Carl Sagan saw this coming in 1995

[Takket]

Wow

Link to tweet

?s=21

[Sherman A1]

1. With all due respect to Mr. Sagan

Anyone paying the least bit of attention saw it long before 1995.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

2. Seriously!! Maybe not billions and billions... but still!!

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

[maxsolomon]

13. Yeah, I saw it coming in 1992.

I even wrote Sagan about it!

[Sherman A1]

19. I figured it out in the early 1980s

And while I did not write Mr Sagan as mentioned all you had to do was be paying attention. It wasn’t too hard to figure out.

[RKP5637]

3. America, "a kind of celebration of ignorance!" Certainly there for a quite large

segment of the population.

[mnhtnbb]

4. The ascendance of a corrupt con man

to the office of President of the United States reinforces the fact that America has achieved the celebration of ignorance.

I still cannot believe that 60 million people voted for that man.

[NNadir]

9. Me neither. It represents a horrifying example of the power...

...of ignorance and racism.

[mnhtnbb]

12. And greed.

I don't think we can forget that as a motivating factor in the decision of people who voted for and continue to support him.

[Cosmocat]

16. My direct quote, "America is dumb enough to make him president if he gets the nomination"

the day he came down the escalator, because my entire life of 50+ years has seen the republican party/conservatism increasingly distance their "base" from reality, including framing democrats as the dog beating, communist/socialist, dog beating spawns of satan.

[hlthe2b]

5. Ohhhhhhh!

prescient, but scary as hell, because he was so right.

[llmart]

6. Wow! is right.

You couldn't put it more precisely than this. There were a lot of us who saw this coming. Anyone else on here remember the popularity of the book "The Closing of the American Mind"? I believe that spoke to the dumbing down of America also.

[oasis]

7. "dumbing down of America"

X 60,000,000

[certainot]

8. i wonder if somewhere else in the quote he mentioned

talk radio, because in 95 it was going very strong, dems lost the house for the first time in 40 years or something, rw radio basically helped the cons get reagan bush out of going to jail for iran contra, limbaugh had just been given an honorary seat in the house, and the democrats were completely ignoring it. and it was setting up fox, which had not been invented yet.

all this doom and gloom is bullshit - there is a cause to this rise of crap - democrats ignore the only advantage trump has, and analyze political cause and effect as if studying fish without water

[Caliman73]

15. Agreed. Good point.

I have been saying that on DU for a little while. There have always been divisions within the political spectrum and there has always been a celebration, while not necessarily specifically of ignorance, but a backlash against progress and the scientific method (the Scopes trial in the 1920's is an example). Scientists have been portrayed as "madmen" or so arrogant and often defeated by "folk wisdom". That has always been a struggle in the US and I am sure, elsewhere.

The difference is that when there were debates, they were typically around interpretation of information presented to everyone from the News agencies of the day. I am sure there was always bias and spin, but typically the focus of the agencies was to have the best stories with accurate information, and as quickly as possible. Since the consolidation of media into large corporate structures and the increasingly coordinated conservative media structure, people are operating with entirely different information. You listen to Fox and other conservative outlets and you never hear information that the rest of the media reports on in various ways to various degrees. You have a not insignificant segment of the population that gets only one message from the conservative media while the majority of people get information from a variety of sources, then the conservative media screams BIAS toward the majority media and they cower and put out the right wing narrative as a "counter point" which muddles the information and study after study shows that people who listen to conservative media are consistently the most misinformed people.

[certainot]

18. republican radio is a very important part and it is now very vulnerable thx to AI

thanks to artificial intelligence-enhanced transcription it's now possible to digitize large samplings of republican talk radio so it's invisibility cloak can be pulled off and it can finally be pushed into the free speech spectrum.

as soon as the ad industry realizes a stoprush x100 is now possible it will cause them to start asking clients if they really want to support trump, racism, global warming denial, etc.

that will finally apply market demand and destroy the 20-1 monopoly.

it would also help if the dem party and or the media would poll for talk radio....

[Cosmocat]

17. YYYEEEPPP

I lived though the late 80s & 90s, and have had heart burn over where this was headed since then.

In no way to I consider myself to be particularly intelligent, but it has been mind boggling my entire life to look around me and see how stone cold stupid this country is when it comes to politics.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. I read that book

Wish we had more people with the mind of Sagan

[Farmer-Rick]

11. The US, and possibly the majority of the developed world, are slipping into another Dark Age

What people fail to notice is that the first Dark Age, where rampant starvation, continual widespread poverty, virulent disease and hysterical religious abuse was unrelenting, was due to the stagnation of the economic system....feudalism.

Feudalism was capitalism's precursor. Marx argued feudalism was required in order for capitalism to take root. Whatever the cause of capitalism, it is now at its terminal stage. Like feudalism, it has reached a stagnant stage where only a handful of wealthy people rule the mass of people resulting in the enevitable rampant poverty, disease, starvation, and religious abuse. Stupidity and the dumbing down of America are just what happens when you give most of the wealth and power to 0.7% (and shrinking) of the people. It happens with feudalism and it is happening with capitalism. Welcome to the New Dark Ages.

[aidbo]

14. Love that book.

[ProfessorPlum]

20. me too. it's one book that I've always kept a copy of