Hope Rides Alone

So first my roommate reading out an article from a bitter Hillary supporter full of inaccuracies, and then dramatically reading out the rebuttal comments - many of which were from grandpas - in accents and describing their profile pictures to me in such a way that we were both laughing so hard we were on the floor (it was so funny omg, hopefully she will record that later this week.) Highlights include people with photos of dogs or flowers as their profile pics, grandpas with guitars, an old man dressed in Revolutionary Era garb, a shirtless man, and a man "who is so old, his photo is sepia with him and his son." They used words like "claptrap" and "craven" and "meander round" and "drivel" and it was amazing. Old outraged sass is the best thing in the world. Reading the responses from people who'd been campaigning against the establishment for 30+ years was frankly inspiring.

Then we went to my other roommate's room to tell HIM about that, and laughing about some of the more lurid comments turned into talking politics. That lead to speculation about the ethical dilemma of stopping dangerous presidents from becoming president, and the ethics of time travel to prevent crimes, Minority Report esque prevention of crimes, etc. That lead to discussions of time travel and if we could go back and change X thing from time would we/should we, that spiraled from stopping monstrosities to changing world events, what if scenarios.

Then we started talking about what if we hadn't entered WWI, and then how things would have changed there.

Things got VERY INTENSE. We spiraled out talking about what wouldn't have happened had we not entered WWI, and all the myriad of global changes resulting from that. Entering WWII late. Us never developing or dropping the bomb. Women's independence not being achieved as soon. The UN not being called that or involving us at all. Us not being named a world protector. Us joining the third world coalition. Us distrusting Canada severely due to its links to England. England dropping the bomb. Us forming closer ties with Central and South America. Us de-segregating faster, but getting women's rights slower. Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state. Guam possibly becoming the 52nd state. I really wish we'd recorded this or taken notes, because it was truly fascinating.  

Then this spiraled into a hypothetical "window of time" into what we'd wanna see, and history mysteries we'd like to have resolved once and for all.