Like many of us, Ray Bradbury was a political chameleon who hop-scotched around, turning into a blue or red supporter when it came to voting in presidential elections. Who can tell what the late author would make of this year’s election?
I have a feeling the native Waukeganite and beloved author wouldn’t be rooting for former President Donald Trump in the upcoming Nov. 5 election. It’s merely a hunch, but from his writings, interviews and biographies, he’d probably be in the blue camp of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Perhaps that is one reason The Atlantic magazine borrowed, “the visual language of old Ray Bradbury and Steven King paperbacks” for its October cover. The image, by illustrator Justin Metz, is believed to be used on the first cover in the magazine’s 167-year history that bears no headline.
It portrays a spooky scene where a garish horse-drawn circus wagon is driven by a red-MAGA-hat-wearing Donald Trump. He wields a whip on a hitched horse heading toward a dystopian-looking U.S. Capitol. Inside the wagon is a sad-looking caged elephant, while an ominous crow oversees the panorama from a barren tree.
The magazine says about the cover that its “particular inspiration” was Bradbury’s eerie 1962 novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” influenced by a childhood remembrance of a traveling carnival which visited Waukegan. The book is considered by students of the author the second of Bradbury’s “Green Town Trilogy” tied to Waukegan. For many future science fiction, horror and fantasy authors, including the meister of creep, King, it shaped their milieus.
In the cover explanation, The Atlantic notes Bradbury’s book “is the story of Mr. Dark, who grifts strangers into joining his malevolent carnival.” Those familiar with the book also know it was made into a 1983 film with G.M. Dark portrayed by Jonathan Pryce, currently seen in season four of the British spy drama, “Slow Horses.”
“The imagery speaks for itself,” the magazine says of the cover.
Another Waukegan writer, Ward Just, who died in 2019, was a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, including a scathing indictment of city government in Lake County’s county seat in a 1979 article, “How It Plays in Waukegan, Illinois.”
Over the years, The Atlantic has not been a friend to Trump. Its January issue was dedicated to a depressing outlook by its various contributors if Trump is elected to a second term next month. Inside this month’s issue is a story entitled, “Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump.”
Currently, the Harris-Trump race is considered a statistical dead heat by pollsters. The latest respected Reuters/Ipsos Poll gives Harris a 3-point lead over Trump, with a 46% to 43% spread, underneath the 5% plus/minus margin of error.
Bradbury, who died in 2012 at age 91, was raised in a Democrat household and voted the party line until 1968, according to one account of his political activism, which he wasn’t shy about proclaiming. After that, he voted Republican, according to biographers, except in 1976 when he cast his vote for Jimmy Carter, who defeated President Gerald Ford.
As many do as they age, he turned conservative, calling Ronald Reagan our “greatest president” and terming President George W. Bush, “wonderful”. The author’s political activism in the 1950s got him on an FBI watch list, according to a 2012 account in The Daily Beast, which got a peek at government files through a Freedom of Information request.
Agents during the ‘50s “Red Scare,” stirred by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, thought he was critical of the federal government and might have been a member of the Communist Party. Turned out he wasn’t a commie, the FBI determined in a 40-page discussion of his political views, only a concerned American.
One of the actions that raised the FBI’s antenna was when Bradbury, then living in Southern California, took out an ad in a 1952 issue of Variety, the newspaper of the entertainment industry. According to the FBI documents, he railed at a number of Republican pols, including then-Vice President Richard Nixon, in a broadside prior to that year’s election.
“I have seen too much fear in a country that has no right to be afraid,” he said in the ad. “I have seen too many campaigns in California, as well as in other states, won on the issue of fear itself, and not on the facts.
“I do not want to hear any more of this claptrap and nonsense from you,” Bradbury continued. “I do not want any more lies, any more prejudice, any more smears. I do not want intimations, hearsay or rumor.”
From more than 70 years ago, words to take heed as we head to early voting now taking place or our polling places next month.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
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