Daily Inspiration Quote by Tom Wilson

A cartoonist doesn’t reach for “very bad history” by accident. Tom Wilson’s line reads like a warning scribbled in the margins of tomorrow’s textbook: not just that something is going wrong, but that we’re about to make it permanent. “Set to” is the quiet killer here. It implies preparation, momentum, institutional buy-in. Bad outcomes aren’t merely possible; they’re scheduled.

The phrase also flips the usual civic fantasy on its head. We like to imagine history as something that happens to us, a force of nature that later generations calmly interpret. Wilson treats it as a craft project with real-time accountability: we are actively manufacturing the future’s cautionary tale. That “we” is a barbed pronoun, too. It distributes blame across the crowd, the electorate, the bystanders refreshing their feeds, the leaders who capitalize on distraction. No one gets to stand outside the frame.

As a cartoonist, Wilson’s intent is compressed editorial clarity. Cartoons live on economy and indictment: one caption that turns today’s noise into tomorrow’s shame. The understatement of “very” is doing sly work, echoing the way democracies often slide into disaster not with melodramatic villainy but with a series of “not ideal” choices that add up to catastrophe.

Contextually, the line fits any moment when the public senses an inflection point - authoritarian drift, climate negligence, policy cruelty dressed as pragmatism. It’s not prophecy; it’s an accusation with a deadline.