One of the main parallels between the society in Fahrenheit 451 and our society today is attacks on books and the media by special interest groups. The whole idea of "political correctness" is exactly what Bradbury addresses in the novel. Books, speeches, news reports, jokes, etc., are ripe for attacks by someone. Large markets for textbooks, for instance, routinely attempt to dictate content, sometimes even attempting to rewrite history, as the society in the novel does.
As Bradbury writes in his "Coda" to the Ballantine edition of the novel:
...There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/ZenBuddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican,Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse....
Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.
Our world is just as mindless as the world in the novel. The media has dumbed down, presenting only what is easily accepted, repeating the same stories every thirty minutes because the big stories attract the most attention, presenting idiot sitcoms night after night.
We are not far from the world of Fahrenheit 451.
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