• @Khanzarate@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    446 months ago

    Reagan probably. If my understanding of history is correct, its the only thing that doesn’t delete me but helps the most.

    • Call me Lenny/Leni
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -96 months ago

      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.

      • mosiacmango
        link
        fedilink
        30
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        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.

        • @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          96 months ago

          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.

  • Mister Neon
    link
    fedilink
    236 months ago

    I say this as an American, from the bottom of my heart I wish Christopher Columbus never existed.

    • Call me Lenny/Leni
      link
      fedilink
      English
      106 months ago

      There was a French explorer who “discovered” America four years before Columbus. So Columbus’ erasure wouldn’t even affect the one purpose he had.

    • @Elaine@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      66 months ago

      Well there goes me but at least my native ancestors would have had a chance to thrive.

      • Mister Neon
        link
        fedilink
        5
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        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.

  • Hanrahan
    link
    fedilink
    English
    206 months ago

    Jimmy Carter losing to Ronald Reagan, shits just rolled downhill gathering size and pace from that unfortunate event.

  • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    206 months ago

    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.

    • KingJalopy
      link
      fedilink
      5
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      I work in pest control and controlling mosquitos is a big part of what we do. What I’ve noticed over the years is some people, like myself, never get bitten while others, like my wife, are constantly attacked. I’ve never looked into why that is but I find it interesting. I haven’t had a mosquito bite in probably 3 or 4 years. Granted, I treat my home for them but I’m always working places that have them bad but I’m never bitten. Couples I work for often relay the same things to me about one being bit but not the other.

      • @Kattiydid@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        16 months ago

        I theorize that it’s somehow based on skin undertone? Maybe? Just by my very limited personal experience, me and my mother have Olive tone skin and we get left alone and my dad and my other three sisters have pink toned skin and get devoured and I’ve seen that pattern play out in about 20 of my close acquaintances as well. I don’t know why that would possibly cause any sort of change besides maybe there’s some chemical makeup in olive tone skin that smells bad to mosquitoes? I don’t know, but me and my Olive friends seem to get left alone and the pink babies get munched.

  • @Susaga@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    96 months ago

    It’d have to be something fairly pivotal, but nothing so important or so far back that it prevents myself from existing amidst the swirl of history. I think I’d take the risk and say Reagan never became president. That would domino Reaganomics out of history, and remove the precedent of celebrities becoming president.

  • @Freefall@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    86 months ago

    Jesus would be funny. Honestly any key religious figure or even their betrayers (Judas) would just make for just a wildly different human race.

    • @ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      66 months ago

      Would this delete the religion or make the religion undeniably false? I’m asking from the historical fact he existed as a human. If he definitely did not exist but it continued to exist idk if that would change much. If Christianity never existed in sure we would be speaking Arabic.

      • Hemingways_Shotgun
        link
        fedilink
        English
        26 months ago

        Or alternatively, Christianity only exists because in an attempt to prevent it, someone from the future snapped Jesus out of existence. But it turns out that Jesus was just some dude who liked to do nice things for people until one day he poofed out of existence in front of a crowd and everyone suddenly figured he must be a god.

      • @KittenBiscuits@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        46 months ago

        If hate for pickles was snapped away, then I suppose I wouldn’t be minding so much when errant pickle juice gets on my food.

        It’s not a disagreeable compromise.

  • @Kattiydid@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    56 months ago

    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

  • @lennybird@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    Save the snap. Use it as leverage to shape the future by threatening tyrants into standing down, for I have no idea what might happen absent of a historical event happening.

    Now. Who to start with? Bibi? Putin? MBS? Closer to home?