Brian Williams reads and recites the above (2021)

https://youtu.be/utjK0EtkU8U?si=vWYdumffcgxKvkFV

Sounds like he just read history, noticed repeating patterns, and believed his own eyes. It sucks that makes him some kind of special person, instead of "people" just being the kind of thing that commonly does stuff like that.

What a vision.

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> The article links to an article about Sagans' prediction of the decline of america. Strangely fitting nowadays.

>> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

Not really. His prediction actually seems pretty off-base, with only some bits that are coincidentally correct. For instance, he seems to attributing the cause of that decline to superstition, when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on pursing their narrow self-interest.

I don't know the full context of that passage, but my read comports with my understanding of Sagan's biases.