Anyone ever wonder what our country would be like if Gore had won the recount? I was a very young republican Catholic at the time. I was uneducated and influenced solely by what my parents and grandparents had been. Education changed me. Reading the classics by Paine, Locke, Hume, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and many more as a philosophy and religion major pursuing two degrees made me a different person. I eschewed religion and changed from conservative by dint of birthplace and parentage to liberalism through education and a growth of compassion and connection with humanity.
So, do you ever wonder what the world would be like now if Gore had won? Would we have avoided the events of 9/11 and the two wars that ensued? Would equal marriage rights have been passed 8 years earlier? Would the environment be better off? I don’t know. I wish I could walk in alternate universes. Only occasionally do my own different time lines interest me: what if the medicines had cured my sister’s cancer, what if a past love had gone different, what if I’d avoided certain things in youth, what if I’d made better financial choices?
More often though, my thoughts swing to history: What if we’d joined the Second World War before Pearl Harbor? What if Hamilton hadn’t written the Reynolds Pamphlet and had the chance to run for president?
So, what if Gore had won?
What in history, or your own timeline, haunts your mind? What alternate universe would you like to walk in, even for a few moments?