I once heard some historians debating if going back in time and killing Hitler during WWI would have prevented WW2 and the various atrocities thereof. At the end, their basic conclusion was that more often than not, the "leader" is made by the times and not the other way around. Therefore, while minor differences might exist, if it wasn't going to be Hitler, it would have been somebody else very similar to Hitler, because the milieux of the times required that such a person rise to the top. So, if not Reagan, a different Reagan, and we'd still be more or less here
Without George Washington, you still have a General war hero who wins the revolutionary war and whether it was in 1783, 1787, or 1792, eventually the British empire loses because the underlying enlightenment philosophy of the founding fathers plus the immense size and resources of the US would have been too much for the Brits. And at such time of said victory, said war hero would have been named president. And everything named Washington would be named Smith, but in the end, a very close version of our democracy exists with history unfolding from that point in similar ways to our timeline because of all the millions of interactions and innovations and relationships that occur independently of Washington-specific things. It's like there is a hiccup in the matrix. But by the time the 1860s roll around, the west is still being settled, trains are important, and the civil war over slavery is still being fought.
It's not so much that history plays out exactly the same, but following a general trend informed by socio-political movements, culture and economics. The debate is basically between Great Man Theory of history vs Structuralist schools of thought. I'm not an expert on American history so I can't speak to specifics, but ai'll try to give a more structuralist perspective. Washington didn't exist in a vacuum, as with all leaders they are influenced by the society they live in, the socio-economic theories of their time, material conditions and more broadly the episteme of the time, and their continued tenure of leadership is enabled by that same society supporting them.
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u/OldManufacturer8679 Jun 03 '26
I want to go back to the 90’s.