I’ve long had a suspicion about how this would be answered, but I’ve finally decided to see for myself.
There’s a big green button in front of you. (Why isn’t it red? Hell if I know.) If you push that button, history will change in two specific ways, while the world changes around you to match the new timeline:
Covid never existed. Assume no twists to the story here. No genie weaseling, no ironic results like a completely different plague popping up that’s even worse. Take it in the spirit in which most people would take it.
Donald Trump was legitimately re-elected president of the United States in 2020.
You have two minutes to decide before the button vanishes forever.
I’m curious who’d push the button. Would you be proud of making either decision?
Would you push the button?
Yes, immediately.
Yes, after some thought.
Yes, after agonizing for 1:59.
No, I’d walk away immediately.
No, I’d walk away after some thought.
No, I’d spend the entire time agonizing and the time limit would make the decision for me.
Covid was what really unhinged Trump. Without it, and without the humiliation of a loss in 2020, he might have continued on as a massive embarrassment but not a particularly dangerous one.
Boiling the actual moral question out of the hypothetical: Which is more destructive, COVID-19 or a second Trump presidency? COVID’s death toll is right around 7 million people right now. I don’t think that even the most pessimistic assessment of Trump’s impact hits that kind of number. I feel morally bound to press the button, and I say that as a member of a minority that Trump and his allies are actively working to eradicate.
Our country survived COVID (although it’s certainly true that far too many of its citizens did not)
I’m not sure we would survive a second Trump term, at least not in a form we would recognize and value.
I would press immediately. Pressing guarantees that Trump would get another term, but I don’t know for sure that he won’t get another term if I don’t press it – the betting odds aren’t exactly a perfect metric, but they suggest he’s got like a 25% chance of another one in 2024. This way it would be almost over, too.
It’s also not like we’re in a timeline where a Trump presidency didn’t make everything worse already; that isn’t one of the options. Get rid of Covid and wonder if we’re going to have a civil war, or don’t get rid of Covid and wonder if we’re going to have a civil war, is how I see it.
I don’t think that a second Trump presidency would have been like the first one. He was slowly wearing down all of the reasonable people who could stomach him and slowly figuring out that he needed to stop listening to others to choose who to appoint to his administration.
During the first term, if Russia had attacked Ukraine or China had attacked Taiwan, Trump might have been pushed into responding and helping to defend those countries. During a second term, he would have happily traded those nations away and let them be flattened by the greater powers. And, those powers, knowing that Trump would do so would have been a lot more likely to have gone for it. As it is, we only got one of the two.
Trump provided a big, consistent, and (as the President) theoretically trustworthy voice that lead millions to doubt the truth of everything that made them sad and to embrace any statement that fulfilled their id. Four more years of that and you’d have so many people reading the Epoch Times that Li Hongzhi would be whipping up popular support for who knows what sort of genocidal craziness.
Covid was, to be sure, a dangerous disease. But it wasn’t the bubonic plague and, in the modern era with modern weapons, having sane and trustworthy people leading things could very well save many millions more lives than we lost to Covid and especially if you compare on the expected total years of life saved, metric.
You are absolutely correct. As a visibly transgender person, I’d be at the front of the line for the showers. I’m guessing the end death toll would be fewer than 7 million though, hence my decision. The button decision is a moral gamble, “you pays your money and you takes your choice.”
What Sage Rat says here
Is a very valid counterpoint, another variable in the moral calculus. I certainly don’t imagine that pushing the button is any kind of high road, it’s a painful choice made to the best of my ability.
After giving it some thought, I push the button. If Trump wins, there is no Stop The Steal, no J6 insurrection, no second impeachment. But, Democrats still control the House and Senate. Trump gets nothing done for at least the first two years, no judicial appointments approved, no legislation passed. And chances are good he gets impeached a second time anyway, perhaps even a third.
I think — or hope, anyway; let’s say believe — that we learned from that. That we learned to better guard against, as well as gun down, insurrectionists. That we learned, as well, what to do with regard to stuff like unto COVID. That we should’ve been able to figure that out beforehand, but we’ve now got some hard-won wisdom afterhand.
Most of the covid death toll was because of Trump. And, OK, in this hypothetical, he wouldn’t have had that particular crisis to exacerbate, but there’d be some other crisis for him to foul up eventually. Maybe still in his first term, maybe not until his second, maybe not until his fifth or sixth, but eventually, he’d find some other way to cause just as many deaths and then some.
And yes, I do assume that a second Trump term would be followed by more. The only thing that would stop that would be a civil war… which, y’know, would be another example of a Trump-caused crisis that’d cause far more damage than covid.
This is pretty much my assessment. Trump is the worst President this country has ever had. But seven million people is too high a price to deny him a second term.
I’d push the button and try to think about how Trump’s incompetence, laziness, stupidity, and lack of charisma mitigates the amount of damage he could cause.
I’m sure Trump believed he was going to be President for life. But there are dozens of Republicans who would have fought him in order to have their own shot at the top.
This seems to be a situation where, by pressing the button, I am taking on moral responsibility. If I were confident that it would create a better outcome, then perhaps I should do it. But I see a very distinct possibility that I make things a lot worse, and those things would now unquestionably be my fault.
Of course, I’m also taking on a lot of guilt by doing this, since I’d be second guessing my decision for the rest of my life. But it seems to me that would be true if I did press the button, too.
You have to make the choice between taking on the moral responsibility for pressing the button or taking on the moral responsibility for not pressing the button.
I voted to walk away, although after some thought.
First, a significant number of those deaths are directly Trump’s responsibility, less we forget how very, very hard he and his ilk pushed against the need to distance, mask, and vaccinate.
So I’m comfortable with cutting those numbers by at least 25%. Which still means I’m being given a choice to save quite a few millions, granted.
Buuuut, and here’s a big part of the problem, if it were JUST Trump getting re-elected, I could probably convince myself it was worth it. But it wouldn’t. How many other non-democratic individuals would be in the House and Senate right now riding his MAGA coattails, rather than being kicked out for being crazy? Enough for a solid majority in both the house and Senate would be my bet.
And given the evils they’ve already worked into law, the judicial system in general and the SCOTUS in particular?
No, American Democracy would be functionally dead after 4 additional years of Trump, even if it’s rotting corpse might have tottered on past it.
The situation is made slightly easier by the fact that I’m not having to chose to kill multiple millions to prevent it, in that I’m not steering them to death, just not altering the timeline.
But I’d have spent much of the two minutes (as I did IRL) to make that decision, it wouldn’t be easy.
And that leaves out what I expect happened to the Ukraine in the new timeline. No thanks.
