OK…wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff happens and you find yourself with the ability to either kill Hitler and prevent the Holocaust, or you can stop meth from existing.
I’m somewhat conflicted here. Hitler was probably the biggest monster humanity has ever produced, responsible for previously unimaginable evil.
On the other hand, I deal with people affected by meth almost every day. Not just the users–they are largely responsible for their own actions, but also the spouses, parents, and especially the children. Nothing I’ve ever encountered can absolutely destroy a life so quickly. I wish it could be magically purged from the face of the Earth.
So what do you say? Two in the head for Hitler, or no meth ever?
Who knows what would happen if you killed Hitler. Maybe fascism grows stronger across the globe and we get dozens of nazi-like regimes at once at a later date, or maybe the world keeps improving slowly and steadily and things turn out rosy. I say it’s worth the gamble.
Remove meth and there are still plenty of other drugs to use and abuse. Maybe someone even develops something worse than meth, depending on how you restrict your hypothetical.
Hitler is the right choice. For Germany and for the world.
I went for Hitler because of the proviso in the OP that said it’d prevent the Holocaust. Personally I think killing Hitler wouldn’t have changed much really.
As bad as World War II was, the world may be a better place today because of it. Modern-day Israel probably wouldn’t exist without the Holocaust, the modern-day structure of the international order wouldn’t be here, and chances are the world would have eventually have had a World War II anyway, with or without Hitler, but perhaps simply in the 1960s or 1980s instead of 1940s.
Meth has the potential to affect even more lives than Hitler did, if it hasn’t already. In my experience it is several orders of magnitude worse than any other drug because it’s relatively cheap, easy to make, highly addictive and readily available. But Hitler is an irredeemable evil, so I really can’t fault anyone choosing to take him out.
Yeah, if it’s just meth, you wanna go with Hitler. Meth isn’t even in much use around here anymore, it’s all opioids. If you want to say all addictive drugs, then it becomes a more interesting question.
I’m guessing you are not involved with the juvenile or family court system where you live. Meth is an issue in probably about 75% of my abuse/neglect cases. These usually aren’t the cases that make the news. They’re small, quiet little tragedies that play out over and over again…leading to grandparents or great grandparents trying to raise children on a fixed income…sometimes becoming victims of abuse themselves from the teenagers they’re trying to raise…or kids placed in foster care. The lucky ones get adopted.
Hitler=murder other people. Meth heads=murder themselves. All of the people that Hitler killed never had the choice to not be targeted for genocide. All the people that meth killed had the option of never taking meth.
I’m of the opinion that if not for the Holocaust, the Eugenics movement might’ve taken a deeper hold both here and around the world. Racism and its related hatreds would’ve been much more difficult to fight.
Plus if not for Hitler, my parents would never have met.
(Oh, and that’s just given the choice between the two. If I were rewriting history with fewer constraints, I’d erase all recreational drugs, including alcohol, tobacco, and pot.)
Yep. Came here to post that.
The active ingredient in methamphetamine, when it was used properly in allergy medications, was a blessing to my aching head. The fake crap they have now just sucks ass.
My guess is that you’re not from where I live. I’m from West Virginia. Our NAS (neonatal abstinence syndrome-essentially being born opioid addicted) numbers just came out yesterday. We have multiple counties with over 10% of births now having NAS. 1 in every 50 of our children are in foster care and 1 in 25 have been permanently placed with non-birth parents. On average, in every single classroom in the state at least one kid has been taken out of their home largely due to opioid abuse. I think I’m pretty familiar with what opioids are doing. Our meth epidemic was in the early 2000s and it was an absolute dream compared to what opioids are doing - largely because of the percent of the populace affected. Meth was much more confined. It’s effects were greater, but the number of people using was smaller. McDowell County as an example has an overdose death rate of over 100 per 100 thousand, which is roughly the same as cancer and coronary heart disease. Opioids are killing us quickly and destroying the fabric of communities.
If I kill Hitler, I think Stalin would have started WWII, and he wasn’t any better than der Fuehrer.
I would pick meth, in part because it would have fewer wide-ranging effects. It’s horrible to say, but WWII ended the Great Depression and colonial empires in general. And discredited ant-Semitism once and for all, at least among the civilized.
I don’t think he would have. Stalin was a coward. He never took chances that he could avoid. That’s one reason he killed so many people; he’d kill anybody who might pose a threat to him rather than take the chance that they didn’t.
War’s always a risk. I don’t think Stalin would have worked up the nerve to start one.