If it was an event, I would choose World War 2. I’m Bohemian (Gypsy) and my people were just as hated as Jews (I’m also like 10% Jewish). So snap Hitler out of history please.
Ronald Reagan.
Also, while I’ve got control of the wishfish, I need it to happen paradoxically. I need him to both get turned to ash at the end of his life, so he knows why he deserves it, and before he’s able to collude with Iran.
Every republican since Nixon.
Update: enjoying my cake 🍰
If it can be abstract I would snap away the acceptance of hierarchy as a method of social control, like historically speaking go back to the first people who decided that there should be a person in charge of all the things and have the people say “Naw, that’s fucked” and then that just not happen. Not that the idea of hierarchy not be in existence at all, because I think it would be more effective to have people recognize that it’s bullshit and intentionally build societies antithetical to hierarchy rather than to have society’s that are ignorant of its potential harm.
If it had to be a tangible thing that I could physically dissolve… Parasites? Would all parasites count or is that too broad? Cuz if we got rid of fleas and leeches and mosquitoes and ticks that would wipe out huge swaths of vectors of disease transmission. No black plague, no zika, no dengue fever. If we wanted to expand the definition of parasites even broader than the the bourgeoisie class might be included but I wouldn’t want to get my hopes up. XD
Richard Nixon
Carbon dioxide, I’m curious what that would do.
Prevent all known life.
Whoever invented circular toilet seats and 1" long sink spigots.
Tough call. There are so many possible points of inflection, and it’s hard to know where history goes when you eliminate any single point. Let’s say that you snap Adam Smith; does that mean that capitalism never happens, and that we live in a system of mercantilism forever? Or does the system get described by someone else and happen inevitably? What about Ghengis Khan? How does history change if the Mongol empire never happens? Do we all end up speaking Chinese? I you snap Julius Ceasar so that the library of Alexandria never burns, and the Roman empire remains democratic–for a time, at least–then what?
Trump winning 2016. He needs to loose, so he never attempts again.
Too recent. Let Gore win back in 2000.
Antonin Scalia would be your best bet in that case. He’s the most directly responsible for cutting off the vote recount that would have seen Gore win. Wm. Renquist might be a better choice though, since he set the stage for Scalia.
Roger Stone was also whipping up the crowds outside the recounts with lies that they are throwing out the R votes. That caused the brooks brother riot. That pressure from that and the news gave these assholes and excuse to stop it.
Reagan probably. If my understanding of history is correct, its the only thing that doesn’t delete me but helps the most.
How would removing Reagan help?
If it’s about the Berlin Wall, it’s not as if it wasn’t inevitable no matter who was president.
He broke basically every single pro middle class policy in the US. Unions, pensions, social security, taxes on the rich, exploded the deficit, congressional partisanship, brutal " better dead than red" foreign policy, on and on. He constantly broke every political “taboo” that protected these middle class bulwarks, and it worked. Our country has been brutalized for 40 years and counting, and most of the ugliness can be traced back to his administration.
He single handedly did more destruction to our nation than any other president so far, and yes that includes Trump.
Not to mention the completely failed War on Drugs which is still ongoing wasting trillions of taxpayer dollars providing jobs to the police to arrest minorities with laws aggressively passed to target them, and actively trying to to prevent more advanced research into “controversial” topics like HIV/AIDS and stem cells instead of actually trying to find treatments.
He may not have started some of these, or kept them going, but he expanded them and created a cult following for their continued implementation.
The Thanos Snap has sooo many problems associated with it. It’s developed by an evil multinational that doesn’t listen to its users and keeps trying to force itself on the universe.
People should use the Thanos Flatpak instead…
Ronald Reagan
I’d even settle for Newt…
Came here to say this
Why him? Why not someone who did something of note?
A LOT of the current Republican policies are based on the stuff that happened during his administration.
The Big Bang was a mistake.
Snap
“In the beginning was the Creation of the Universe. This has made a lot of people angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Jack Welch’s whole business philosophy.
Before him, it was more or less understood that business owners had a responsibility to do what was best for their customers, their employees, their communities, and their company’s long-term sustainability; the companies that didn’t (or didn’t at least make it look like they were) were looked down upon.
Welch was the first one to popularize the notion that short-term shareholder value was the CEO’s highest priority. He normalized companies’ c-suites being cutthroat, craven capitalists.
To be sure, not everything that’s wrong with the world today can be laid at his feet. But late-stage capitalism can.
It was more Milton Freedman’s philosophy. Welch was teacher’s pet who implemented it to the fullest extent.
I say this as an American, from the bottom of my heart I wish Christopher Columbus never existed.
I’ve good news, the continent’s fate was sealed long before that because colonialism was never going to stop.
There was a French explorer who “discovered” America four years before Columbus. So Columbus’ erasure wouldn’t even affect the one purpose he had.
The acts of Christophorus Columbus directly perpetrated by him range from holocaustic to apocalyptic in scale.
Christophorus
You missed the opportunity to call him Mr. Christoffelees.
It’s his non-anglicized name.
Oh… I thought it was a pun on phosphorus used as a jab.
Well there goes me but at least my native ancestors would have had a chance to thrive.
I’m a white dude that’s obsessed with Mesoamerican history. Holy fuck I would prefer the civilization your ancestors would come up with than what my idiot dirt farmer progenitors from Europe ended up creating.