The Future is Now

In the United States... recent public opinion polls have revealed that an actual majority of young people in their teens, the voters of tomorrow, have no faith in democratic institutions, see no objection to the censorship of unpopular ideas, do not believe that the government of the people by the people is possible and would be perfectly content, if they can continue to live in the style to which the boom has accustomed them, to be ruled, from above, by an oligarchy"

--Aldous Huxley, 1958, Brave New World Revisited

by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms — elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest — will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial

--Aldous Huxley, 1958, Brave New World Revisited

In reading this follow-up essay for the first time on the tail of re-reading Brave New World I ended up marking a great number of similarly prophetic passages. Painfully brilliant.