“…and then the professor goes, ‘but what if you knew the person would do something terrible if you didn’t stop them? What if you met Hitler as a kid?’” He snorted. “Little Hitler. In a college philosophy class. Please.”
She didn’t answer, immediately, but stared for a while at the falling leaves. “It’s not an interesting question?” she asked at last.
“You shoot the kid. Of course. It’s stupid.”
“You’d just shoot him?”
“Duh.”
“You wouldn’t hesitate? You wouldn’t grieve?”
“Bang!” He grinned. She looked pained. He looked puzzled. “What’s wrong with you, lately?” he asked.
“I’m never going to change you,” she said, smiling slightly.
“Nope.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not like it’s the end of the world,” he said, laughing.
“No,” she said. “I won’t let it be.”
Then she shot him. Five times: gut; chest; grazing wound to the shoulder as he went down, eyes enormous with surprise; face; face again.
He stopped shaking long before she did.
(not mine and reproduced without permission. Its from an intro to an rpg by Sydney Freedberg which can be found here.
Just thought i’d share, cos its pretty powerful stuff, and not an angle i’d ever considered before; being capable of shooting baby hitler is precisely the quality needed to be hitler.)
Your initial point, that killing baby Hitler is precisely the quality needed to BE Hitler, is totally wrong.
The quality needed to be Hitler is one where you are willing and eager to kill MILLIONS of people who don’t fit your concept of an ideal race.
Being willing to kill one person like that before they commit an atrocity is not only PHENOMENALLY different - it is a moral imperative. If you have this stupid wishy-washy attitude of “I can’t kill him, he hasn’t done anything yet” when you are ASSURED that he will kill MILLIONS of people, don’t you think that you’re being a bit selfish? What do you think the Jewish families destroyed by his madness would want you to do? What do you think they’d do themselves?
Hitler was a child born of chaos and a terrible thrust of a hand
Towards a better tomarrow
That broke through a human heart
And distorted it.
One builds a castle out of bricks,
And the other builds the castle out of bones.
I’ve wondered about this sort of distortion before.
I suppose that a soul cannot guide it properly.
The horse in the night
The screaming nightmare
That had the fearful power
The man became his fear
He became his doom
Then began to steer it
And it was his power.