No idea what this is referring to.
I don’t think that immunizes you as much as you suggest. The U.S. has ever-present elements of:
- Love for strongmen
- Puritanical hatred of perceived sinners and weaklings
- Vulnerability to exploitation of patriotism
A sustained environmental/economic crisis allowing all the above to run unchecked, and we’d see the U.S. unraveling pretty quickly, I expect. The chances of Atwood’s vision coming to pass are indeed remote. I’m cheerfully willing to say very remote. Impossible? No.
The concern raised was with the plausibility of the timeframe for the change in the book. Someone said: Oh, yeah, well how long did it take between Kristalnacht and the ovens? But Kirstalnacht was after the dictatorship was in place. You need to get us to the dictatorship first, and then start the clock to the ovens. The fact that it was only a few years from KN to The Ovens is meaningless in terms of the time it would take for the US to become Gilead.
But I don’t know where you’re getting your descriptions 1-3 of the US. Possibly true of a minority, but not the majority. It looks like something conjured up for the sole purpose of “proving” how close we are to Gilead already.
On the other hand, you are not that far removed from multiple genocides of various Red Indian tribal groups.
Mostly from the history of the U.S., actually.
But you’re not close. I just think the actual distance (while large) is measurable and not infinite.
Actually, the analogy succeeds.
I was addressing the point that the events in the Handmaid’s Tale happened too fast. The riots shown at the beginning of the movie, to me, were analogous to *Kristallnacht *in the sense that tensions that had been simmering for years finally erupted. And then it was only three years to the camps.
Tensions have been simmering in the USA since the end of the Civil War.
I’ll vote for “too fast,” but certainly that it is all horribly possible.
At present, we have too many social checks upon any single-party dictatorship or single-religion theocracy. Even a truly severe economic crash wouldn’t overturn the U.S.'s essential libertarian mind-set.
But given time, and with untiring dedication, bad guys could promote “Taliban” thinking here. We are not immune. Look at how much influence the Religious Right already has wielded.
(I was listening to a Catholic radio talk-show, where the host was talking about legal implementation of pro-life viewpoints. He said that we need to persuade our Representatives, and to “Hold their feet to the fire.” Yeah, Catholics, putting people’s feet to the fire. Nasty historical allusion, that.)
Recogntion and Rejection of Victimization in the Novels of Margaret Atwood
The purpose of Atwood’s dystopia is not to predict what the USA will become, but rather to point out aspects of culture that, if left to their own devices, will continue harm people – woman in particular. Plausibility isn’t relevant. What is relevant is if the text/vid makes a reader/viewer think about how the inequities of the artistic work present aspects of culture that should be changed.
For example, The Handmaid’s Tale illustrates, et alia, the harm that comes from women not having control over their own bodies, so the person reading or viewing The Handmaid’s Tale will think about that issue and then apply it to contemporary circumstances, such as the religious based push in the USA to restrict women’s control over their own bodies. That the USA will never become a literal Gilead is meaningless.
That’s very interesting (and I mean that sincerely), and that might be what the novel is about, but that’s not what this thread is about.
People are people, and the fact that Nazi Germany existed, that Da-esh exists, and that Saudi Arabia exists is prima facia proof that brutal, totalitarian regimes are possible anywhere. People are people, and Americans are not inherently any different from Germans or Saudis. Under the right (or wrong, depending how one is looking at it) circumstances, of course the US could become a brutal dictatorship. But it would take some fundamental changes to the environment that we live in for that to be at all likely. And that’s one reason Atwood, to her credit, postulated a cataclysmic event that preceded the descent into totalitarianism. It wasn’t just a few steps from Reagan (or Trump, to make it more timely). It was after the cataclysm. No cataclysm, no Gilead.
I think you misunderstood ThelmaLou’s post:
The time period “between *Kristallnacht *and the first ovens” is being compared to the time period between Offred’s failed attempt to escape to Canada with her family and the events of the main part of the story, when Offred is serving as a handmaid. Offred is obviously not trying to flee the US as we know it, but a country that has already become repressive. IIRC, at this point women’s bank accounts have already been frozen.
ThelmaLou is referring to the Hulu series which I have not seen, and I don’t remember what hints the book gives as to how long it takes to get from “now” to the full-blown Republic of Gilead. The Wikipedia entry for the novel suggests that it’s set circa 2005, or roughly 20 years from when the book was written, but the timeline isn’t made explicit. However long it takes, it’s not a period when everything is mostly going fine in the US. There are increasing environmental problems, declining birthrates and rising birth defects, and then the assassination of the President and most of Congress in an attack that’s blamed on foreign terrorists.
I was wondering when this one would come up. Also the Taliban swiftly taking over (most of) Afghanistan.
That kind of thing has happened in real life (Iran and Afghanistan being the most obvious examples). I doubt it could happen in the US. As soon as women could vote, the likelihood of something like that happening went from slim to zero. I suspect there wasn’t any voting after the assassination in the book’s backstory (but in real life, there is an Amendment to quickly select new leaders). I don’t think a theocratic military revolution is plausible in the US. It has literally happened in some countries though.
The most frightening thing was the technological takeover. I’m pretty sure my bank record has a “Mr.” in it, if only to cut in half the number of people who could defraud my bank account via telephone banking. At one point in the backstory women’s bank accounts were all locked (possible) and put under the control of “their husband or nearest male relation” (impossible), on the same day that all women were kicked out of work. Possible, yes, at least the first thing. Plausible? Not remotely in the United States or indeed most countries.
I thought in many such societies high status women (and sometimes men) were required to wear an excessive amount of clothing, through social rather than legal pressure. Those wigs, ruffs, tight hose, etc, don’t look at all comfortable to me.
This wasn’t true of many ancient slave-making countries. In Rome, only male citizens could wear a toga, but most didn’t most of the time, so you could literally mistake a citizen for a slave or vice versa. One senator suggested a slave’s uniform, but the idea died because the slaves could easily identify each other. (Freedmen were required to wear a “cap of liberty”.)
MRGA?
Bing bing bing We have a winner. Yes, yes and oh HELL YES.
Couple things.
It’s been objected that Gilead has done away with marriage and totally restructured society.
Nope. Most people go about their regular lives. But troublemakers…well, troublemakers get dealt with. Men get killed. And women are handed over to elite men as sex slaves. It’s not everybody that gets a handmaid, it’s the rulers. And it’s not all women who get enslaved, it’s the troublemakers.
And if you think elite men having sex slaves is unusual, given the right-wing Theocracy, well, don’t you think Americans were Christian in the 1800s? Thomas Jefferson literally owned a slave that he had sex with who gave birth to his children. This is part of the literal history of the United States.
And that smashes the contention that hey, Donald Trump may be a pig, but his Hugh Hefner style male chauvinism is incompatible with the right-wing theocratic version of male chauvinism. And to that I say, who did self-identified Christians vote for overwhelmingly? I forget–was it the guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, or not? Oh, yeah, it was. Christians are very comfortable with the idea that sexual activity is horribly horribly sinful–for women. For men, not so much. Donald Trump has literally discarded his former wives for younger more fertile concubines, and Christian America is completely fine with it. Do they want their daughter or sisters to be one of Trump’s whores? No, but they’re fine with whores being whores. A whore deserves what she gets.
The US Patriot Act was a good example of how quickly a democratic nation can be persuaded, largely through fear with a measure of hatred, to surrender a measure of liberty that had taken decades to evolve. There was such a large majority that approved of the restrictions on liberty, that it was simply a done deal when it was announced.
If by “swiftly”, you mean after 18 years of continuous war which killed millions and displaced more millions.
When was capital punishment ever banned USA-wide?
Abortion - aren’t there still 1 million legal abortions every year?
The death penalty was for all practical purposes banned in the United States from 1972 to 1976.
That’s hilarious.
And it was a big influence on Atwood. The series is definitely drawing some strong parallels between Iran and Gilead (at least visual).
Ofglen/Emily’s girlfriend being hanged by construction crane for example. I’m especially interested to see where her subplot goes since it wasn’t on the books at all.
Yes, and Luke was her husband (at least until the state voided their marriage because his “ex-wife” was still alive).
Yep. I liked how even the Commander looked like he hated every moment and was only doing it out of duty.
Yeah, but personally I’d feel much safer in Australia or New Zealand instead of being right next store to Gilead.
That wasn’t just a Quebec thing. Until the 1970s it was basically impossible for a married woman to obtain a mortgage or any kind of credit in her own name. Banks would even factor her income in making a decision; only her husband’s mattered. It wasn’t much easier for single women; my great aunt, who never married, once had a bank offer insist on having her younger brother cosign a mortgage. She was able to was able by screaming at bank’s president and threatening to withdraw all her accounts on the spot.
Don’t forget about the airports; Gilead implanted an exit control system at same time so nobody could leave. At least unless they were Jewish or held foreign passports.
Pretty much. And if there are fertile Econowives (Offred’s caste prior to being a made a Handmaid) presumably there are even fertile Wives too. One of the most disturbing things about the book was that it implied there volunteer Handmaids (ie fertile women so fanatical they volunteered for Handmaid duty instead of getting married). It disturbed me because it was so believable. Speaking of Econowives; are any other book fans hoping we actually get to see one? I’ve always had troubling visualizing when their clothing is supposed to look like (the movie didn’t show any).
It caters to approved-paranoia.