It's not a great quote. Sagan is eloquent in describing his fears, but the concern for Beavis and Butthead was "ok boomer" even at the time and an extremely bad

It's not a great quote. Sagan is eloquent in describing his fears, but the concern for Beavis and Butthead was "ok boomer" even at the time and an extremely bad look now. Even in B&B Judge is clearly worried about the same things Sagan is, the difference is Judge's belief that the intelligentsia aren't going to be any help for us either. (And they weren't! And still aren't!) It's not so prescient. The same quote was often raised 15-20 years ago during the Bush Jr. years with similar praise for its foresight. But the economical transformation was well underway when Sagan wrote it, and even today it hasn't been that long (25 years) since it was written. In some sense it's horribly myopic - concern about 10-30 second mass broadcasts rather than 20 paragraph conspiracy theories from your uncle is quaint! It's not a good context for it. Sagan would have detested Kassam and Rubin, holding them up as prime examples of the media, political, and intellectual failings he's describing.