Poli-Sci-Fi: Time Travel

Al Franken and Ann Coulter were once on panel and were asked the hypothetical if you could go back in time a be someone who would you be? Their answers are very telling, in a left-right sort of way, of what are the priorities for each.



This reminded me of a post I drafted back in October of 2004. There was an exchange of messages between 2 guys who changed, reversed actually, their political leanings between 9/ll and the invasion of Iraq. One says he grew up a liberal and be came a Bush supporter after the terrorist attack. The other grew up conservative and became much more progressive after seeing the disastrous course Bush plunged the country in the aftermath of donning the mantle of Commander-in-Chief.

Their discourse reached a pinnacle in this missive from the newly born-again conservative to his newly born-again liberal friend*:

If I had a time machine...and it only had enough power to be used once...I would not go back in time and play the stock market... I wouldn't kill Hitler as a baby... Nor would I do what any sensible straight man would do, fuck Madonna before she got famous...

No...I would go back to 1993...walk into the OHP offices and show you that one day you would have a web page with all of your political/social/economic views... and that it's linked with other web pages such as leaningleft.com and liberalnews.com... and watch you slit your wrists...

Personally I'm not a fan of time travel fictions. Most of it seems trite and repetitive. But, then again, I never imagined I use it to go back to win an argument - that seems to be a conservative mind set.

The simple message is conservatives can't be trusted with time machines.


*I think I found this at the now defunct Jon's Mind.