Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Good morning Hank, it's Wednesday. I'm in Venice and I'm really sick, but I don't want
to talk about either of those things. I want to talk about the Evil Baby Orphanage and
our first president, George Washington.
Right, so, Hank, as I'm sure you recall, a few years ago Nerdfighters came up with the
idea that instead of, like, going back in a time machine and KILLING evil people when
they're babies, we could go back and kidnap them and take them to the Evil Baby Orphanage
where, you know, we could rehabilitate them.
Hank, it's obviously a fantastic idea, aside from the small problem of, you know, time
travel being... quite challenging. But here's my question, Hank: how do you decide who is
a good candidate for the Evil Baby Orphanage?
Take, for example, George Washington. Terrible Evil Baby Orphanage candidate, right? Like,
he fought the British in the War for Independence, he was a huge part of the American constitution,
represented democracy, wooden teeth, six-foot-eight, weight a frickin' ton, all that stuff. He
was also inarguably REALLY good at being the American president.
But, Hank, what if our nearly universal assumption that the American Revolution was a good thing
is wrong? Like, let's say we kidnap George Washington as a baby and take him to the Evil
Baby Orphanage, "how, if at all, does that change history?" turns out to be a pretty
interesting question. Let's assume - although I think this is a bit dubious - that somehow
removing George Washington from history causes us to lose and/or not fight the Revolutionary
War. It probably takes the United States at least 70 more years to achieve its independence,
like, let's assume that we're following the "Canada Model", but we still eventually end
up with a representative democracy, and if we're following the "Canada Model", some excellent
beer.
Furthermore, as pointed out in M.T. Anderson's brilliant novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian
Nothing, the revolutionary war was decidedly a bad thing for the people who most needed
the protection of a government: the slaves. And Hank, it's almost certain that slavery
would have ended earlier in America if we had just remained a British colony. Furthermore,
Hank, it's not totally unreasonable to assume that, with slavery ending in the early 19th
century at some point, we might have avoided the Civil War, which was the bloodiest conflict
in United States history, resulting in 600,000 dead people.
But it doesn't stop there, Hank, because we know that one of the key factors in the French
Revolution was that France bankrupted itself helping us fight our revolution. Now, Hank,
I'm not saying that George Washington - who, by the way, was a slave-owner - is responsible
for a century of slavery or 600,000 dead people. I'm just saying that, as usual, the truth
resists simplicity.
So, Hank, here's my non-rhetorical question for the day: how do we know who's a good candidate
for the Evil Baby Orphanage, given the complexity of history? And more importantly, how do we
know that we ourselves are not living lives that could result in us going to the Evil
Baby Orphanage?
Let's continue the conversation in comments and in Your Pants. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.