In no particular order the following are all what I consider harbingers – warning signs – of the era we now live in. Some of the following are referenced in Resources.
This YouTube video, full of menace and signs of urban decay, packs in a lot. The ending sequence is especially significant, and disturbing.
The following are books, the first two written a while ago, that gave clear warnings of a problematic future for America.
The Revolt of the Elites
The Image
Mortal Republic
Also, works by Noam Chomsky.
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Misc
Going back to early 20th century, there is famous poem by Robinson Jeffers: Shine, Perishing Republic. It begins
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens…
This is an intimation of things to come, in the wake of WWI (and America’s triumphant part in ending that war).
In another works by the painter Edward Hopper especially Nighthawks
isolation hints of despair
work by Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
the effect of electronic media on society and our cognition