Sunday, January 26, 2025

What If?

'What' and 'if' are two words as non-threatening as words can be, but put them together side by side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life. What if? What if? What if? -- (Letters to Juliet)

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I'm not sure that there are many things more intoxicating to a journalist than speculation. By training and obligation, we work within the world of what can be proven -- the facts -- about any given situation, so "wishful thinking" or any such speculative endeavor is strictly out of bounds.

But of course we do speculate, like everyone else, and that is ultimately how we end up getting some of our biggest stories. It starts with a hunch, then a theory, that slowly takes on the shape of reality as the evidence comes in.

There is no better feeling for a reporter than to have such a hunch come true, except for later when you can tell yourself that it actually made a difference in somebody’s life.

Naturally, this sort of experience is not confined to journalists; nothing of value is. Entrepreneurs pitch "what if" scenarios all the time, as in "what if we could disrupt this industry, it would be a multi-billion-dollar market."

After that, go down the list. When scientists speculate, it's called a hypothesis, which like journalists they cannot publish until they've developed enough evidence to convince their peers that it is a plausible explanation for observable phenomena.

Political analysts dream up various scenarios whereby candidates can win close elections based on multiple factors, most of which boil down to voter turnout.

I'm sure you could add dozens of others to this list -- sportscasters, doctors, weather forecasters, grandparents, space explorers. And, of course, what novelists do is almost entirely speculation.

When it comes to me, I rarely indulge in this when considering the past, as in "what if I had taken that job offer, bought that house, stayed in that relationship?" The reason is that it is all pointless now, and in many cases it would only lead to regret.

The future, however, is another matter. And it involves all of us. What if we can’t stop Trump from reaching his goal of autocratic rule? What if we organize a protest movement against Trump as big and boisterous as those in the 1960s? What if in spite of our movement, Trump and the extremists prevail? What if they don’t?

What if we can salvage our democracy? What if we prevail?

(I first published a version of this essay in September 2021.)

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