Clarisse
“People don’t talk about anything... No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.”
Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you for your patience while I’ve been living. Life has just been life-ing as usual. I went to Santa Monica for Halloween. My dog’s cyst on his paw has gotten a little bigger and there’s been more dating adventures. I found someone who reads! I’m trying this thing where I don’t settle for anti-intellectual men. I honestly have to like you in my head before I even think of jumping in bed with you. Stimulate my mind first and my lady parts second.
If you’re new here, I support reading. I support the reading of books and the reading of people. I’m actually about to read probably more than half of the country for filth with this piece; According to The Barbara Bush Foundation, 130 million Americans including 54% of people between the ages of 16 to 74 lack proficiency in literacy. That’s over 1/3 of the US population, which is estimated between 330-350 million people. Another fun fact: Illiteracy costs the US an estimated $2.2 trillion annually in revenue/lost productivity. Turns out the more your country reads, the more prosperous it can be.
So why are some legislators banning books? And it’s the states that don’t need to be banning books because they rank at the bottom in education: Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama…You get where I’m going with this.
It’s probably because illiterate people won’t 1) organize and 2) question propaganda. They’re more inclined to want to be spoon fed garbage via mediums such as the idiot box aka the TV. I thought Kendrick told y’all to turn the tv off in February of last year?
Now, we have a mini “idiot box” known as the smartphone that we carry around in our pockets wherever we go including the bathroom. I guess watching reels of people doing/saying dumb things is more entertaining than reading shampoo bottles like in the 1900s. Reading shampoo bottles is probably a better choice than TikTok; At least you’ll learn multisyllable words like “phenoxyethanol”.
Instead of reels, why not some Steinbeck? Orwell? Or better yet, the inspiration for this post: Ray Bradbury. I feel like now is the right time to talk about my love for dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 as the US gets more dystopian every day. It was a warning much like George Orwell’s 1984 about authoritarianism through gaslighting and mass surveillance in Orwell’s case and attacks on free thought and literacy in Fahrenheit 451.
Freedom of thought is key to a free society. Critical thinking is key to a free society. As someone who grew up with Reading Rainbow, I find it troubling how in 2023, less than half of US adults had read at least one book that year. How did we as a society get so intellectually lazy to the point where people won’t read a news article before an election and the excuse for voting for an unqualified person or not participating at all is that “I just wasn’t educated enough”? So you decided the remedy was to not read at all? To not research to become knowledgeable?
And the shittier part? The people who claim to have done their own research use unverified and sensationalized sources that promote conspiracy theories that anyone who ever paid attention in school or in life in general could debunk. Or worse: TikTok and X are their “sources” because they won’t read so they’ll just watch a 30 second nonsense reel to feel “enlightened”. Although, according to a Pew Research Center study posted in September of 2025, Facebook (38%) and YouTube (35%) outpace Instagram, TikTok and X as “news sources”. I can’t tell you how many inaccurate memes I’ve seen shared as “information” because it’s simply too many.
“We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.”
But 53% of US adults get their news from social media. It explains why I was shocked to see someone purchasing a hardcopy of the San Diego Union-Tribune at the supermarket earlier last year. I’d like to think it was to read and not line his bird cage. I don’t even know if that man owns a bird.
One of the things I found equally as puzzling is when you share legitimate news sources to debunk whatever farfetched nonsense your friends or family members have seen on the internet and believed — they send you a laughing emoji. I feel like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas: “How am I funny?” Or they’ll call you a sheep for believing sources that have been properly vetted while they believe some random social media video that hasn’t been verified or has a clear AI watermark.
I realize this is a very long preface. I do feel like I am Clarisse McClellan hoping I can reach the Guy Montag’s of the world. One more time for the people in the back: I love and recommend Fahrenheit 451 as a read, because it will make everything happening now make so much sense. I saw it from the start of the book bans…
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury in 1950. He wrote the original draft in just nine days in the basement of the UCLA library; and it was originally called The Fireman. The novel was expanded and published in 1953. I own the 60th anniversary copy. The premise? It focuses on themes of intellectual freedom, censorship and critiques mass media/entertainment. It’s funny because those are things I find myself doing. Honestly, if more people read instead of consuming copious amounts of social media and reality tv, the country wouldn’t be almost exactly like it is in the novel. In fact, Bradbury warns about the dangers of excessive television, the loss of critical thinking and “culture of instant gratification” over complex ideas. Remember the meltdown over the potential TikTok ban because it allows people to “become famous” overnight for absolutely nothing? Very few people want to work to be known for something novel; instead it’s how can I instantly get 15 minutes of fame even if I contribute nothing of value to society? And can I make a meme coin? Looking at you, Hawk Tuah girl.
Guy Montag is a firefighter. In this future American society, reading is illegal. Books are banned entirely leading to a less informed and easily controlled populace. That is except Clarisse McClellan, Guy’s 17-year-old neighbor who asks him important questions that make him rethink a duty he was once proud to fulfill: burning the books. One of those questions: “Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”. She exudes a natural curiosity about the world at large. Because of her inquisitive nature and ping-ponging thoughts, Guy tells her during their first encounter walking the neighborhood: “You think too many things”. I’m sure people think that about me.
What’s the first thing in an authoritarian playbook? Censorship. Take control of history and how it is written. Take control of the arts. Control the flow of information and subject matter of written works. Does any of that sound familiar? It should. It’s happening in the United States in Republican legislatures at the behest of Moms for Liberty pushing for book bans. Museums are also losing federal funding.
Bradbury issues a lot of warnings through the characters in this novel. One of those warnings? What happens to a society consumed with superficial forms of entertainment. He refers to the tv as the “idiot box”. I can safely say that it has become the idiot box ever since the creation of “reality tv” programs like Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Real Housewives. The kicker? The invention of the “smartphone” created a mini “idiot box” and social media apps creating another gateway to superficial entertainment — creating a society of Mildreds.
Mildred is Guy’s wife who takes sleeping pills and is a mindless zombie preoccupied by the walls of her parlor that feature huge screens of shallow entertainment. She watches “The Relatives” and considers them her family. Kind of like the parasocial relationships that viewers have with reality tv “stars” (that word does a lot of heavy lifting) or influencers they follow on socials: “I feel like I know them” or “Kim Kardashian is my Scorpio twin” or whatever her Zodiac sign is. I didn’t waste time looking that up for this piece. But you catch my drift. You don’t know these people just because they’re in your living room every night. Another thing about Mildred? She gathers with her girlfriends to watch the mindless entertainment on the parlor screens complete with martini glasses in hand. It might sound familiar if you get together with your friends for wine and The Bachelor, Selling Sunset or whatever you watch.
I feel like Clarisse in the way that she tries to reach people on a deeper emotional and intellectual nature. Those two things are very important to me when it comes to my friends and my potential lovers. I don’t consider myself Albert Einstein. I’m not out here creating a Theory of Relativity Part Deux. I am not out here challenging the observations of Copernicus or Galileo.
Bur I’ve learned enough in my lifetime to recognize the signs of authoritarianism on the rise. I’ve learned enough to recognize the apathy of society in which even human life isn’t valued just because it’s a different skin color. For instance, I don’t know the color of the victim today in Minneapolis who died at the hands of the US government’s masked gestapo, but I know that I was the only one out of the people I know to be talking about it. Are we that desensitized to violence that even the spectacle of it leaves us indifferent? There are some in this country that possess a bloodlust and want to suppress the rights of others because they think somehow authoritarianism will not oppress them.
The apathy reminds me of Mildred and her friends discussing her friends’ husbands going off the war and dying. Mildred and the girls just treated it like their husbands were expendable and they could just get another. It’s not surprising when you read how Mildred couldn’t even remember how she met Guy. It bothered him but not her. And after overhearing the coldness in their discussion of death as if it meant nothing while the ladies watched “The White Clown” and downed martinis — Guy took it upon himself to expose the books he had stolen from a burn. He read a poem that brought one of the ladies to tears. Of course, Mildred blamed him for bringing her friend to tears because all they wanted to do was not think and watch the meaningless white clown on the parlor screens. As Captain Beatty said: “Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.” In other words, thinking makes people feel bad.
It does feel like in 2026, people in America want to think as little as possible and that’s why bumper sticker slogan answers for nuanced problems appeal to them. That’s why people didn’t bother to look up what a tariff was before the election or even understand the three branches of government. People won’t even read newspapers that are written at 7th grade level at the lowest for readability. But just to reiterate: more than half of US adults can’t read above 6th grade level. So they definitely didn’t read the Wall Street Journal articles on tariffs or bother to try to read even a page of Project 2025. Again, in thinking lies melancholy. I find myself feeling less than happy with every fucked up news story. But I refuse to live my life as an uninformed ostrich.
So why did I write this? The same reason Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451: as a warning. Everything is going to get worse the more apathetic society gets. It’s going to get worse the more preoccupied with screens people get. It’s going to get worse the more people disregard humans having their rights stripped away or even murdered. It’s going to get worse if we ignore the murders of people in sovereign nations because the Department of Defense is being run by people who think they’re playing Call of Duty and the explosions look “cool”. It’s going to get worse if we continue to turn a blind eye to due process not being given to migrants, because eventually it will apply to US citizens the regime doesn’t like.
Guy Montag learned that last part when he was dimed out to Captain Beatty for having books, by Mildred and her friends. He was hunted by the mechanical hound — a mass surveillance lethal injection “dog” that memorized the scents of everyone in the city to hunt down anyone who possessed books. They kept files on people who were free thinkers and readers, much like Palantir is working on building with the data stolen by DOGE.
Authoritarianism spares no one. It’s time people started acting like it and stop thinking it can’t happen here when it’s already in progress.
One last thing:
“Take a look. It’s in a book. A reading rainbowwwwww...”