SEER-SUCKER

"I can't believe anybody believes
this crap either!"

 Back in my National Enquirer-reading days, the paper of non-record would feature a few dozen the predictions for the following year by some self-styled psychics. That none of them were ever accurate was no problem. Those conmen knew readers would forget them as soon as they turned the page. In fact, that was the most accurate prediction any of them ever made.

So it was with great interest that, while in our co-op laundry room, I discovered a book with a 1955 copyright date entitled Utopia 1976, and written by Morris L. Ernst. Let the blurb explain its contents:

Incredible? Fabulous? Impossible? Yet only a hardheaded realist and a glandular optimist could paint such a vivid and compelling picture of a dream world that can be ours tomorrow!

"Trust me, I'm a lawyer."

You don't say. Who is this glandular fellow anyway? As the 40-year general counsel for the ACLU, Morris L. Ernst, among other things, helped relax censorship laws regarding sex education; defended Random House against obscenity charges regarding James Joyce's Ulysses; argued the case that gave media employees the right to unionize; and was appointed to President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights.

Nowhere in his impressive curriculum vitae will you find the occupation of soothsayer. And yet, over the course of 300 pages, Ernst describes in remarkable detail of what life would be like 21 years hence (or, now, 46 years ago). Allow me to open Utopia 1976 to any random paragraph:

 I should think that the odds are overwhelming that new sources of energy will be developed in 1976 to the point of where they are cheap enough to warrant, in commercial terms, such increased speeds that London to New York will take two hours, and short-distance rockets will carry mail from Cleveland to Chicago. We may soon, rising vertically, with electrified instead of heated energy, take off at breakfast and arrive for dinner the night before.

Arrive for dinner the night before? Would you want this guy defending you in a court of law? Now take a once-over of the back cover:

If this is the work of a "glandular optimist", those glands must be infected with fertilizer, if you get my drift. Let's take these bullet points one by one.

• We're only now seriously discussing a 35-hour workweek. And this guy is saying 30 by 1976? To quote the Indian chief on F Troop, you've got to be putting me on.
• According to Google, the gross national income in 1976 was $8,960 per family.
• You can read about why 1976 was the worst year for new cars in history, and  they weren't made of plastic, either.
• Well, you can still find Rustoleum in your local homegoods store; there are 160,000 species of moths; and there will never be a cure for the cold.
• So women will be able to compete in the economy just because they can push buttons? (Actually, any husband will agree with they're really good at that.) They're still being paid 83 cents for every dollar men earn.
• There was no such thing as a General Education grant in 1976. Today's Pell Grant averages roughly $4,400. And that's available to only 34% of high school grads. 
• The U.S. population in 1976 was just under 222-million; under three million had passports. So while it's tempting to believe Ernst was on to something, you still needed passports to travel!
• They marry young in the South, but always have.
• Ernst almost got this "free flow of ideas" right, even if he didn't predict the internet (which, again, wasn't a thing in 1976). But today, people on the left and the right want free speech regulated for our their own good. As for dropping taxes on radio, TV, and newsprint -- some people are way too optimistic.

Let's face it: almost nobody accurately predicts the future. People like Bill Gates can spitball some ideas that come to pass, mainly because they've made a career out of thinking ten steps ahead of everybody else. My credo: if you're going speak of future events, keep them negative. You're more likely to get it right.

One more thing. Morris L. Ernst never predicted 1976 as the year of his death. That's almost funnier than returning for dinner the night before.

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