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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?
Along those lines, perhaps convince Grant to actually put “40 acres and a mule” into effect. Seize all the Southern plantations, divide them up, and give the property to the former slaves who worked there.
Plus, as the time machine isn’t working and it’s a one-way trip, if you gotta’ spend the rest of your life in the past you could do worse than to spend it in the Garden of Eden.
Nonsense. There are no Americans in Baghdad.
Imagine annexing Iraq. You would have had Sadr in the Senate and definitely no SSM.
Gotta say, in either case, the whole chin-in-hand thing is a bit twee. I forgive Nixon as that was FIFTY YEARS AGO.
Auggie just needs a serpent costume and a good set of notes.
Huh? I’m not sure what you mean by that.
Vlad just wanted to look as cool as Nixon.
If we’re confessing here, I was involved in the barely-organized OK campaign for Jerry Brown AGAINST Clinton in the ‘92 Democratic Primary, with the flat tax being his main issue.
And, what if eliminating powered flight means that time travel is never discovered?
The universe collapses on itself!
Steamships, railroads, and the telegraph, technologies of the 1830s, were already integrating the world at a surprising pace even 180-150 years ago; motor vehicles, motion pictures, and radio came along at about the same time as powered flight, 130-120 years ago. If we didn’t have planes, but we had radio, there’d still be a lot of homogenization around the world.
Would you be okay with giving up “talkies” in addition to powered flight? “Talkies” actually came after the Wright Brothers, you know. By over 20 years, minimum. Maybe not very linked but who knows? What if some part of developing “talkies” involved someone flying somewhere, that doesn’t happen otherwise?
Would audio CDs and then DVDs exist without the inspiration of Star Trek? Who can say?
Stephen Ambrose’s “Nothing Like It In The World”, about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad starts out with a section describing how difficult it was to get from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast. It was either weeks or months by horseback and wagon, or months by ship around South America, or by ship and overland trek across central America before getting on another ship.
Once the railroad was completed, the trip only took a few days, in relative comfort.
It think that’s supposed to go:
Railroad, steamboat, river, and canal,
Yonder comes a sucker, and he’s with my gal!
In this exercise our chance of success is based on our knowledge of the past. From this we can hopefully pick both a critical pinch point in history and know how to fix it in order to produce a better future outcome. When we jump into the past we are looking into a future we already know, so we already know how to navigate the course. (SIDE NOTE: Great power will also come with our future knowledge. Will you remain uncorrupted by this power and stay pure to your original purpose? That’s a different topic.)
Of course, we are human and can’t time travel, so we can only see the past. Our options to understanding the future are to either (1) learn from the past or (2) listen to someone who has seen the future. Also being human, we tend to think our own personal experience is 100% unique so we rarely if ever listen to either.
To flip the script. If someone came from our future and told us how to turn our future around, would we listen? Its already been done and it was 2,000 plus years ago. Plenty enough time for everyone to get the message. Did/do we listen? Have we changed our course? Has the world had a “better future outcome” in the last 2,000 years?
Yes, it has, but only as a result of and proportionate to the few who listened.
The past and future belongs to God. He has already sent us messages from the future. We were warned in no uncertain terms. God showed us how to navigate the course. We were clearly shown the obstacles and encouraged to overcome them. We know the final outcome. We know He wins in the end. We know His promises to us will be fulfilled. Its at the back of the Book. If we really want to, every day is a critical pinch point we can jump into to produce a better future outcome for whoever listens.
Okay, I have my official answer:
In the year 1998, I ban all electronic voting machines with online capabilities.
Hah, gotcha there! Fraud doesn’t require electronics!
Well I know it. 2,000 mules and all that.
But I only get to fix one thing.
Man, why would I? I change one thing and I’m done. Making a killing speculating on real estate is a fine hobby with which to spend the rest of my time.
Keeping in mind that if you did that much, your very activities would change the events you want to capitalize on.
Alright, I’ll bite. Explain to me how altering the 1962 Supreme Court decision banning prayer in school will massively alter the demographics of the nation such that any attempt I might make to buy into the population explosion in Southern California will be brought to naught.
The nuclear war, obviously.
Are you taking on investors? I want in.
One of my favorite “proofs” that time travel is impossible is the fact that interest rates are not zero.
ZIRP zones notwithstanding…
If time travel is possible, where are all the time travelers?
Aside from John Titor, that is.
Time travelers understand that they can’t go around showing everyone lists of the next Oscar winners etc.
It’s in the handbook.
According to the Weekly World News approximately 7% of the world’s population at any given time are time travellers.
That explains it.
They’re more reliable than the Washington Post.