Jon is the exception, and I’ve often spoken about how he would be an excellent President.
He knows, has been involved, and most importantly is disgusted in that knowledge of how the sausage gets made. He knows how to appeal for public support to tear down the institutional obstructions.
Also importantly, I don’t think he can be bought. He’s walked away from cash cow gigs after he made enough. He isn’t infinitely greedy, and that’s rare in politics because most of them get into politics explicitly to be bought. I think his combination of institutional knowledge, understanding of today’s social ills, demonstrated empathy, and ability to say no to calls of making moooooaaaaaar money make him the ideal candidate.
That’s also the problem, because I don’t think he’d want it, which makes him an even better choice.
That’s the paradox of power, from police all the way to POTUS, the ones that seek it out and fight for it tend to be the worst possible candidates to possess it.
“I’ve got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem. I know where we can build housing for the homeless: golf courses! It’s perfect! Just what we need. Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods, land that is currently being wasted on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in primarily by white, well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer amongst themselves.
I am getting tired, really getting tired, of these golfing cocksuckers in their green pants, and their yellow pants, and their orange pants, and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts! It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless! Golfing is a arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country. Too much room’ in this country! It is an arrogant game on its very design alone, just the design of the game speaks of arrogance.
Think of how big a golf course is - the ball is that fucking big! What do these pin-headed pricks need with all that land?! There are over seventeen thousand golf courses in America, they average over one hundred and fifty acres a piece - that’s three million plus acres, four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles - you could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, racist, there’s another thing; the only blacks you’ll find at country clubs are carrying trays.
And a boring game. A boring game for boring people. You ever watch golf on television? It’s like watching flies fuck! And a mindless game, mindless. Think of the intellect it must take, to draw pleasure from this activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then, walking after it! And then, hitting it again! I say pick it up asshole, you’re lucky you found the fucking thing! Put it in your pocket and go home, you’re a winner! You’ve found it! No chance of that happening. Dork-o in the plaid knickers is going to hit it again and walk some more. Let these rich cocksuckers play miniature golf! Let them fuck with a windmill for an hour and a half or so! See if there’s any real skill among these people.
Now I know there are some people who play golf who don’t consider themselves rich. FUCK 'EM! And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist passtime.”
Then we will fall to fascism in the near future. Maybe not this election, but soon.
You can’t get people en masse to support you on the message of “Your tangible situation will continue to be horrible, but letting those guys win will cause unimaginably worse horror” cycle after cycle and continue to get them to care, and it is understandable to for them to eventually wash their hands of it, because at the end of the day, voting associates you with this system, and it feels dirty to participate because it makes it feel like you bear responsibility for what a Faustian bargain it is every cycle.
I will keep showing up with a funeral dirge in my heart to vote for the lesser evil and attempt to hold back the bloodthirsty fascist horde yet again without hope for things actually improving, but I’m not the norm. Most sane people will eventually just walk away from it sooner or later because the reality is too unpalatable.
I think you could drastically minimize any impact by doing the time travel in space and merely observing from high orbit, assuming your time machine has no form of exhaust, which if you have a time machine seems like a relatively small engineering challenge by comparison.
You might displace a few atoms in the void, but it’s the safest way one could go about it.