In one of my favorite books Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer (about the demonstrators opposing Hubert Humphrey at the 1968 Chicago Dem. Nat. convention) he wrote a vivid description of the cattle being herded toward the slaughterhouse and the shirtless man there doing the bloody job of first slashes there all day with fresh blood covering him all day and the pools of blood in which he stood.
Symbolizing the American people led to be duped by the politicians and the young Leftist demonstrators soon to be beaten, prodded, bloodied and jailed by the pro-Dem Mayor Daley corrupt cops, the cattle were led from boxcars to fenced ramps a long way from the slaughterhouse. Even so,and never having been there before or even hearing noises or smelling anything, they sensed somehow their bloody deaths were imminent. They got nervous and then wailed.
Mailer thought they knew from sensing the emotions causing the screams of the other cattle which they couldn’t hear that something horrible was ahead. The ML King and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations and countless riots and much mayhem were on the way in 1968.
I think the future was also the America today and the impending horrors coming soon.
Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” was the first book in the English language I ever read.