Sympathy for the Devil, part 3: The Man Who Wrecked History

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Nice piece, but what I wonder is who would have filled his shoes if he had been tossed down that well.

That's my point.  Maybe someone would have, maybe someone wouldn't.  We made it through the cold war without what seemed to be - at the time - the inevitable spark.

But Princip DID provide that spark...An alternate spark is an assumption, the fact that he DID is a fact.

[Adios]

I'll give you the fact about the cold war with a caveat. No one would have won that one if it had gotten real. A very potential spark was the Cuban missle crisis.

[The Wizard]

Great piece, Rev. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'll give you the fact about the cold war with a caveat. No one would have won that one if it had gotten real. A very potential spark was the Cuban missle crisis.

Given the effects of WW I and WW II... did anyone really win either of those?

[Adios]

I'll give you the fact about the cold war with a caveat. No one would have won that one if it had gotten real. A very potential spark was the Cuban missle crisis.

Given the effects of WW I and WW II... did anyone really win either of those?

Are you being forced to speak German or Japanese today?

[LMNO]

Are they being forced to speak English?

[Adios]

Are they being forced to speak English?

Actually.......

Riding the crest of globalization and technology, English dominates the world as no language ever has, and some linguists are now saying it may never be dethroned as the king of languages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/asia/09iht-englede.1.5198685.html

[LMNO]

I'm pretty sure neither of us meant it like that... 

[Adios]

I'm pretty sure neither of us meant it like that... 

You are correct.
The difference is that we weren't out to conquer the world, we were out to prevent it from being conquered.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'll give you the fact about the cold war with a caveat. No one would have won that one if it had gotten real. A very potential spark was the Cuban missle crisis.

Given the effects of WW I and WW II... did anyone really win either of those?

Are you being forced to speak German or Japanese today?

Had either of those nations planned on taking over our country and changing our language? I wasn't aware that it was the goal of either Hitler or Hirohito...

However, as Roger points out so well, quite a bit of the problems we face now are due to those wars... affecting the "winners" as much as the "losers". We could argue pretty easily that 'WINNING' WWI directly led to WWII and between the two wars set up the Russian and Chinese revolutions, which of course directly contributed to Korea and Vietnam...

Causes and Effects.

We may have been victorious from a military perspective... we may have won battles and forced the enemy to stop shooting at us... but the effects half a century later don't seem to say "Win" to me.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'll give you the fact about the cold war with a caveat. No one would have won that one if it had gotten real. A very potential spark was the Cuban missle crisis.

Given the effects of WW I and WW II... did anyone really win either of those?

Yes.

Corpse-eating rats won both wars.

[Adios]

I'll give you the fact about the cold war with a caveat. No one would have won that one if it had gotten real. A very potential spark was the Cuban missle crisis.

Given the effects of WW I and WW II... did anyone really win either of those?

Yes.

Corpse-eating rats won both wars.

I'll damn sure agree with this.

[BadBeast]

When you think of the bizarre and frankly, twisted set of events that led to the assassination, It beggars belief how such a fucked up day ever got past the reality censors at all. First, this pissant little group of Slavic independence "fighters" no-one had ever heard of, decide to kill the Duke. Because, with FF out of the way, it stood to reason they would be given their autonomy, and their lands back. (Duh!) So they decide to take him out, with a hand grenade. But the fuckwitted grenade tossing Serb, Cabrinovic, didn't know the grenade had a ten second fuse on it. (Either that or he couldn't count up to ten) So it took out the car behind FF instead. And a fair few bystanders as well. The would be assassins melted away in the ensuing chaos. Except for Cabrinovic. In a fit of failure, he then tries to kill himself. With Cyanide. And failed that too. So he drowned himself. In a ditch.
Meanwhile FF, (never one to take a hint) tells his driver he wants to visit the poor unfortunates injured in the grenade blast at the hospital they had been taken to, but unfortunately the driver didn't have a fucking clue where he was going, so they drove around Sarajevo for a bit, looking for the Hospital.  As luck would have it, he drove right past the Cafe where one of the foiled fuckwits of the Black Hand Gang, Gavrilo Princip, was commiserating with a traditional Serbian Ploughman's lunch. (A bottle of rancid Riesling, and half a grilled turnip)  Princip looks up, thinks "Fuck me, there's the Duke again" leaps to his feet, and shot him dead with his pistol.
That's a bit like if Lee Harvey Oswald really did kill Kennedy, but by taking a shot from the school book repository, missing, then running down all those stairs, and in the panic, finding a nice quiet spot on the grassy knoll, lighting a cigarette (A Lucky Strike, of course) to steady his hand, and then plugging him with a well executed headshot. Then running off to hide. In the school book repository. 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Nice piece, but what I wonder is who would have filled his shoes if he had been tossed down that well.

That's my point.  Maybe someone would have, maybe someone wouldn't.  We made it through the cold war without what seemed to be - at the time - the inevitable spark.

But Princip DID provide that spark...An alternate spark is an assumption, the fact that he DID is a fact.

When I was in my senior year at high school (2000, got kept back for lack of work rather than lack of understanding) I went to a new school (see previous parenthesis), and one of the questions we got, since we were wrapping up the century, was, who was the most influential person of the 20th century. Hitler was overwhelmingly voted as most influential. I was the only person to suggest Francis Ferdinand (One of the faculty responded, "I could see that"). All of them overlooked the fact that if there was no WWI there is no Hitler. None. Fucking shortsightedness, even in retrospect.

Probably will have to start up a new thread in Horrorology but you're right. That assassination was the defining moment of the 20th Century (and by proxy the 21st and 22nd...) And he wasn't even anything to write home about. It was all about the alliances. The bad shit that lasts comes out of nowhere.