Paul Thomas wrote a post that you should read about our Know-Nothing era.
https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/know-nothing-follies-american-style/
Spelling errors from the Education Department? A Secretary of Education who has never had any contact with public schools other than to disparage them? A president who is ignorant of the Constitution? A cabinet determined to abolish their agencies? Lies? Fake news?
Which is more appropriate to our time? 1984 or Brave New World or The Handmaid’s Tale? Thomas says Brave New World.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Paul Thomas included this link. It is worth a look, especially if you recal the writing of Neil Postman.
http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/
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Brilliant analysis.
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Our schools are meant to turn know-nothing follies into know-something follies. Have we teachers and teacher-educators failed? Is Trump — indirectly — our product? Is he the revenge for humiliating too many of our students because of their difficulties with spelling? Have we been a bit too arrogant toward our fellow human beings? And: are we still? Could it be that the Trump take-over is a revolution of once disrespected (but now rich) students against their know-everything (but not-so rich) teachers? Remember: When we point with a finger at someone, three fingers point back at us.
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Spelling is the least of all the problems in the Trump administration. What is happening is leadership by amateurs and posers. It’s the Keystone Cops creating policy. Frankly, his cabinet is looking more like reality TV than government.
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Appropriate to our times? All three of the mentioned books have elements that are appropriate, but I would say, Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here.”
Read it, if you haven’t yet.
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I agree, Zorba: Lewis perfectly anticipated–and captured–the demagogic idiocy and banality of American fascism. But I still throw in Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” for consideration.
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Yes, markstextterminal, another excellent suggestion. Roth’s book does seem like an alternative, alternative history to Lewis’s. The Lewis book about a fictional character, but who was in actuality based on Huey Long, beating FDR, the Roth book about Lindbergh beating FDR.
Both characters who won over FDR in the books, were right-wing fascists.
Chilling to contemplate, isn’t it? 😦
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Yes….
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What about the forward looking nonfiction from the 70s, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler?
“The medium is the massage”
Marshall McLuhan
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It’s the broad, pervasive disregard for any detail whatsoever that is so shocking. This is not a game. There is actually some important stuff involved in the presidency of the US.
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A good article by Henry Giroux:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rethinking_orwells_1984_and_huxleys_brave_new_20170213
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