I think there is a lot to discuss here.
Diplomacy.
After 9/11, when the world weighed an invasion of Afghanistan, America could have skipped the invasion, taken the Al Qaeda leadership the Taliban offered up, and continued to seek O/UBL. A forensic investigation and specific arrests, extradition, trials, and convictions would have been much better than a disastrous 20 year war that accomplished two things: enriching military contractors and the impoverishment of a central Asian nation.
Diplomacy.
Deposing Saddam Hussein with the same type of pressure that, later, led to the ousters of Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Bashar al Assad. Some might say that 2003 created the pretext for the Arab Spring. I’d counter that time and tide created the conditions. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a pipe dream and an extension on the GWoT piggy bank.
Diplomacy.
Building a better, more sustainable future demands a move away from fossil fuels. Making driving, urban sprawl, warfare, agribiz, and Amazon packages into a socially toxic soup of ideas would have done wonders for green initiatives. Instead a turn away from the largest industries of the time was — and still is — regarded as heresy.
Well if you allowed one more year, I really feel that stopping the Columbine shooting would have an exponential improvement on the quality of the timeline.
I’d pump the brakes on technology. Especially the internet.
“Does X need to be improved?” “No” “Then we don’t progress it because its current state functions and does things as efficiently right now” “Does Y need to be improved?” “Yes” “Then we research, fund and progress it”
Phones would be fun again and not just a series of rectangles with silicone. They’d have any design that they want, so long as it still functions normally as a phone would.
I’d call and write to every newspaper and law enforcement agency and report the perpetrators of 9/11 a couple of days before it happened. I’d also place a decent bet on it happening anyway
The agencies can’t arrest themselves.
- Do what I could to stop the passing of the SCOTUS Citizen’s United ruling
- Write a letter to then Senator Obama that there’s a major recession coming and that holding the banks accountable and buoying the lower and middle class is a better option than a bailout of the private sector
- Warn about various impending natural disasters around the world to try to save as many folks as I could
Convince a guy in Google to not publish a paper that started this AI nonsense.
Find Elon musk and tell him that only betas use ketamine, and real epic cyberlords smoke fent
Savage!
I’m going to visit the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 and stop this one kid kid from falling into a gorilla enclosure.
Edit: fixed spelling error
Cincinnati. 2 n’s 1 t
Thank you. Maybe that’s why I failed the first time. I must’ve went to the wrong city.
Cinncinati, got it!
Cccinnciiiiinattttttiiiiiiii!
3 N:s
2 C:s
3 I:s
Be really obnoxious about the ballot format in the Florida 2000 election until they either fix it or news outlets do a good job educating people about how to correctly vote for Gore
Better yet, help Elián González make it to Florida with his mom. That saga made Democrats lose a lot of votes in Florida in that election.
It’s all Chad’s fault. We should just hang him
No! That’s how we got here!
Do I just get one shot or can I keep trying until I get it right?
Basically anything that reduces Republican power in the US is probably a win overall.
So, the Republican shift toward the far right was already in full swing by the 2000s. You’d need to go back to at least Reagan to head that off. Trickle down economics, Two Santas, etc. was already decades in the making. My dad had already been fully brainwashed by talk radio in the 90s.
But on the flip side, the Democratic establishment has made it painfully clear even to this day that their only priority has always been to maintain the status quo for the privileged NIMBY class. The Republican party didn’t need to do anything to keep unaffordability rising, they all want to maintain the housing market bubble to protect the wealth of boomers.
We make it so Reagan still runs but doesn’t win presidency, ever, until he dies. We make sure Bill Clinton doesn’t do that incident with Monica that got him impeached so he can still have some goodwill with the people enough to make them think we want the current path he paved to continue.
Clinton mostly became president by embracing Reaganism, so he didn’t really pave the path and it did continue
If it’s just a single shot, then preventing the Brooks Brothers Riot would be the best use of your time.
All it would take is an industrial sized can of pepper spray. Just like the kind police regularly use on leftwing protesters.
Pretty sure that’s how we got here in the first place.
Life imitates art.
Funny thing is the character was a parody of Trump to begin with
Considering I’d just be some guy, I’d invest all of my money in Nvidia and Bitcoin then when I get back and have millions, I’d spend it on passing wealth taxes and raising the minimum wage.
This 1. Buy bitcoin 2. Bribe, but for good
Yeah, a focus on altruism, but make investments to be more effective at it. Hey, you could even get ahead of the game and start a crypto exchange!
Prohibit social media.
I would get everyone to sign the Paris agreement and give it real teeth for non compliance.
Even Bob?
nah, fuck him, he still owes me five bucks
You’ll have to kill me for them!
Go back bit future and prevent the Columbine shooters. Done some studying on that day. Couple flat tires and a motail cocktail in the basement they hung out in before the shooting would have ended that.
That’s dumb.
What would’ve really needed to happen is to speak to the parents and the school about “hey, your child and student is doing some pretty fucked up things and they’re raising the stakes soon, so you may want to commit them somewhere or talk or smack some sense into them”
Then the media cycle that would have been about the columbine shooters is about the mad stranger who killed two innocent high schoolers and vanished.
