America in 2026 feels a lot like the future America described in Fahrenheit 451. 451, written by Ray Bradbury in 1950 using rentable typewriters at UCLA, builds a future America based on laziness and government control.

After living 42 years of my life and getting through high school without ever having read 451, I felt it time to right a wrong; especially because the book continues to end up banned at schools across the county.

I grew up surrounded by churches on every corner and a Bible sitting on end tables in nearly every home I stepped foot in. My friends and I all went to church multiple times a week and we prayed until our hands were callused from the hours asking for forgiveness of our sins.

We were taught to be fearful of the world around us. To not be swayed by temptation. And to revere the Bible; and push aside those who would question it.

Fahrenheit doesn’t hurt religion. What it does is shed a light on the reaches of hypocrisy. It is often dubbed a book about censorship and while it is; it is so much more.

It is a view of a world where people decide that books are bad, thinking is detrimental, and questions are for the weak.

This clip is from my favorite television show, The West Wing. Then student (future President) Jed Bartlet writes for the schools newspaper and quotes Bradbury, “If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”

And that’s what happens to America in 451. They stop questioning. They stop wondering. They shame those who do. And no one learns.

The main character in 451, Montag, is forced to question everything he has been told to believe; and what he has shaped his life around. It is in that questioning— getting hit — something I have experienced as a gay man in America, we come to understand the depths the country has fallen.

As he escapes from government capture, the government proclaims he’s dead and all is well. Where have we seen our government lying before?

There was a moment in turning these pages, angry, frustrated, and feeling all too close to Montag’s fight, when these pages that the characters were screaming to burn in my hands and down the house the held them, that felt like the violence and the phrases used the week that Renee Macklin Good was murdered, and the next weekend when Alex Pretti met the same end.

I think, in 2026, that’s what made Fahrenheit so impactful. Because it’s real.

The people are actively removing thought from their homes and their schools.

The government is supporting the removal of knowledge.

The same government is executing the plan to clean out the diversity of the community.

And lie to you in so doing.

One can only hope that Montag and his hobo group found a way to band together to save their country.

Verso stands for un-censorship. For thinking. For questioning. For lively discussion about our differences and the beauty of the world around us.

This is a book that reaches beyond the war of censorship and prophetically into the battle for the mind. And that’s a fight that continues today.

Want to read it for yourself? Pick up your copy of Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. Prefer to purchase from Amazon?

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