Like many of the classics we were required to read in school, I scanned just enough of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, to pass the test.
This week I finally read it.
The main character is a fire man in a new world order in which firemen do not put out fires, they start them. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the current White House occupant is clearly a fire starter, not an extinguisher.
Remember DOGE? That was one hell of a destructive, worldwide fire he set with the help of Elon Musk and then poof! onto other things to burn.
In the last few days alone, The New Yorker reports that Mr. Trump and his family have already made $3.5 Billion off his presidency. Axios reports that the White House has a list of more than 500 companies and trade associations scored by how much they supported Mr. Trump’s spending bill. A NYT headline says that Elon Musk’s — the same DOGE guy who said he was ridding the government of waste, fraud and abuse — SpaceX gets billions from the government while paying little to nothing in taxes.
Meanwhile, he’s heading to Alaska to meet with President Putin just days after his order to militarize policing in Washington D.C.
Like a capsized boat taking on water, the speed of going under is shocking.
There is one small passage — in a file folder full of incredible passages — in Fahrenheit 451 that I keep thinking about:
“The ‘televisor’ is real. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t the time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’”
Seventy-two years since those words were published, Mr. Trump is the embodiment of the televisor. He is also the fire man in the White House with a devoted staff of fire men and women carrying gas cans and matches. He is immediate, he has dimension. He tells you what to think and blasts it in. He must be right. He seems right. He rushes you on so quickly to his own conclusions that, especially if you are a Trump supporter, your mind hasn’t the time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’
Mr. Trump is Bradbury’s televisor in human form, in every media space, while our eyes are glued to our many screens waiting to see what happens next.
I wonder what Ray Bradbury would say about us.
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