There is a plague that has been around for hundreds of years and spreads across the nation, taking control of the minds of citizens. The plague is called anti-intellectualism. Taken directly from the Random House Dictionary, an anti-intellectual is someone who is ignorant of or hostile to artistic and cultural values, against modern academic, artistic, social, religious, and other theories associated with them. Richard Hofstadter, who wrote Anti-intellectualism in American Life, defines anti-intellectualism as a “resentment against the life of the mind and those who are believed to represent it.” Ralph Waldo Emerson commented in 1837, "The mind of this country, which has been taught to aim at low objects, devours itself." In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury creates a society in which an attitude of escapism, or the avoidance of reality by absorbing the mind in entertainment, results in the decline of thought and the rise of mass conformity (Schramer 2008). The similarities that exist between Fahrenheit 451 and American society are cause for alarm (Schramer 2008). Susan Jacoby even said, “Americans have serious intellectual problems.” Fortunately, there are some things we can do to combat this problem which we will talk about later in this essay. Thomas White states that “anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of totalitarian regimes.” In Fahrenheit 451, mass exploitation, in which a single entity or government takes advantage of the majority for selfish gain, is used on a large scale (Schramer 2008). Beatty, from Fahrenheit 451, talks about the new technology that has begun to be popularized by the masses, turning communication into a marketable commodity instead of an educational tool. Beatty expands on this topic in the novel, discussing the… middle of paper… important even though English and philosophy majors do not have the same lucrative job opportunities as a financier (White 2014). If citizens could see that people who value these things can be just as successful, the widely recognized resentment toward the humanities might diminish. Ray Bradbury warned against anti-intellectualism, the plague that has been creeping into the minds of American citizens for hundreds of years, in Fahrenheit 451. Unless we can popularize intellect and show its benefits, the Our nation will soon be condemned to follow in the footsteps of Bradbury's novel. Of course our society has not resorted to the extremist task of burning books, however, lack of interest and contempt for the intellect can accomplish the task just as well. As Bradbury said: “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”