein of the past with antibiotics to prevent his discharge from the Navy, and presumably be harmless.
After this is done, Proxmire is introduced to Admiral Heinlein of the American Space Forces.
Two world wars and one World Cup, Z.
Kind of reminds me of a Ghostbusters cartoon where someone sells their soul to a demon in order to get rid of all chickens in the world.
If I remember correctly, the demon coerced the Ghostbusters into unmaking the wish for him because he found it so embarrassing to be a part of it.
The WWs they didn’t do by themselves and I thought the idea was to extract the (vastly bigger) US from foreign entanglements.
We get Russia. It’s mostly Asia. That little European part comes with.
With the abortion mentality coupled with a general decline in births from the culture change we are experiencing and , finally, the developing viewpoints that we cannot solve problems we face, that we must run from them, I wonder if we will fail to reproduce the talent needed to survive and prosper.
“What would you like to order, sir?”
“Russia, please.”
“Okay, and part of Europe comes with that, of course.”
On the plus side, perhaps, much of the rest of the world is doing a lot worse in those regards, including/especially Russia. But also China.
In Turtledove’s alternate history books where the South won, a lot of the Mexican states are in the USA and CSA. I don’t remember how it happened and I don’t remember them playing a part in the books I read. Just remember them on the map at the front.
From one of my favorite Al Stewart songs:
Reminds me of a guy talking about the Nuremberg Trials and imagined the Germans on the stand saying, “But we learned it from you. Why are we on trial and you get to be the judge?”
Ummm… because they lost?
The Germans didn’t do it by themselves either. They just couldn’t get allies that were worth anything.
I would like to think I would use a time machine to convince the Holy Roman Emperor to murder the entire Rothschild family and spare the modern world endless suffering.
But knowing me I would probably use it to introduce Gilbert Gottfried to Emperor Charlemagne.
Before either of them died, of course.
Which actually means 2 trips.
AFLAC!!!
When the Frankfurt School guys escaped Germany and began their long march through our institutions. I only learned a couple years ago that the Department Republicans had been promising to shutter my entire political awareness was created by Carter and started after Reagan was inaugurated.
P.S. Since this is about time travel, “How Did YOU Save America?” might be more appropriate, and funnier. :-)
“What do we want?”
“Time travel!”
“When do we want it?”
“It’s irrelevant!”
Since you mentioned it, I stopped Dr. Stephen von Druin.
And look at the thanks I get for doing my job so well!
Don’t mind me, just taking notes for when I get this stupid time machine working.
In like episode 1 or 2 of the original Sabrina The Teenage Witch, when Sabrina wants to turn back the day so she doesn’t get embarassed at school, her aunts tell her that it’s very rarely done, and only under very special circumstances.
Something like:
Aunt: “For example, for a week the entire world was controlled by a little rabbit.”
Sabrina: “I don’t remember that.”
Aunt: “Exactly!”
That was my earlier point about Hitler, too.