On Friday afternoon, Twitter was rocked by a simple question.
We asked @nytmag readers: If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it? (What’s your response?) pic.twitter.com/daatm12NZC
— NYT Magazine (@NYTmag) October 23, 2015
This led, naturally, to other—better—questions.
https://twitter.com/SaraKateW/status/657623586476302336
“uhhh, baby who?” – millennials who haven’t taken the millennial pledge
— cale g weissman (@caleweissman) October 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/_Cooper/status/657632472331587584
If you could travel thru time and wished to engage in altruistic assassinations, would you kill your targets in their infancy or as adults?
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) October 23, 2015
Why don’t they ever ask if you’d *kidnap* Baby Hitler? You’ve got a time machine. You could drop him off with a caveman family or something.
— Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) October 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/657630587134582784
And nearly everyone had an opinion.
Congratulations, @NYTmag. In less than 45 minutes you have gotten “Baby Hitler” to trend nationally on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/3t5FbD0XM7
— Liam Stack (@liamstack) October 23, 2015
Lurking beneath these hypothetical moral choices, of course, was a still deeper question about space-time and history: What if Baby Hitler? Imagine it. Baby Hitler, sitting there, Hitlering there in his high chair. His little baby legs dangle at a Hitleresque angle. His Hitlery eyes stare straight through you. Does he have a mustache? Of course not: He’s a baby.
But he’s also Hitler.
Man, what a mindfuck.
Photo via Craig Nagy/Flickr
