What If....?

What are you looking at?

I'll write about Leonard Nimoy, and in particular his Spock character, soon. Meanwhile, live long and prosper.

In the meantime, call me crazy, but people LOVE time travel movies. Time travel books too. These movies and books almost always consider traveling back in time. Never forward. Who wants to go forward in time? You want to wind up like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes? Surrounded by a bunch of damn, dirty apes? (Ooops! Spoiler alert!). No, the time travel movies that succeed all involve going back in time. Back to the Future. The Time Machine (ok, literally, the main character goes forward in time, but to a society that has reverted to a primitive state, so its almost like going back in time). Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Countless original Star Trek episodes where they went back in time so they didn't have to spring for futuristic special effects that episode, like the one where they went back to 1968 to meet Teri Garr and the black cat/hot babe. Hot Tub Time Machine. Peggy Sue Got Married. Somewhere In Time (Miss Birdie's favorite movie, because, of course it is). Midnight In Paris. Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite. Downton Abbey and Mad Men (not really time travel per se, but kind of serving the same purpose of showing "how it used to be"). Its all about going...Back In Time (cue Huey Lewis).

Why, you may ask?

I think there's kind of a prevailing sense that times aren't as good now as they were "back then." Both on a personal level and as a country. I've written about the latter notion before, and of course, in many ways, we're living in the best times ever. So time travel back in time lets the audience delve back in the good old days. So in going back in time, we can return to a state where things seemed more certain, where we don't face the constant challenge of adapting to new technology (the "iPad"), new cultural norms (they acutally let gays marry each other now?), new life realities (like back before Austin was a hipster-ridden doucheville), or when you were younger and could do awesome things (instead of spend the weekend sore and lying on the couch).

The other reason people like time travel stories is we seem to have this view that your well-being and life circumstances often turn on individual decisions or actions. That didn't come out very clearly. That just a few individual moments or decisions directly lead to our station in life, our position, our overall welfare. So for example, the reason I'm a bus driver and have a horrible life is because I dropped out of school. IF ONLY I HAD STAYED IN SCHOOL...I'd be Bill Gates. Or whatever. We seem to think our lives come down to these very few "either/or" moments, such that the wrong choice, or being in the wrong place (or right place) at a specific time invariably caused to live the life we live. I know, that makes no sense, but I think it accounts for all these time travel stories where the main character goes back in time to correct some "mistake," the unstated premise being that without that mistake, their horrible rotten lives would magically become a bed of roses. If only I had married Jennifer. If only I stayed in school. If only I applied for that job. If only I hadn't quit the team.

You can tell that same story as a nation too. WHAT IF...certain crucial events in our nation's history hadn't happened? I'm not so sure about key events in people's lives. It seems to me that people basically are who they are and act how they act. If you had indeed asked that one girl to marry you after college, your life probably wouldn't have been much different than it ultimately turned out. The reason you didn't marry her to begin with probably would have caused you to get a divorce, and you'd be in the same place you were anyway. For example. But on a national basis, I'm not so sure the same thing would hold true. Sometimes, a singular event really does profoundly alter a nation's future.

I've thought about this a good bit lately, although I have absolutely no idea why. But here's some intriguing "what ifs." I don't necessarily answer these questions because they inherently elude an answer. No one can no know how things may have turned out differently. But make no mistake. Things would have turned out differently.

Some of the more obvious "what if" questions don't really generate much excitement because you figure the same thing would have happened anyway, at some other time or with someone else. So for example, "what if Elvis were never born" doesn't seem very interesting because someone like Elvis would probably have reached similar fame. America was ready for someone just like him, so if Elvis hadn't been born, Jerry Lee Lewis, for example, may have become the King of Rock and Roll. But rock and roll and counterculture and long hair and all that would probably still have happened.

Oh, and I try to be reasonable here.  The point is to focus on particular moments in time. Assuming away an entire era for example ("what if the 60s had never happened") is just stupid. Or "what if the Wright Brothers never lived"? As if though no one else in the entire world would ever have had the same idea to invent an airplane.

Think about these:



Kennedy at Rice University

Sorry for asking our generation's most obvious "what if." What if Oswald missed? Would JFK have
been as aggressive on Vietnam as LBJ? Would Kennedy have pursued civil rights legislation with the same fervor as LBJ? The Warren Commission would never have existed, and therefore the great  cynicism in its findings, the first time the American public really mistrusted its government, would not have happened. Would America have been as ready to let off some steam in late Spring 1964 when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show and unleashed the "British Invasion," which in turn unleashed "The Sixties"? Would a second Kennedy term have seen the same level of anti-war and civil rights protests, and therefore have led to the conservative backlash that elected Nixon and ultimately Reagan and the Bushes (and turned the South to the GOP for at least two generations)? So many distinctly different futures possibly flow from that one moment in time.

What if America never fought the Vietnam War? Would all that social unrest have happened? The "Youth Movement"? Giving the vote to 18 year olds (like that made any difference). Would it have intervened more aggressively in other conflicts? When would the draft have ended?



That Guy

What if Lincoln hadn't been assassinated? Would he still have made it on the penny? More importantly, without harsh Reconstruction measures, would Jim Crow have come into existence? Would the South have lagged economically and socially for more than a century?
What if the Japanese had launched their second assault wave on Pearl Harbor? The American Navy could not have realistically supported operations against the Japanese for a least a year, well into 1943, giving the Japanese time to consolidate their conquered territory and move more broadly against China, Australia and New Zealand, and possibly even against Soviet Far Eastern territories (while Germany kept it busy on the Eastern Front).

What if America entered the war against Japan only, not the Germans? Could Germany have defeated Russia, moved on to conquer Great Britain, take over all those British colonies, and effectively split the Eastern Hemisphere with Japan?

What if the Germans had invaded Russia just a couple months earlier, in June 1941, rather than waiting until August? See above.

I Am the Walrus?

What if Lenin hadn't died of a stroke, but lived another few years? Would there have been forced collectivization, and its 12 million deaths? Would a Stalinist dictator have succeeded Lenin if Lenin had more time to develop a coherent, functioning Soviet government? Would the Soviets have entered into the Nazi non-aggression pact, thereby encouraging Hitler to move on Poland?

What if the Brits had supported the Confederacy? The Holy Grail of the Confederacy--British recognition and support. The British Navy could have broken the Federal blockade and resupplied Confederate troops, and the resulting Southern trade with other nations could have supplied the South with needed hard currency. Immigrants would have poured into Charleston and Galveston just as much as Ellis Island, providing manpower to replenish the chronically outmanned Confederate Army. The United States may well have split into two weakened nations, with the South clinging to outmoded slavery just long enough to miss the Industrial Revolution and the North lacking the resources to project American power throughout the world. More importantly, the American "ideal," which has inspired so many people around the world to fight for freedom, would have lost a good bit of its moral imperative.

Kind of obvious: What if 9/11 hadn't happened? I wouldn't have to strip every time I want to fly.

The "I Have a Dream" Speech

What if Martin Luther King hadn't been assassinated? Would race relations have taken a different course?

What if that giant asteroid hadn't hit the earth millions of years ago (or 6,000 years ago, depending on your choice of cable news programming), and wiped out the dinosaurs? Would we all live like Fred Flintstone?

What if the Confederates won at the Battle of Gettysburg? See above.

What if the Brits won the Revolutionary War? Now this one is even more fascinating. Stuck with the British "class system," and with economic policies that discouraged the opening of the West and creation of private corporations, America almost certainly would not have achieved its "super power" status or enjoy its present standard of living. Everything in the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones may have remained in Spanish possession, or broken off into some sort of Spanish speaking confederation resembling Mexico. As something resembling a larger Canada, the weakened US may have been unable to reinforce the British and French in World War I, or even World War II. The industrial and technological innovations we've produced for more than a century may never have occurred.

That's all I've got.

What are some other "what ifs"?