Re-imagining history is a harmless pastime of unrequited lovers and heartbroken sports fanatics, and then there’s this piece of dreck.
Gawker posted an article Thursday entitled “What If Dick Cheney’s First Heart Attack Had Killed Him?” to coincide with the release of the former vice-president’s book about his battle with heart disease, and it’s as thoughtful as can be expected. The piece laments that Cheney survived a heart attack in 1978 and was afforded the chance “to do all of the glorious things with which many unfortunate residents of Planet Earth are familiar.” Shucks.
“But what if Dick Cheney had died there on the floor in 1978?” the author asks, surely igniting the creative fires of historians and writers of terrible political fiction everywhere. “A promising young political leader, taken away all too young?” You can almost see the tears streaming down the computer screen.
After listing Cheney’s vita and a series of American conflicts that happened on his watch, the incisiveness really takes off. Just remember: satire is supposed to bring the funny, not the thesis defense.
“Many of these historical events, of course, would have happened whether Cheney was around or not. But the Iraq War? Perhaps not,” the author speculates. “It’s hard to imagine that George W. Bush himself would have formulated the plan to attack a nation wholly uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks, under false pretenses, without the strong assistance of a group of intellectual neocons led (and empowered) by Dick Cheney. And it’s hard to imagine that the post-9/11 push to vastly increase the power of the presidency itself — making the president less accountable to Congress, the courts, and the public — would have occurred without Cheney’s urging. It was his pet cause, after all.”
OK. So …?
“So let’s say that — conservatively speaking — approximately 300,000 people killed in the Iraq War would be alive today, had Dick Cheney passed away after his first heart attack in 1978.
“He didn’t though. His book comes out on Tuesday.”
It’s a very Vulcan thing that Cheney whiffed on, not weighing the needs of many over the few; if only the man had thought, Based on the specious hypothetical of a future internet writer (what the hell is the internet?), I could save the world countless lives and treasures, even though history isn’t a calculus equation in which all else is held equal and I won’t ever possess the ability to control the violent tendencies of religious fanatics and the bloodily oppressive tactics of foreign tyrants.
But he didn’t think that, though. His book comes out on Tuesday.
