While I’ve always wondered if I would look good in jackboots, I’ve never owned or worn jackboots. Actually, I’ve never even seen a film by Lars von Trier.
So my ties with Nazis are limited to occasionally playing on the German side in EA Games seminal online multiplayer classic, Battlefield 1942, and even then I really, really sucked.
My comments this past week, about me desiring to go back in time so I could be a better father to Hitler, than his own father was, was fueled by my basic and ongoing frustration with poor parenting.
Actually, poor parenting dates back to the Stone Age when Thag the Fire-keeper once told his son, Bud the Goat-fracker/Hunter to stop his activity with the village livestock and practice his erotic hunting skills on the local cavewomen, no matter how they complained.
After all, the other hunters in the village were making fun of Thag and they began pointing out that Bud wasn’t a real caveman unless he was fracking cavewomen. Thag couldn't deal and so he sat little Bud down and gave him the idea to become the very first prehistoric serial killer rapist.
Bad parenting has been a problem for thousands of years. The cause of bad parenting is that bad parents pass on their bad parenting skills to their children, who, in-turn, pass on the bad parenting skills they learned from their parents on to their own children, and so on...
Anyway, back to my unseemly Hitler comment. If you folks don’t want anyone to go back in time and turn Hitler into an ordinary person who doesn’t become an evil dictator, I totally understand your concern as to how history might become muddied. Messing with history is a tricky business.
However, I really do believe the world would be a better place if Hitler had not had such a dick for a father. I mean, instead of beating and belittling him he could have steered his little son toward a different career path.
Had little Adolph been encouraged to become an artist or a famous bowler, or possibly even a swimming pool lifeguard, the world would be a different place. But then again, probably some other asshole would have taken Hitler's place and done even worse things. Who knows?
If you’re dead set on keeping Hitler firmly rooted in history as the monster he was, I’ll leave him alone and concentrate on changing the history of people like Gary Glitter—mostly because I don’t want to feel guilty for pumping my fist every time I hear the “Hey Song”—it is quite catchy.
Oh, and as for my comment about wishing someone would come up with a way to sterilize entire cultures. Really, I just want to make potentially bad parents stop having children.
While I realize that sterilizing the entire Middle East is a bit extreme, and would prevent some really nice people in Syria or Afghanistan from bringing another Ahmed into the world, it’s really hard to not at least consider how such a move might indeed keep future 9-11s from happening. I'm just being pragmatic.
Heck, I feel the same way about the crack heads living in the trailer park down the street.
Oh, and by the way, there's no such thing as time travel, dumb shits.
-Pragmatic Eddie
[Eddie Vincent is a fictional character created by Wade Buffington. Views expressed by Mr. Vincent do not necessarily represent the views of Wade Buffington. Any similarities between Eddie and Wade are entirely coincidental.]
