"I was, and I knew it, an ordinary person who long after he was grown retained the childhood assumption that the people who largely control our lives are somehow better informed than, and have judgment superior to, the rest of us; that they are more intelligent. Not until Vietnam did I finally realize that some of the most important decisions of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than, and who are not more intelligent than, most of the rest of us. That it was even possible that my own opinions and judgment could be as good as and maybe better than a politician's who made a decision of profound consequence." -- Jack Finney, "Time and Again"
By the late 1960s I had reached the same conclusion. I remember Kurt Vonnegut writing, during the Nixon administration, that the people now running the country were the ones he went to high school with.
Finney's book, first published in 1970, is the best time travel story I've ever read. He lets us experience New York City in 1882.
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Again-Jack-Finney/dp/0684801051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425177886&sr=8-1&keywords=time+and+again+by+jack+finney
Whatever happens to be going through my mind at the moment.
