Carl Sagan warning about Donald Trump in 1994

A staggeringly prescient warning from Carl Sagan... He spoke these words in 1994, yet he might as well be talking to us today. Though he has been dead for over two decades, his profound and beautiful insights continue to educate and elevate our thinking and our behaviour. He was a shining star, a guiding light... And this message is but one beam from it.

[ubernaffa]

For all the Trump fans that have been triggered by the title, Carl's meaning remains clear: he is saying that decades of feckless leadership from Democrats and Republicans that ignores the wellbeing of the population at large will lead some people to desperation. This desperation will leave them vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation by someone that will tell them what they want to hear - and Trump absolutely was the person that capitalised on it. Reality no longer matters to them, facts don't matter, only whatever Trump says and does. Clearly this isn't the case for all Trump supporters, as there are many wealthy, well-to-do people that decided that electing the former host of The Apprentice president would be a good idea, no matter how much he lies, cheats and obfuscates. Likewise, it's not to say that Democrats aren't liable to blindly believe in whatever policy or claim their team is making on a given day, but the person that embodied the complete jettisoning of reason, logic and any semblance of reality is Donald Trump. The damage he has done to our prospects as a species is difficult to overstate, and it is exactly what Carl was warning about in this speech.

[stewartfosterc]

This was not a warning of Trump but a warning of society as a whole. That being said everyone he said in this snippet was spot on!👏👏👏

[vectorhold]

A true visionary. Won't see another like him in our lifetime.

[thoughtfuldevil]

In the age of flat-earthers and ancient aliens, he couldn't have been more right.

[trollimusprime]

This is legendary. This man was insightful and brilliant beyond his time.

[rodneycooperLMSCoach]

Carl Sagan saw the future in detail and it is depressing to see so much ignorance and indifference among huge populations and see them concentrate all their attentions on trivia and who end up believing and voting for charlatans.

[laurenceanthony]

Thank you for posting this. Words of wisdom that we so desperately need to heed. I am thankful that there are people out there such as yourself who feel the importance to share these moments of reflection from such great minds such as Carl Sagan, a man whose insight and knowledge is so sadly lacking in today's discourse on the fate of humanity. Please post more of the same, but in the interest of ensuring that the audience hears the message, an interest that apparently you are invested in otherwise I guess you wouldn't be posting the topic in the first place, leave the "musical" score out, or turn it down so low that it becomes nothing more than a whispered accoutrement in the background. Many thanks and may your god bless you.

[leonnicols]

He was not warning about Trump but about the whole political system and the kind of actors it drags with it.

[falseflag]

A great great human being. I named my boy Sagan.

[leriku]

It's not a warning about Donald Trump, It's a warning about the society as a whole.

[dschznit]

Way to turn Carl Sagan’s words into a partisan agenda.

[yes]

Carl wasn't able to put this on a hat.

[leonardkellum]

there was a time when the best and brightest led us forward, now it seems we have the worst and the dimmest. tests are too hard and discriminate against those who don't care to read or think much.

[oliviajames]

It's the entire system/government not one side or the other they work together against the people. Playing dual roles (2 faces) making the people think there is a side to be on. We the people need to come together but it will never happen things are so divisive now people can't see clearly because we're so caught up in the constant divisions.

[amramjose]

The Demon Haunted World is a fantastic read.

[tFER]

I'm afraid that you may be violating Carl's values - he in no way spoke directly about Trump - you should change this headline to be more accurate. This devalues Carl's position on science and truth. What he says relates to Trump and others.

[jeremymull]

I love Carl Sagan.
But by the 90s anyone with a lick of sense, and an IQ with more than two digits in it, could see the writing on the wall from a mile away.
Sadly, his foreboding, and that of many who worried about the same thing, was not ill placed.
And all one has to do is pick up a history book or two, to see that unfortunately this is often a repeating trend amongst human societies.

[kevinneuhard]

Not about Trump.

You made it about Trump.

[jaspercooper]

He was warning against Scientism and pseudo science.

[jorgeluz]

This passage is literally in the first page of my dissertation. It's a beautiful and haunting quote. Here, Sagan warns us of the dangers of a civilization that is dependent on the technology that is made possible with science but who have themselves no real understanding of how science works. It's about how people only trust science when it supports their preconceived ideas, but set it aside when it doesn't.

People are saying this is not about Donald Trump, and, in a literal sense, it isn't. But it is about the culture that made Donald Trump president. He's a man who exploited things a group of people "felt" were true, even when they weren't. He said told Christians they were the real oppressed religion — they are not. He told white men they were the real victims of racism — they are not. He told people the US has never been more violent than now — it is not. But they felt those things were true, and he was there to feed their fears. He told people what they wanted to hear, or what they needed to hear, as it supported their belief and defended their privilege (or their perceived privilege) and they gave him power for it. Being told you're correct feels much better than facing an inconvenient truth.

"Facts don't care about your feelings", a certain person likes to say, but if the facts don't match this person's feelings, then well, let's use "alternative facts". It is a culture of selfishness, where "my rights" (but more accurately, "my convenience") and "my truth" is more important than factual information and the overall well-being of society. Facts be damned, what matters is "me being right" and "owning" the ones who challenge "my" world views.

This passage isn't about Donald Trump, but in a deep way it is. Donald Trump is one of the results of what worried Dr. Sagan in this passage. Donald Trump understated the dangers of COVID-19 because the facts were not convinient to him, and what he said "felt" true to his base, even though it wasn't. And people paid for it with their lives. Jobs can be regained, the economy can be recovered, but the lives that were lost, dreams that will never be, none of that will ever come back.

Carl Sagan believed in empathy, in truth, in following evidence wherever it may lead, even into disappointment or into contradicting your beliefs, no matter how inconvenient. He was a man who believed in the greater good of mankind and in tearing down the racial, cultural, economical, gender and sexual barriers. To the Trump supporters annoyed at this quote being linked to Trump: you can believe this is not directly about Trump, but don't kid yourselves, Carl Sagan would not be on your side.

More on this quote:

I grew up in a Catholic family, son of a corporate lawyer and a chemical engineer. Even though my mom was the scientist, my dad was the one who more actively supported my childhood curiosity for science and history. He bought me books, science magazines, VHS tapes with documentaries, airplane and rocket models, and took me to museums. What my father taught me led me to become a skeptic and to find myself as an atheist, even if it went against my family beliefs and I'll forever be grateful for that.

Now my father is 70, and even though he's now retired his entire life working in the corporate world has made him somewhat selfish (which he dismisses as just "being pragmatic"), taking an approach of supporting the ideas that are convenient to protecting the industry over the ones that protect lives, specially of the disfranchised. "I believe in science — but scientists are ideological" he said last time he and my mother talked to each other (they've been divorced over 20 years now), as he dismissed much of the pandemic restrictions safety protocols as "alarmism". What he said saddened my mother and me. We wonder what happened to the man that taught me about Newton, Fermat and Darwin, who along my mother protested the right-wing dictatorship that ruled our country for 20 years until the mid 1980's. Now he supports a president who exalts said dictatorship — because this president repeats the ideas my father has come to believe since then. My father, I feel, is lost in the darkness.

I recently gave my father my copy of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, the same one I used while studying for my dissertation years ago. I can only hope he will read it and that Dr. Sagan's words will in some way reach my father and bring to light the man I love who made me grow to love science.