# Can Big Brother, Handmaiden's Tale, Brave New World happen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 5, 2013, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750 "2013-07-05T20:48:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/1 "2013-07-05T20:48:15Z")
Does anyone here believe that books like 1984, Handmaiden’s Tale or Brave New World could actually be realized in the U.S.? In our lifetimes? I love dystopian novels and cautionary tales and utopian novels and all that good stuff. I have a very good hardcore feminist friend and she is convinced that Handmaiden’s Tale is happening NOW as we speak. She told me flat out, “the phrase abortion riots keeps popping into my head. I don’t want to riot, but I will.” So, I am curious. Does anyone else worry that these kinds of books are honestly coming true? I don’t mean, do you think you see signs of some of the details from the book in play…that is obvious. I mean, do you actually believe one of the scenarios from the book could actually become a reality. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/2 "2013-07-05T20:51:20Z")
As resilient as the American people are, I think they are also conditioned to being led down paths they are convinced are for their own good. I think we’ve come close to setting foot in a Republic of Gilead a couple of times in recent decades, and the only reason we aren’t is that… …we’ve been fortunate to have a government and elected officials that are far better and more sincerely devoted to ideals than we’ve given them credit for. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/3 "2013-07-05T21:13:52Z")
No, it’s impossible. There’s a reason all dystopian novels/movies either or open with a short “present day” montage and fast-forward to a future where things are bleak with no mention of how they got that way or they just skip all that and start in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/4 "2013-07-05T21:22:17Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > No, it’s impossible. Have you taken “Tomorrow will be just like today, only more so?” as a personal mantra? You seem to be utterly immune to the idea of change for any reason, even historically validated ones. > [@](#): > > There’s a reason all dystopian novels/movies either or open with a short “present day” montage and fast-forward to a future where things are bleak with no mention of how they got that way or they just skip all that and start in the future. I can think of quite a few such novels that go into significant detail on the transformation, either in linear narrative or flashback. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/5 "2013-07-05T21:32:55Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Have you taken “Tomorrow will be just like today, only more so?” as a personal mantra? You seem to be utterly immune to the idea of change for any reason, even historically validated ones. What? Are you stalking me or something? OK, examples… Look at Mad Max and then look at The Road Warrior. How does the world of Mad Max (which is rife with crime, but people still go on vacations to the country and eat ice cream) devolve into The Road Warrior (which is a wasteland populated by S&M bikers and dirt-poor refugees) in the span of a few years? Yes, yes, nuclear bombs and all that. But it doesn’t explain everything. Nor does it explain why pockets of society are most interested in fighting over gas. Or what about Blade Runner? It takes place in 2019 and through some unexplained catastrophe, the Earth has become a polluted husk. But! Fans cry foul when Deckard escapes to the country at the end of the movie because they believe the whole country should be as dirty as LA. But US population density doesn’t work like that. > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I can think of quite a few such novels that go into significant detail on the transformation, either in linear narrative or flashback. Can you? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/6 "2013-07-05T21:36:28Z")
**1984** – No, since that was really just Stalinisn writ large. You’d have to have the country set up as a totalitarian dictatorship to even begin the process, and the people who might consider something like it are anti-totalitarian in one form or another. **Brave New World** – No, since that depended on complete government regulation of birth and eugenics. Eugenics appalls everyone these days. **The Handmaid’s Tale** – Not likely. The world shown is really no different from the world under Heinlein’s Nehemiah Scudder. While the religious fundamentalist movement is strong these days, it’s not really in charge and the world shown in the book would not be accepted by fundamentalists. If we end up with a dystopia, it will take a form that no one has ever thought of; the only version that I can think of as being slightly plausible is that in Sinclair Lewis’s **It Can’t Happen Here**. A Berzelius Windrip could possibly arise if factors were right (Windrip was based loosely on Huey Long). ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/7 "2013-07-05T21:42:25Z")
I think that something like Handmaid’s Tale \*could \*happen on a state-by-state level in the US, but what that means rationally is that people who don’t want to live like that would move away, or organize and work for change. Otherwise, I sincerely doubt that a Big Brother like government could happen in America. We’re too untrusting of our government getting that much power. I don’t know enough about other countries to say anything about them. Now, what’s interesting is that even in America we’re not nearly as distrusting of corporations (we’re getting there) and internet connection hubs (thinking about getting there) and so some of \*them \*might end up as a de-facto Big Brother, but it won’t be like 1984 - it’ll be more like … the movie version of Logan’s Run - everyone happy and entertained and vapid and not thinking about the big issues because why bother? Even then there would be pockets of abstainers and dissenters - we’re too diverse a country to end up as a monolithic “dystopian” entity in the classic sense - we’re not an \*\*entity \*\*to begin with, and it would take way too much effort to force us into being an entity just for the purposes of control. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/8 "2013-07-05T21:46:37Z")
I never read “It Can’t Happen Here”. Just looked it up, and it looks interesting. ETA: Lasciel, there were dissenters in 1984, too. As a matter of fact, there were whole swaths of the population that wasn’t even expected to be ‘a part of the system’, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/9 "2013-07-05T21:52:45Z")
Sorry to double post, but yes, Justin Bailey, I do think that many novels do go into how the changes happened? In Handmaiden’s Tale there are several references to the events that led up to the current condition. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/10 "2013-07-05T21:58:01Z")
From the Wikipedia entry on The Handmaid’s Tale: > [@](#): > > The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, homophobic, Christian nativist-derived, theocratic-organized cult’s military coup as an ideologically-driven response to the country’s ecological, physical and social degradation. > > Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the “Sons of Jacob” launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order. > > They were quickly able to take away all of the women’s rights, largely attributed to the financial records being stored electronically and labelled by gender. The new theocratic military dictatorship-styled “The Republic of Gilead”, moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily cult-Christian regime of selectively skewed Old Testament-inspired social and religious ultra-conservatism among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read. Does that sound like something that is even remotely possible? Contrary to popular belief… no, fuck it… the vast VAST majority of the United States citizenry would be appalled if women were treated this way by the country’s rulers. Regardless of where you fall on the abortion debate, how many people tout the treatment of women as property? A dozen? Maybe two dozen? How could they “take over the country in a coup”? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/11 "2013-07-05T21:58:21Z")
We’ve discussed THT before in the long-dead [SDMB Bookclub](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=160044) and I still stand by my assessment - the only way Gilead occurs is if everybody drops 50% in IQ points. > [@](#): > > It’s hard reconciling how the country will be able to replace that many productive hands - can you imagine having the army replace every position currently filled by women\*? Regardless, it is hard to see how we can get from here (“here” being defined as 1981-84ish) to there in a space of 20-30 years. Cromwell’s Commonwealth had the backings of a people long-accustomed to religious authority, by 1980 this country had 200+ years of non-religious rule and was quite happy with it. > > This book seems to be a slight over-reaction to the election of Ronald Reagan, an artistic rendering of a N.O.W. rant regarding the perils of the Religious Right. I’m not fond of the people either, but please, c’mon! :rolleyes: \*This is how women were replaced in the workplace - the army took their jobs of bagging groceries, being bank tellers, selling cars, etc. The first (bagging groceries) was specifically referenced in the book. Of the three, BNW is the most likely from my POV - a society where everybody drugs themselves to believe that everything is OK? It’s so disturbing to me to think about this that I’m logging off the computer to go watch _Game of Thrones_… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/12 "2013-07-05T21:59:24Z")
No, I’m not saying it is possible. I was responding to your comment that the books don’t explain how they got to the dystopian state. The books \*do \*explain. ETA: my post was for Justin Bailey ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/13 "2013-07-05T22:01:38Z")
Could it happen that a government could photograph every piece of mail, and save the pics for later use? Pure fiction. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/14 "2013-07-05T22:02:11Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > Sorry to double post, but yes, Justin Bailey, I do think that many novels do go into how the changes happened? In Handmaiden’s Tale there are several references to the events that led up to the current condition. The Republic of Gilead occurred because of a systemic drop in birth rates brought about by environmental issues. While the book does mention some events that happened in Offred’s life, it doesn’t go into much detail about how all this actually went down at the national level. Chapter 19 gives more of the overall reasons, but it still doesn’t go into the how’s: > [@](#): > > There was no one cause, says Aunt Lydia. She stands at the front of the room, in her khaki dress, a pointer in her hand. Pulled down in front of the blackboard, where once there would have been a map, is a graph, showing the birthrate per thousaind, for years and years: a slippery slope, down past the zero line of replacement, and down and down. > [@](#): > > There are no dates after the mid-eighties. Thus must have been one of the schools that was closed down then, for lack of children. > [@](#): > > Possibly it will be the sound of death today also. We will soon know. What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby, with a pinhead or a snout like a dog’s, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet? There’s no telling. They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed. What would be the point of knowing, anyway? You can’t have them taken out; whatever it is must be carried to term. > The chances are one in four, we learned that at the Center. The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic molecules, all of that takes years to clean up, and meanwhile they creep into your body, camp out in your fatty cells. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/15 "2013-07-05T22:05:07Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > …the vast VAST majority of the United States citizenry would be appalled if women were treated this way by the country’s rulers. When fertile women fall to 10% of the population? I won’t claim HT is absolutely likely or even possible as writ, but governments and peoples have shifted over far small crises. I think that if female fertility were to fall to some fraction of its present level, women would return to being commodities in many respects. You could look at about 5,000 years of history for examples. ETA: And no, I’m not stalking you. We end up posting in many of the same threads, and your ability to insist that \_\_\_\_\_ could never, ever possibly change is something of a hallmark. Your grasp of history seems tenuous and selective, and your resistance to the notion that things in the here and now might change (within a few years, much less within your lifetime) seems to haul out your IMPOSSIBLE stamp. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/16 "2013-07-05T22:10:40Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > Could it happen that a government could photograph every piece of mail, and save the pics for later use? > > Pure fiction. Very weak. Hardly comparable to such a drastic change in society as in the examples in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/17 "2013-07-05T23:17:50Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > You’d have to have the country set up as a totalitarian dictatorship to even begin the process, and the people who might consider something like it are anti-totalitarian in one form or another. Eh? It sound like you’re claiming that people who tend to be totalitarian are anti-totalitarian. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/18 "2013-07-05T23:19:40Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > ETA: And no, I’m not stalking you. We end up posting in many of the same threads, and your ability to insist that \_\_\_\_\_ could never, ever possibly change is something of a hallmark. Your grasp of history seems tenuous and selective, and your resistance to the notion that things in the here and now might change (within a few years, much less within your lifetime) seems to haul out your IMPOSSIBLE stamp. You know what, you’re right. I do have an IMPOSSIBLE stamp. And I think I wield it fairly. Google is too big to be bought out by any other company barring an ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE uprising within the Google-Plex and the future of The Handmaid’s Tale will never come to pass barring an IMPOSSIBLE collective decision by everyone that women deserve to be property. The US population is 52% female, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime… well ever. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/19 "2013-07-05T23:39:51Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > Eh? It sound like you’re claiming that people who tend to be totalitarian are anti-totalitarian. I’m claiming the people who would _have to be_ totalitarian in order to set up a state (the army, business leader, etc.), are dead set against that sort of system. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750/20 "2013-07-05T23:55:40Z")
I know 1984 can happen because it did. I remember it as if it were yesterday: Michael Jackson caught fire, Vanessa Williams showed us a Miss America could look good naked, and a young Joe Piscopo left _SNL_ to thrill us in _Johnny Dangerously_ and a couple episodes of _Goof Troop._ And is somehow still worth $3 million. What, this is Cafe Society, not Great Debates, right? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-big-brother-handmaidens-tale-brave-new-world-happen/662750.md?page=2)