Time travel assassination

[sabotabby]

frandroid has a neat game going here that ought to be spread around a bit more. Here are the rules:

If you were to travel in time and allowed to kill one person to change the course of history, who would that be?

The usual answer to this is the head of state who most personifies evil in the modern era. But what if we tried to pick the "smallest" person (in the sense of their highest lifetime office/social position) possible, in relation to their maximum geopolitical impact on today's world?

For additional fun, don't post your reasoning and let people guess at why you picked that person.

(He picked this dude with some clever reasoning; I like it.)

I confess I am absolutely terrible at this game. Not because I'm inherently peaceful or kind, but for the same reason that I'm a lousy chess player: I'm incapable of thinking two moves in advance. You have to be strategic—there's no point in killing Hitler, or Hitler's mom, because someone would inevitably rise to fill the same place (there will be no arguing the Great Man Theory of history on this LJ or anywhere else).

Today's pick shall be Henry Morton Stanley for me. There are two reasons—one humanitarian and obvious, the other personal.

I also confess that I'm posting this for reasons rather unrelated to the original meme. Though only one of you will correctly guess why.

So have at it, friends list. I give you a hypothetical TARDIS, you tell me whom you'd land it on.

Comments

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

George A. Draper

[sabotabby]

To prevent the birth of his rather odious son?

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Ooh, neat game!

Well, the obvious humanitarian reason is that he helped claim Congo for the Belgians, leading to genocide. Personal reason... hmm, well as it's personal that's kinda hard to guess! Apart from generally being an unpleasant colonialist. Oh, and a Liberal Unionist, which would hardly put him on your good side. Not really sufficiently personal though. Stumped.

I am pondering who I want to historically kill!

[sabotabby]

Two clues:

1. The personal reason is related to the conquest of the Congo.
2. It has to do with one of my quirks.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Brian Mulroney.

Not cuz I care about him particularly, though.

[sabotabby]

Hah.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.

Sadly, I don't think I know enough history to play this game. Either the killing someone part or the guessing part.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Mikhail Tukhachevsky, immediately after losing the Battle of Warsaw.

[sabotabby]

I had to look him up. I suck.

Icon related.

[erotetica.livejournal.com]

Queen Söyembikä of Kazan

[erotetica.livejournal.com]

Oh...wait. My reasoning doesn't quite work in this case.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of any of them! But then I never did history at school. Or ever. Alas. There are plenty of people alive now I'd like to kill, so I'd choose one of their ancestors, or one of mine, so I wouldn't have been born in the first place. I would quite like to kill Jason of the Argonauts, to prevent all that misery for Medea. Does that count?

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

I'm incapable of thinking two moves in advance.

But at least you got it... Some people are picking famous figures directly. That's boring!!

As far as Esterhazy is concerned though, I don't have too much merit. I mostly started from the book I'm currently reading, The Flâneur, which mentioned Herzl's horror at the Dreyfus Affair* and subsequent Zionism. Then I created this meme. :)

As for your dude, I can't go further than the Rwanda genocide connection mentioned above, and even then the dots haven't been quite tied.

Personal reason: If it wasn't for the Rwanda genocide and/or RDC civil war, someone you know today would not have been a refugee to Canada and they would not be part of your life.

*: The French entry for this on French Wikipedia is gigantic.

[sabotabby]

You are still thinking too altruistically. My desire to stop genocide, rape, and tyranny is genuine; however, my other reason has to do with personal preference.

What common object do most people in the industrialized world own that I do not own?

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Edward Teller

[sabotabby]

I had considered him too. But the first paragraph of the Wiki article gives it away.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Milton Friedman?

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I nominate either Frederick Winslow Taylor or Hernado de Soto.

But the right answer might be Jesus, or perhaps Paul.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I don't really believe in this degree of historical contingency, though. For example, I think it may be pleasant to imagine that there would be no Zionism without Herzl and no Herzl without Dreyfus and no Dreyfus without Esterhazy, it's vulgar to imagine this is actually true. Zionism doesn't spring ex nihilo from Herzl any more than the oppressive consciousness of anti-Semitism was wholly embodied in L'affaire Dreyfus.

[frippy.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head, I want to elect Cecil Rhodes as a tardis landing platform -- though I guess some decent people got put through school in his name. But South Africa might've been a little better off without an imperialist founding a giant diamond mining company there...

But I'll have to think this over more.

[ironed_orchid]

Not to mention other benefits for Zimbabwe and Malawi...

[ironed_orchid]

Hmm, I guess I can't kill off my own parents or grandparents for the obvious reasons.

So I'll pick Alfred Deakin.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Abraham!

edit: Hmm, I see that springheel_jack went for Jesus/Paul... but that's still not cutting deep enough in that particular direction, IMO. Or is Abraham ahistorical?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator

Suppose Rome had lost the Second Punic War...

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

One thing that I'd consider is getting George B. McClellan killed off around 1859.

[5-miles.livejournal.com]

Zoroaster.

[5-miles.livejournal.com]

Although someone else would have eventually come up with Monotheism if he hadn't.

[jamie-miller.livejournal.com]

Noah.

[jamie-miller.livejournal.com]

Before he had children, of course.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Waldemar Pabst

[cheshirecat25.livejournal.com]

John Wilkes Booth.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

John Calvin.

Ooooh AND this Spanish royal couple. Isabella and Ferdinand.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I'd go for Gavrilo Princip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip

[see-my-glock.livejournal.com]

milton wexler, for personal reasons that Ayn Rand approves of