With the announcement of the Biden Administration’s creation of a Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, I think it is time to re-publish my October, 2020 essay. While the Ministry of Truth is an Orwellian creation in Orwell’s dystopic classic, 1984, Bradbury’s Firemen are the equivalent of Department of Homeland Security enforcement officers, destroying non-government approved speech.
Tens of millions of Americans have read Ray Bradbury’s dystopic novel, Fahrenheit 451, without digesting and understanding the story. Tens of thousands of teachers have made the book required reading without disseminating the prescient truths eerily contained within its pages. It is quite possible they believed that Bradbury’s prophesies simply could never come to pass. I am telling you now, we are here.
Predicted Technology
Bradbury first published F451 seventy years ago under the title The Fireman. In 1953 he republished it under its acclaimed title Fahrenheit 451, the same year Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. It is a prophetic tale so filled with accurate predictions, it is as though the author was compelled to warn us against a future he saw in a prescient vision.
Before I take on Bradbury’s warnings about the events of today, let’s just take a look at the technologies that exist in the world of F451.
- Biometric identification
- Robotic olfaction
- DNA profiling
- Facial recognition software
- Robotic artificial intelligence
- Cellular phones with Bluetooth
- Wireless earphones
- Smart doorbells
- The internet
- Wall-sized, interactive, flatscreen televisions
- Postcard sized televisions
- Interactive media and games
- Multimedia, digital entertainment
- The laugh track
While Bradbury is forced to make up names for technologies that did not yet exist, such as calling an EarPod a Seashell or describing a DNA profile as a person’s Chemical Index, his visual descriptions of these future technologies are too close for comfort. Even more frightening, the only tech he describes in F451 that does not yet exist is robotic AI, and that is just around the corner. When it comes to accurately predicting the technology that would come to pass, Bradbury bats 1000. That alone should give you cause to think. If Bradbury is 100% right about these things, what else in F451 is a literal truth.
Minority Rule
The most critical, and most forgotten, foundation of F451 is it is radical minorities seeking vengeful justice that start the movement towards groupthink in order to eradicate social norms they disagree with. Minorities, in their quest for revenge for perceived wrongs at the hands of society at large, create the doctrine of the revolution…the new rules for Social Justice. The more intersections you have, say a gender dysphoric, short, white, lesbian woman who identifies as a tall, straight, white man, gets lots of justice points. You need justice points if you want to have a say in redefining right and wrong. At the same time, a real straight, white man who identifies as a straight, white man, gets no points… and must apologize… and protest himself by gathering in large packs and singling out lone white men who are innocently walking by with an American flag in hand… and beating and robbing them, all because that is what the new Social Justice dictates. There are only three things that do not count as intersections, real white skin, real male gender, and Christian faith. No justice points for white men means no voice, except to affirm the echo chamber.
When radical minorities cry out for equality, what they really want is to vengefully force all people to conform to their twisted point of view. The deep state government and the media simply take advantage of these radical minority groups as a means to an end… power over the masses. That is F451’s foundation. It is already history in the world of F451, but that battle is our present day… and why Seattle and Portland have become such doublethink shit-hole cities where ordinary citizens wring their hands over the madness, yet continue to support the political leaders and community organizers who are the root cause of the new lawless culture… all because the Orange Man is Bad. President Trump represents the old idea of a fireman, someone who attempts to put out fires and save people and their property. The leaders of Portland and Seattle, as well as leftist leaders all around the country, represent the firemen of F451, who let property burn and people get hurt and killed.
The Power of Destruction
Bradbury opens the world of F451 with destruction. Destroying things gives destroyers immediate, visceral pleasure, and a sense of power. Something that takes time, intelligence, and talent to create, say a book, statue, building, or city, can be demolished in a single, euphoric moment by an illiterate mob craving self-importance and self-affirmation. Bullies who knock others down to build themselves up. Might makes right. Tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus does nothing to educate Americans about the context in which the statue was made. The difference between vandalism, terrorism, and demolition is simply a matter of rule of law. In 2020 America, thanks to leftist politicians like Nancy Pelosi, domestic terror groups such as ANTIFA and BLM, and brainwashed young adults who refuse to think for themselves, the rule of law is rapidly crumbling. The rule of law, an ideal thousands of years in the making, is being rapidly destroyed by radicals in their desperate bid to bend culture to their will.
American law was offended when terrorists ran passenger jets into the Twin Towers on 9/11. So offended that we went to war and eventually caught and killed Osama Bin Laden. In stark contrast, today we are suffering under the domestic terrorism of ANTIFA and BLM while American law is giving them permission to riot. Their acts of destruction, intimidation, violence, and murder are now lawful in many cities and states, and self-defense against these lethal mobs is a felony.
These people and their NPC supporters are fools who cannot see past the end of their nose. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, people will not tolerate lawless behavior for long. This fall America votes. We will either vote for a return to conservative, constitutional rule of law, or we will vote to install a new brand of government that will ease us into totalitarianism with a baited hook.
Reverse definitions, doublethink, and doublespeak.
George Orwell is not the only author to predict that future societies will revise the meaning of words and phrases to suit the echo chamber’s goals. Bradbury’s analogy is simple. In the real world, firemen are first responders who put out fires and save people and possessions. As time progresses in the world of F451, firemen become the opposite. They arrest people and burn their possessions. The history of firefighters is then erased and replaced with the false narrative that Ben Franklin espoused the burning of books and founded the Firemen.
Let’s take the phrase, black lives matter. Of course, black lives matter. Planned Parenthood protesters have peacefully been saying black lives matter since Roe v Wade. Christian abolitionists said black lives matter for centuries. America, as a society, has been rejecting racism and bigotry for over fifty years because black lives matter. All lives matter, black, white, male, female, gay, straight, and everything in between. Even people you do not like. So, yes, black lives matter, but Black Lives Matter does not give one shitty little damn about black lives. Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization that, among other evil intents, is founded on the principle that white lives DO NOT matter.
Bradbury also discusses reverse laws. Driving too slow, walking along the street, real conversation, and reading books have become illegal, while driving recklessly, intentionally running over pedestrians, and arson have become legal. We live in a time where our expectations of the rule of law are being turned upside-down. President Trump was impeached solely for defending himself against impeachment. Roving bands of BLM and ANTIFA rioters are violating the law and people’s rights every day with government permission, while people engaging in self-defense or going to church are being charged with crimes. Up is down and down is up, and we can thank radical minorities for the mess. They are the ones so desperate to get their way, that they are cutting a swath through the law to destroy their perceived enemies. They foolishly think they are winning some sort of social justice along the way, but without equal rule of law for all, there is justice for none. The secret here is, once the rule of law has been mowed down, those fools will lose their rights no different than the society they hoped to overthrow.
Where THE END Began – Common Core
“I don’t talk things, sir,” said Faber. “I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”
In the world of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, player characters, PCs, controlled by the players match wits with non-player characters, known as NPCs, controlled by the dungeon master who coordinates the adventure. NPCs do not think for themselves. They do not question the philosophic truths and mores of their environment. There is no critical thinking. They cannot suddenly change sides and rebel against the game’s coordinator. They simply echo the echo chamber.
Turning an entire nation into NPC groupthink requires an educational system to conform at all levels. A Common Core, if you will. Bradbury describes the dumbing down of education and the relaxing of social and academic discipline as a root cause in the decline in critical thinking. He predicted the public school system’s hatred of charter schools and homeschooling programs because they skirt core indoctrination and teach non-revisionist history and critical thinking skills. He predicted the rise of Head-Start to begin the social indoctrination of children at younger and younger ages. He predicted a relentless deep state beast that will not stop until everyone conforms and is living in a vast echo chamber of self-affirming ideology. He predicted the NPC revolution, that generation who gives up their individual identity in favor of groupthink’s echo chamber. He predicted that anyone who gives pause to question or debate the echo chamber will be labeled as radical… antisocial… insane. He also predicts it will be lawful and encouraged to hate and bully those same people in an attempt to force them to conform… not to merely check their white privilege, but to check their very soul.
The F451 definition of happiness is that moment the individual conforms to groupthink and the echo chamber, no matter how miserable they feel.
Bullying will become an institution of social correction
“Oh, they don’t miss me,” she said. “I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you call social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking… about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?”
Clarisse McClellan, F451, explaining why she no longer attends public school.
When I was a boy we were taught that bullies tormented other children because tearing another child down gave the bully a sense of elevation. We were also taught that the only way to deal with a bully was to stand up to them regardless of the beating we would receive. The trouble with this bland teaching, at least for me at the time, was my school’s worst, most sadistic, bully was also the most popular girl in school. She was pretty, had money, and was a perpetual teacher’s pet. She was a master manipulator and pack leader, and would organize mobs that would isolate and prey on weak, unpopular students. She was already at the top of the pile. She tore people down simply for pleasure. Never once did she get the grade school comeuppance my teachers prophesied.
The point being, there was a time when bullying was something teachers sort of tried to stop. There was a time when teachers recognized that justice, the even-handed rule of law, was paramount for a peaceful, cohesive society. That is largely gone in today’s society. Today our public school system is the biggest bully of all. Not only do educators scorn discipline in the classroom, as an institution they single out and persecute children who engage in politically incorrect behaviors. Stupid stuff like making finger guns, wearing Wounded Warriors Foundation t-shirts with a soldier carried a rifle, a kindergartener kissing a classmate’s hand, believing there are only two genders, expressing any sort of Christian belief, or, God forbid, wearing pro-Trump clothing. Pretty much anything conservative, rightwing, Christian, or manly will be targeted by the institution. But if the students want to skip school to attend a leftist protest, they are not only given permission, they are encouraged by the institution.
Bullying does not stop with our educational institutions. Ignorant Americans have persistently elected leftist politicians like Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and others that actively and passively encourage and support leftist mob violence. Do not forget Maxine Waters’ many calls for violent mobs to bully and intimidate conservative politicians and officials that directly empowered leftist mobs to verbally assault Sarah Sanders and Ted Cruz and their families while dining in D.C. area restaurants. Do not forget Nancy Pelosi referred to law enforcement officers as Storm Troopers and the violent rioters who assault them as peaceful protesters. Do not forget that Chuck Schumer literally threatened violence upon the Supreme Court if they sided against him.
Children may be ignorant and foolish, but they are clever little sponges. If the teachers and leaders praise one sort of thinking, rightthink, and discount a different sort of thinking, wrongthink, the children will absorb it. If the teachers and leaders allow the most radical minorities to define the difference between rightthink and wrongthink and the difference between free speech and hate speech, then you have the prequel to F451. Today. Right now. The entirety of our public education system and fifty percent of our government is bent on empowering these radical new standards through threats and intimidation. In Bradbury’s dystopia, all these things are in the past. Those who valued freedom and liberty lost the cultural civil war and groupthink reigns supreme. Today, as leftist politicians like Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, New York’s Bill de Blasio, and Portland’s Ted Wheeler encourage mob rule with its murder and mayhem, conservative America is, just as F451’s Guy Montag was, frozen in place with no strategy to return this great country to the rule of law.
Authorized Violence
Once Liberal-Progressives come to power in city politics, make laws, enact policies and take over the local school systems, their world goes to hell.
“I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn’t kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. They believed in responsibility,”
Clarisse McClellan, F451 on social violence.
F451 is a future where hatred and violence are the institutionally supported norms. Visceral pleasures have replaced personal responsibilities. If someone disagrees with the echo chamber’s agreed discourse, it is social justice to hate them and do them violence. The hatred and violence of F451 are not government mandates, such as Nazi Germany’s brand of antisemitism. Instead, Bradbury portrays a world where radical minority groups like ANTIFA, BLM, and QUILTBAG, dictate the terms of social justice. Then the institutions of mass media, education, and government support those terms. Intimidation, property destruction, violence, and murder become lawful and justified because they are acts perpetrated in the name of minority grievances. Of course, as time goes on, the minorities have less and less influence, most books are banned, and the population is quelled through an endless supply of mindless digital entertainment. Only the hate, bullying, intimidation, and violence directed at those who move outside the echo chamber remains. No more freedom of speech, religion, or right to gather in groups to discuss life, the universe, and everything. Critical thinking is wrong thinking and opinionated writing is illegal radicalism.
That is Bradbury’s prediction, and today there is a strong political movement to define hate speech as something other than protected free speech. Once the radical left has established that some words and ideas are no longer protected by the Constitution, then they are free to redefine free speech as politically protected speech. There will no longer be left and right only left and wrong. Violence will be done unto them who refuse to conform.
Bradbury also predicted that the leftist rioters will absolve themselves of sin by reasoning that the people and businesses they are attacking have insurance to pay for the damages. This is the very justification that ANTIFA and BLM use today, calling their thievery and destruction ‘reparations for grievances.’
“Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don’t care as long as they’re insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone’s happy.”
Clarisse, F451, on breaking the law and insurance.
How stupid are we to buy it. Surely, we will be boiled in gradually warming water.
Fatherlessness as a contributing factor
Bradbury makes a brief allusion early in F451 that fatherlessness contributes to the ease with which children are indoctrinated into the cesspool of groupthink. Bradbury’s character, Guy Montag, had only his mother to rely on. We are not privy to the fate of his father. Perhaps he died in one of America’s endless wars. As he grew he felt programmed not to think critically or question the program. He lacked the strength to express free will and thinking made him feel uneasy. Ultimately, he saw himself as a mere marionette… what we comically refer to today as an NPC, or an unthinking human automaton.
The rise of the single mother households in America and the devaluation of the role of the father, and men in general, in our society, has left our younger generations extremely vulnerable to leftwing indoctrination. For instance, I am telling you there are but two genders. Honest, only two genders. Male and female… and a quick underpants check will prove it. The progressive left is hell-bent on bullying our children into believing there are scores of genders and gender itself is a fluid that can take infinite shapes. If a child refuses to accept this scientific falsehood as fact, they are labeled as phobic, intolerant haters. They are bullied by their peers and teachers. They are ostracized. That is a lot to endure unless you have a strong father figure to keep you grounded in reality. That is why the progressive left has been devaluing men since the 1950s. We have reached a point where the echo chamber reverberates with nothing but hatred for men. Men are sexist. Men are rapists. Men are violent. Masculinity is, by its very nature, toxic. Men are rape culture.
This is the progressive left’s fallacious straw man argument against the strength of manhood. By attributing evils committed by a handful of bad actors to all men, they are able to teach that being born male is, by its very nature, a sin that must be atoned for through self-emasculation and self-hatred. It does not matter how sensitive, respectful and metrosexual men become, we can simply never rid ourselves of the sin we were born with. We are born unclean and must proclaim ourselves unclean always. Good fathers are spurned by leftist culture, replaced by leftist educators who mold young minds to docilely accept fiction as fact. If a man refutes these false claims he is simply marginalized as a misogynist. That makes the Democrat Party the party of misandry.
Bread and Circuses
The Rise of Psychoactive Drug Use
Bradbury predicts America’s rising reliance on drugs in place of developing mature coping mechanisms. I have been a pharmacist for thirty years. In that time I have seen the steady, linear growth in America’s use of psychoactive drugs. Amphetamines to get going in the morning. Anti-depressives as a substitute for coping. Benzodiazepines to take the edge of daily anxiety. Sedatives and antipsychotics to get knocked out at bedtime. Wash, rinse, and repeat every day. Add in the relentless march to legalize marijuana across the United States, and a large part of our population is getting pretty baked every day. With each additional psychoactive medication comes an additional diagnosis. Each diagnosis becomes a protected intersection. Many of the drugs are addictive. Taking lots of psychoactive drugs changes a person, reducing empathy for others in favor of a certain measure of selfish victimhood, where their lives revolve around procuring the drugs they need to remain calm… flat… numb. The fog of these chemical soups leaves little room for critical thinking, let alone resisting the left’s constant march towards totalitarian groupthink.
Cartoons Will Replace Literature
Several years ago I gathered with my extended family at a restaurant to celebrate a birthday or some such occasion. Within minutes of sitting down, nearly everyone at the table had their smartphones out chasing Pokemon Go or looking at kitten videos. The conversation died as they retreated into their digital worlds, oblivious that the minutes we spend together as a family were relatively few. I looked around the table feeling both frustration and sadness. It is not that I don’t play games or surf the internet, but not to the detriment of all else. I wanted to sneak away from the table and go home. Seeing how easily people can be lulled away from real human connections by meaningless things left a pit in my stomach.
And that is where F451 begins. Society is quelled, not through brutality regimented by authoritarianism, but through endless, mindless digital distractions and psychoactive drugs. Critical thinking, real conversation, and debating two sides of an issue are long outlawed, replaced by meaningless, endless, mindless, visceral entertainment. Laugh tracks for shows that are not funny and long action scenes and loud music to make up for shallow, politically correct scripts. Run a pedestrian over with your car for a thrill? Good on you! Own a 20th-century dictionary with the real definitions of words rather than the imaginary definitions? The death penalty!
In the world of F451, not all books are burned. Far from it. Bradbury predicts the rise of comic books and graphic novels, with their mindless adolescent themes and characters, such as exist in the Marvel and DC multiverses, along with the world of the Walking Dead. Over time, these will replace great works of literature in the hearts of the people. By the time the book-burning begins, there are too few critical thinkers left to save society from its own gradual failure.
The Super-Organization of Sports
Back in Ray Bradbury’s day, there was no such thing as organized children’s sports. Little League baseball was only beginning in 1950 and most kids just played haphazard pickup games in the street, park, or sandlot. High school, college, and professional sports were nothing like the multi-trillion dollar, international industries they are now. Today, we are behaving just as Bradbury predicted in F451, with parents spending tens of thousands of dollars on professional coaching for their little tykes just so they have a chance to make the varsity in high school. Football and basketball make billions for major universities, and many professional athletes are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Our completely bonkers obsession with professional sports is just another face of our overall addiction to thoughtless entertainment.
These three predictions are the bread and circuses that distract us from looking too closely at the Deep State’s machinations. We are like the frog that is not smart enough to get out of gradually warming water.
The Constant State of War
“We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1990!”
Montag, F451.
The world of F451 exists in a constant state of war, yet it is of little concern to the general public. They are too distracted by psychoactive drugs, social media, and shallow, interactive, digital entertainment to actually pay attention to what real news is available. The one lone date Bradbury mentions in F451 is the year 1990. Originally the date was 1960, but that was subsequently changed to 1990 in later editions, and finally to 2022 in the latest edition. 1990 is an uncanny choice. Since the start of the Gulf War in 1990, American troops have been committed to a constant state of war primarily in Muslim countries for thirty years.
My children have never known a time when U.S. troops were not getting killed in action overseas. If you ask just about any young adult how many U.S. troops die in overseas operations you will just get a blank stare. Not only do they not know, they literally never think about it. They are too busy watching spicy memes and posting photos of their lunch. They will march in the street, assaulting the police, in the name of some vacuous idea of Social Justice, but thirty years of American men and women putting their lives on the line for this country isn’t worth their time. If you ask them why they will uniformly say learning those kinds of facts is frustrating and hurts their heads, then they will confess they get their news from Twitter. Bradbury predicted it all.
Here is something else to think about when you fill out your ballot this fall. Fewer American military personnel have died overseas under President Trump’s command than any of the four previous Presidents, despite having inherited the sum total of all their bad decisions. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer call that dangerous.
Christianity Will Be Persecuted and Suppressed, But Will Ultimately Survive
“Who is more important? Me or that Bible?”
Mildred Montag, F451, confronts her husband when he refuses to burn the world’s last Bible.
In John Bunyan’s classic tale of Christian conversion, Pilgrim’s Progress, the story begins with a man named Pilgrim who reads the Bible. The message in the book is so powerful he seeks to explain it to his family and friends. Those he loves reject him and he is ultimately forced to flee. This is the same character arc Bradbury gives his protagonist, Guy Montag. In F451, the progressive left and the deep state, with the aid of radicalized minorities who refuse to be victimized by the notions of virtuous behavior, have absolutely removed any notion of God from the human society. There is no such thing as unalienable rights, only conformity to groupthink. The practice of Christianity is illegal. When Montag steals one of the planet’s last surviving Bibles, his family and friends report the crime. To avoid arrest, he must flee the city with the book of Ecclesiastes committed to memory. The timing of his escape appears to be God directed, as just hours later the city is utterly destroyed by a massive foreign air attack, leaving Guy Montag and other readers to pick up the pieces of society.
This parallel ultimately changes F451 from a simple sci-fi novel musing about a potential dystopic future, to a prescient narrative about the looming disintegration of society and the coming apocalypse. Ray Bradbury died in 2012, but he left us a book, written seventy years ago, that accurately describe all the events of today. Evil will rise, suffering and destruction will be inevitable, but Good survives to rebuild after Evil is spent.
Conclusion
Saying the road to Hell is paved with good intentions is a nicety that allows a lack of accountability for the people placing the stones. The road to Hell is paved with foolish intentions, ignorant intentions, and evil intentions. The road to Hell is paved with vices that are dressed to appear as virtues. The road to Hell is paved with feelings, not rational thinking. The road to Hell is paved with impulses in defiance of self-discipline. Those who lay the stones often believe they are righteous, but that does not excuse them from accountability when they drag society as a whole to Hell. America’s left is a paving juggernaut, and they have lost patience with President Trump and conservative America’s futile resistance. The left knows it is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and they want ‘when’ to be now, not four years from now. Personally, I want to put off the coming dystopia as long a possible. That is why I am writing to you. That is why I am encouraging you to give President Trump another four years. Make the left wait for a little while to finish their road to Hell.
Here is a real-life example. Anyone over the age of fifty years will have watched this road paved with left-wing activist intentions come to its natural end in Hell.
Back in the early to mid-seventies logging in the Pacific Northwest had overcut our forests by about twenty years. This spurred an age of woke environmental activism. Endearingly nicknamed ‘tree huggers,’ these young radicals, much like ANTIFA and BLM, used a mixture of activism, protests, terrorism, and endless lawsuits, to severely cripple America’s logging industry. Mills all around the country closed and thousands of men lost the means to provide for their families. The leftist radicals then filed lawsuit after lawsuit and lobbied political leaders everywhere, ultimately changing laws all over the country. Suddenly trees were treated as endangered species. Some states, such as California, Oregon, and Washington, through endless regulations and permitting processes, virtually outlawed the felling of trees and removal of dead brush.
As you know just by looking outside your window, trees are by no means endangered, and they grow relentlessly. By the end of the 1990s our forests were once again flush and in need of logging, thinning, and all-around general care, yet the moratorium on logging remained. By 2010, they were getting choked and turning into unhealthy tinderboxes, yet the moratorium remained. So Mother Nature turned on the foolish, little radicals and cleaned up their mess, burning the forests to return them to good health. Instead of properly managing our forests, we were desperately managing forest fires. Look at the costs to the state of California alone over the last several years, all because it was illegal for private landowners to steward their own land. Entire communities burned in hellish fires. That is where that road, paved with good, leftist intentions ended, at a temperature above Fahrenheit 451.
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