Carl Sagan said it so much more eloquently, but that’s kind of the point… it isn’t eloquent. And the timing of when Sagan said it matters, because the momentum of history and people’s favoring of drama driven by hate and mass dehumanization grows to a point where people are in a war and just don’t care to stop it. They fight to the death against strangers they don’t even know, feeding the machines that kill as fast as they can. That’s what two world wars have shown.

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark