You can’t tell me we you didn’t see this coming… I mean the times we are living in. The craziness(1), the near-civil war hysteria of “it’s your fault (and never my fault)” that’s going round and round. Don’t tell me you are surprised.
Don’t do that.
Ulysses S. Grant, General of the Armies of the North, predicted it, in 1875.
150 years ago… and Yes! This is an accurate description of what is going on right now in America and many parts of the world. I would change one word though: instead of “intelligence” I would say “education.”
150 years ago.
If you don’t think this quote describes the precise situation in America today, well… what can I say? Perhaps you are right. It’s hard to see things clearly from the inside(2).
Notice, it does not say which side has the intelligence and which side has the superstition. Nor do I say which side is which. Each side thinks it is the intelligent and patriotic side and the other is the ignorant, superstitious and blindly-ambitious side.
In other words, both sides are wrong,
both sides are guilty, both sides are
acting stupidly. Just like in any civil war.
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(1) Another person who predicted it was Robert Heinlein, a man of many talents and accomplishments, but mainly remembered as the father of modern science fiction (though it’s devolved a bit since his time). He would recognize where we are in America right now as the “Crazy Years” that he predicted, a period of time that lead up to an absolute dictatorship followed some time later by the 2nd American Revolution. There is a great deal that could be said there, but it’s not important just now. (Ha!)
(2) Which is why it’s considered “overly ambitious” to try writing a history on events less than 100 years old — which stops no one from trying it anyway, of course.