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Challenge of the Week XXXIX
You took your smartphone and moved back to 1984. For the sake of the plot, your phone works perfectly, but a condition of your year-long relocation in time is no one can see it, or know about it. You are to report back to 2023 the contrasts: With people, music, overall humanity, anything. Send texts, pics, videos, undetected. The elite group with whom you work has cracked the code of time travel and intervention, and while the race to colonize Mars rages on, your group has decided to instead go back to 1984 to reset the world, so to speak. Before that power leaves a seamless, yet indelible mark on the future, the group has to decide if it's for the better, or to go ahead and let it all run the course it's on, and start looking skyward for continuation. Make it funny, make it deep, make it dark, make it yours. Entry with the most likes takes the $25 wire. Go.

Good Guy With a Gun, or, the Bernhard Goetz Debate

The following is a text message conversion between two Northwestern University sociology graduate students. Emilio Aguilar has been sent back to 1984 as part of a groundbreaking time-travel research project. His classmate and research partner, Kaitlyn Pierce, remains in 2023 to record their correspondence.

The date is December 22.

Emilio: HOLY SHIT KP. I don't even know what I just saw.

Kaitlyn: what??? what happened?

Emilio: I was just on a subway in NYC and some dude pulled a gun and shot four people. It was kinda like that scene in Joker. I got a video. I'll send it to you.

Kaitlyn: dude wtf??? thats nuts! are you okay?

Emilio: Yeah I'm good. That was crazy though.

Kaitlyn: good. just looked that up. there was some guy named bernhard goetz that did that exact thing. pretty sure thats what you saw. was he about to get robbed by some teenagers?

Emilio: I mean, yeah maybe they would have. Or maybe they would have just tried scaring him. They had only asked him for 5 bucks when he pulled the gun.

Kaitlyn: im reading some more about it. people were calling him a vigilante and a hero

Emilio: What? He's a maniac.

Kaitlyn: he was acquitted of attempted murder and assault charges and only served 8 months in prison

Kaitlyn: oh, plus a 5000 $ fine

Emilio: Wow

Kaitlyn: easy to call someone a hero crime fighter when crime is high. crime rates in nyc were way higher in the 80s. i just read this article that said there were 5 murders a day there in 1984

Emilio: Damn. It's a lot better these days right? At least per capita

Kaitlyn: oh yeah. theyre way down the list for violent crime in 2019. that was all i could find right now

Emilio: Yeah, so if someone did that today they would for sure get charged with murder and be seen as criminal.

Kaitlyn: im with you on getting charged but i think ppl would be pretty divided on the whole self-defense thing still. but thats mostly bc ppl dont wanna admit guns lead to gun violence

Emilio: The context of everything has so much sway on people's moral compass. Crime rates are high so someone that kills criminals is hailed as a hero. But if crime was low, shooting three people on the train suddenly seems hard to cheer for. Which is why I think the public reaction would be different in 2023.

Kaitlyn: i get what you mean. there arent a lot of shootings bc there are a lot of bad ppl. there are a lot of shootings bc theres a lot of guns to be shot. thats like the one constant variable with places that have higher rates of gun violence

Emilio: And that goes to the self-defense thing. I'm not sure if the guys he shot were armed, but if you think everyone should have a gun you can't shoot people and then say "I felt threatened because I saw a gun on his waist."

Kaitlyn: i just found a quote from goetz when he confessed where he says he would have shot them over and over again, but his problem was that he ran out of bullets. he would have gouged their eyes out with his car keys too. ill send the video of his confession

Emilio: Yikes. That goes a little beyond self-defense to me

Kaitlyn: lol is there such a thing as preemptive self defense?

Emilio: Hahah I think that phrase was added in recent revisions of both Wisconsin's and Florida's legal codes.

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