All the books mentioned in Michele's wonderful article were works of warning. About what can happen if a society goes too far. What we have now is a society led by a man who flat out does not read. He is not at all interested in exploring other views. And he leads a group of people that will follow him to wherever it is he wants them to go. They don't criticize him. They don't question him. They never say "Wait a minute". And if he wins a second term, he will see that the sky is the limit. And when it is all over they will stand there and say they were just following orders. Not their fault. They are lemmings that are not willing to stop at the precipice to see where they are being led. To them I ask: stop for a moment and think....is your life really that much different than it was 8 or 10 or even 20 years ago? But you think it is and you think it will be heaven on earth when Trump is finished. Jim Jones told his followers the same thing. And they, like Trump supporters, didn't even pause for a second before drinking the Kool-Aid. These books are asking, begging really, for people to look before they leap. And to stop listening to the man who tells you not to. It's like taking that robocall. By the time you figure out you shouldn't have shared the personal information, it's too late. But you don't realize that until you get your bank statement. No matter how many times experts warn you to hang up, there are still lots of people who don't.
150
His voters don’t read literature, and they don’t want their children to read actual books or study science either. It’s now a multigenerational effort opposed not only to the truth but to the very human process of critical thought.
83
@Walking Man
Good comments. I don't think all of Jim Jones followers willingly drank the Kool-Aid. Some were forced to drink it by other followers. Maybe the children in the Evangelical churches or the ones being dragged to his Hate Rallies will wake up to what they are being force fed and choose Truth over the lies.
45
Reading this I was thinking about the scene in GOT when Lord Baylish slyly threatens Cercei saying "knowledge is power" and she has her men grab him and she says "no - power is power".
But I think that what we are seeing now in the US and around the world is the last dying gasp of an old power structure overplaying its hand in a desperate over reach to hold on the power it once had without question. Not just white male power, but the power of industrial wealth to take whatever it wants in pursuit of market dominance.
But I do think they are overplaying it. They are defeating only centrist incrementalism and will find that when the dam breaks, nobody will be in the mood to compromise with them anymore.
63
A very sobering critique here, not just of “The Testament”, but of America today, and of the ineffectiveness of truth in combatting the corrupted Trump Administration, Senate, and a Supreme Court that now preemptively overrules lower courts in advance of any hearing, but simply at the behest of the President.
Not given play here is the importance of propaganda, which Goebbels demonstrated could corrupt an entire nation. In the USA at present just under half of all voters are glued to Fox, manipulated Google searches, scurrilous YouTube videos, screaming Tweets, Facebook “news”. They are brainwashed lemmings glued to alternative facts and fictional conspiracies, beyond any form of reason or their own eyes.
2020 will be a squeaker, and may be awarded to Trump by the “Supreme” Court like Bush vs Gore, but with less pretense.
80
Atwood's dystopia in The Handmaid's Tale and Testaments tends to make many men uncomfortable - positively critical - immediately discounting the parallels of Atwood's society with our own.
I read The Handmaid's Tale twice and read Testaments yesterday. We need to start taking the common denominators very seriously. Women never come out ahead in societies that fall to fascism.
Most totalitarian, theocratic regimes aren't successful or long-lived, but the ones that are subjugate the women, remove their right to vote and restrict legal rights and personal freedoms. Remove the power of women and men maintain control. It's been the way of religion, politics and government for millennia.
First, subjugate the women.
127
If the conclusion Atwood reaches is that truth can save us, she has nullified the reality of the post-modern world.
In post-modern reality, truth is merely what we believe. As Kellyanne would tell us, she has alternative facts, and Rudy tells us that truth isn't always truth, and the FBIs truth may not be Trumps truth.
For Trump supporters, and GOP supporters, the Russian videos, the Mueller report, the bus soundtrack, the business failings and investigations, the brazen rejection of the emoluments clause, the narcissistic need to be right even when wrong, the failure of tariff policy, are all falsehoods invented by a lying press intent on the destruction the GOP hold on government.
Just as any accusation against Brett Kavanaugh was defacto false since it was brought forth by Democrats and reported int he news media.
If actual, proven fact - the hurricane was never going to hit Alabama, pork sales and soy sales are non-existent and the car industry is suffering because of tariffs, people are dying form poor healthcare and the economy is sunk under student debt - is not proven fact if reported by the wrong people, then truth ain't gonna save us.
And that is very, very bad. Because when truth is known, seen, disseminated but ignored then supressed, then the next step is usually insurrection.
226
@Cathy
Yes
Insurrection would be more orderly, patriotic, and fair than this administration -- insurrection that is in terms of motivating a throng to speak out, encourage others to stand up for what's right, and then vote.
Insurrection in terms of 2nd amendment militias putting the hammer down on dissent in the name of the constitution is war. It's Red Vs Blue states and the end of United.
Say Trump wins a 2nd term. Say it's fair and square as best we can see. It's a toss up. Then what? Nothing. Then we shop while the Capital sinks in its soggy bottom half bake of rhetoric and good intentions.
16
@larkspur "Then what?"
Then we do what our ancestors did and leave the country of our birth to create something new and better.
Our species was "born under a wandering star". We are at the top of the food chain not because of our intelligence, strength or speed, but because we're the most adaptable of all mammals. We can survive and thrive literally anywhere.
It may be time to remember that.
19
@Kris Aaron
“Leave the country of our birth.”
Become yet more refugees in a world bursting with unwanted refugees.
It’s easy to say we should leave, much harder to do. In the last, what? thirty years or so, our country has made it increasingly difficult to leave. Ask any expat about how to get money out of the country, banking, taxes, receiving social security. Trying to move pets — that’s the where I balked eight years ago. Leaving family behind. Learning another language as an adult.
Very quietly, over the years, our country has made it very difficult for Americans of little to moderate wealth, to resettle in another country.
And your first choice, Canada? Not going to happen.
If Trump wins the next election, we can expect that to become more difficult. Dictators and passports have a way of becoming an issue.
There was this song I heard yesterday at the Saturday market. The lyrics were something on the order of: “Where are you going to run? The whole world is in trouble.”
28
While 'The Handmaid's Tale' is an interesting view of the future, the truth is that we are already well into Huxley's scientific dictatorship outlined in a Brave New World. He himself said he was surprised at how far things had come in his 1962 speech at US Berkeley.
Atwood's future is very focused on the family - for the upper echelons of its society to the point of assigning women to bear children for those families. Her society is based on fundamentalist Christianity.
Astoundingly for 1931 Huxley talked of sex being divorced from reproduction, and promoted among teens and younger. There is no family and long term bonds are discouraged. Reproduction and birth occur via laboratories. Look at sperm counts in the west - soon natural reproduction may NOT be possible. Already many need help in conceiving.
Fordism - a 'scientific' approach to everything - is the religion of this future.
SOMA, an all purpose drug is issued by government to both sedate and intoxicate the population.
Only the top alphas and betas have any real control over their lives. They are bred as individuals while the rest of the workers are specialized clones. People are conditioned to obey and be content with their lot in life. They willingly accept their roles as cogs in a machine.
Take time and look at what is happening. We are already well along the road to 'A Brave New World' where the masses serve the few.
30
The most striking scenes in the show was when the Gilead elders discuss how they will justify the forcible rape of women, not their wives, without causing outrage among the general population and the participants themselves. In order to get away with this obvious abuse of the women, they decide to make it a sacrament and have the wives assist them. I don’t know whether I would prefer to live under a dystopian society ruled by the rich, the crazy or the religious but I feel we are straddling all three.
531
@Rick Gage We're there and we've been there for a long time. Which is what inspired her to write The Handmaid's Tale during the Reagan era. It's just been a continual slide to worse and worser since then.
190
@Rick Gage. The religious, at least in the US, are a minority. Our country is built on the belief that no one should judged by race, creed color, sex, or national origin. I have never understood why bedrock institutions tolerate vicious attacks based on creed but are vigilant about racial and gay jokes and jokes about women.
21
@michjas, you misunderstand the application of "creed." In saying we don't judge others by their "creed" (their religious beliefs), we mean that you are free to practice your religion in your own, tax-exempt churches and not push them onto anyone else. This is a big freedom (esp the tax-exempt part) that is enjoyed only in more tolerant nations. But some religions in the US aren't content to practice privately but instead push their views onto everyone else - even lobbying the gov't to ban abortion, gay marriage, etc. By bringing these religious views into the public arena, the creeds themselves become subject to our collective ridicule - and rightly so.
69
This is a beautifully written analysis. When I was a young idealist, quite a few decades ago, I had the naive belief that "the arc . . bends towards justice". I have been dismayed to learn that it is not true. We can very easily bend towards injustice, as we are now. And it is not given that we shall recover. The new tools of propaganda may exclude justice from our future - nothing is for sure anymore. Thank you.
248
@Ian
As a medic-getting drafted during the Vietnam war era, eventually I came to realize the mistake Vietnam was and to do the right thing. I refused to wear my uniform to protest the war, suffer the consequences-getting a Court Martial with significant jail time charged against me, and hope for the best.
For support all I had to do do was look into the streets due to the demonstrations against the war.
For it was our own government officials who lied to us-not the 'social media' at the time. And once Daniel Ellsburg selflessly did the right thing, it was the newspapers and their reporters who were brave enough to risk their futures and disclose the truths History delivered to our curbsides into the waiting arms of the news-stands, and ultimately into eternity-signed and sealed in the Pentagon Papers.
37
At the end of 1984 Orwell let the reader know that Big Brother was no more.
In the Handmaiden's Tale, Atwood let the reader know that Gilead would fall.
In the American Tune circa 2019 I don't know if Jefferson's reliance on the People to insure the continuation of our democratic experiment begun in 1776 is well placed.
Truth to many of us now apparently doesn't matter if it means loss of political, social or economic power. Those folks are winning and in control now.
When truth doesn't matter to a majority of the electorate in a democratic society it's all over but the crying.
446
@winthropo muchacho It isn't a majority and never has been. Just enough votes EXACTLY where they needed them to win the Electoral College. How convenient!
155
@winthropo muchacho
You’re mighty well told.
Without high respect for truth,
power in all its forms takes precedence.
It’s already observable in daily life that ethical or unselfish behavior is on the wane.
Many no longer believe that the news is based on truth. Of course it was never perfect but one could generally trust the news to be true.
19
@winthropo muchacho
You are inaccurate about the ending of Orwell’s 1984; Winston Smith, after his experience in Room 101, succumbs to Big Brother, who encompassed his last vestiges of independent self.
Elizabeth Warren is our last best hope to fight against Gilead.
35
Because it works in fiction that a single person can so make a difference.
Here in reality it takes a village to picket it's Churches of the Republican Way. Of the good, bad, and ugly of America, it is our Christians who are the uglies. They vote all the Republican dirt just like all the bad do, but, in addition claim "Truth". For Satan is the Master of Deceit.
Republicanism is the ISM of our time. Just check the state of the Union: most warmongering, most jail stuffing, most unequal nation on the planet. How liberal is that?
Four term, greatest president, FDR had liberal ideals but was greatly resisted by the wealthy who finally won out big time with the Ronald Reagan Tax Cut Revolution. Ever since, they have been telling us that our own government is our greatest problem.
Our government is all we have against the rich and powerful. A Republican is a traitor to the American people. A Christian Republican is a Judas. Period. A lifetime of observation supports the conclusion.
21
Oh, dear. What a load of narcissistic tosh. Try living in Saudi Arabia or Somalia for a while, Lady.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/the-appalling-vanity-of-western-feminists-who-think-margaret-atwood-writes-about-them/
4
Are we truly heading toward the dystopian perspectives of Atwood and Orwell?
In a word, yes. Trump's spinning is sounding more and more like Orwell: "He who controls the past, controls the future; he who controls the present, controls the past." But perhaps a more relevant quote from Orwell: "How do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?" Remember Trump's admonition to his base: "Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening," Trump said. "Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news."
We are living in 1984 and Atwood's dystopia is right around the corner.
74
"Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows"
Brava Ms. Goldberg!
11
TV and the internet are the two biggest inventions of the 20th century (internet almost 21st, but well...) They are both American inventions. Despite early pious, glib assurances of the noble purpose behind these radical new ways to communicate, truth didn't survive the good old American values of entertainment and commercialism.
People were indulged, spoon fed, and what was essentially an addiction became a fact of life gladly sustained by corporate advertising. The great majority of the public became desensitized, benumbed, oblivious. Panem et circenses. "Reality" TV. The Apprentice. Trump as president. For many people, there is no difference. When it comes to society, the environment, the future, life, they are on the couch. When hell shall truly break loose, they'll reach for the remote or swipe their smartphone.
7
"But here’s what’s shocking about the book: Rather than a warning, it reads, in 2019, like wish fulfillment. Instead of a new glimpse of hell, it’s a riveting and deeply satisfying escapist fantasy." Yay! I will get this book, I need some "...riveting and deeply satisfying escapist fantasy." Maybe it will inspire and uplift and serve as a trail marker. I get enough long looks of the current hell in the news every day, I don't want it darker than it already is.
4
The "don't let the bastards grind us down" was sort of a motto of our Engineering school back in 1960. Ours was Illegitimi non carborundum. So it was around long before Ms Atwood used it.
6
Michelle, excellent summary of living in Trump's dystopian world. The question is how do we get out of this entrapment with one major party in Congress supporting it as well as social media with its fake news and lies and many institutions now corrupted including our own Justice Department, Military and FBI?
10
One of the things i find especially alarming about trump followers is that they are fully aware that he is lying and do not care. Moreover, they take immense delight in every outrageous, loathsome, and criminal thing he gets away with. There is a trump store in northern arizona selling merch where they gleefully identify as the cartoon Minions - a witless and vulgar species that lives only to serve a despicable Leader. they have finally found their leader in dt, and will follow him anywhere.
In my home town in the california desert, we have our own trump store with a heavy heavy “christian” slant. T-shirts and hats self-identify the wearer as “deplorable.” Gigantic trump flags fly over homes and in the beds of pickup trucks. I feel like i am watching a slow motion train wreck as my fellow Americans strive to make our country an ethnic, misogynistic dictatorship.
As for the role of truth— We all saw the kids in cages and some felt great satisfaction to know they were suffering. And nothing was done. Those camps are still there, still full of suffering people as we seek to build more. That truth set no one free. As Adam Serwer observed, the cruelty IS the point. When such viciousness wrapped in a thin veil of religiosity is what drives as much as 40% of the population, we are too too close to dystopias like Gilead.
28
Wait another 50 short years when climate and the natural world completely calapses. That is when the fun begins.
11
I'd give my right arm for a tale of utopia that came out as promised, with truth restored and Trump gone and indicted. The disaster of Trump remains to some degree a failure of imagination. Too many Americans and their institutions including the Constitutional free press really did believe it cannot happen here. Too many are failing to recognize a textbook demagogue, textbook fascism, and the textbook sabotage of democracy by autocracy. Too many Americans cannot see the evidence in front of their own eyes. The route from the mistaken brain to the eyes is a freeway but the route from the eyes to the brain is only a path through the woods. In this case, we must will our imaginations to recognize the vulnerability of truth itself. Truth is not a panacea. Something other than truth is also required. Republican power and Republican dreams of eternal white male dominance couldn't care less about truth. And the mulish intransigence of the Trump minions is holding the door open for them.
9
How does a nation avoid political catastrophe if a majority of the voting public get too morally numb to relentless--almost daily--evidence of severe corruption, unremitting torrents of falsehood and deceit at every level of gov't administration, chronically callous, uncivil daily speech (tweets) by the President, and, perhaps, above all, nationally endangering levels of pathological narcissism in that president, narcissism of such severity (witness the recent sharpie episode) it easily recalls innumerable crackpot dictators in history who ultimately destroyed their own nations? In less than 4 years, a dangerously unfit president has terrorized into submission every sitting member of his own political party. It is no longer that difficult to imagine an American political catastrophe, if enough of the voting public fall into the same morally blank state as the current Republican party. If this should happen, everything falls apart.
5
“In “1984,” history has been obliterated. In “Fahrenheit 451,” all books are banned, while in “The Handmaid’s Tale” reading is illegal for (most) women. The regimes in these books are smothering and all-encompassing, but facts could, at least theoretically, endanger them.”
History obliterated? Like Beto trying to change our nation’s historical founding back to when slaves were first brought to the early settlements in the new world?
Books banned? Like when Trump supporters have their businesses boycotted and actors blacklisted for being conservative?
Regimes that are smothering and all-encompassing? Like political correctness? Like people demanding certain pronouns be used to address them? How rather than tolerate we must embrace these new ‘ideas’ regardless of religious objections?
Like when an employer must provide medical insurance that violates their religious views? In a free country, the employee can not work there and work for someone who provides the coverage they want. But not here; the government makes you.
Your insights are interesting but misplaced. Fascism is alive and well. But it comes from the left. We must treat women as equals, but not offend them. We must allow gay marriage and bake a cake for them. But they can boycott a conservative restaurant because?
Look in the mirror; your world is the one described in the books. Conservatives believe we are all free. Liberals say some are more free than others. Think about it.
2
A number of issues to consider as one traverses the pathways between Utopia and Dystopia; both human creations. Both in a range of semantic and visual languages as well as in lived-in daily
As the range of media continue to focus on and document the ranges of daily attacks on truths and generalizable facts by selected powerful individuals, relatively little focuses on the all too many enablers who choose (?) “Living with the lies. Complacency by...enables complicity by...In a culture seeding personal unaccountability as a norm.
“Despite the wishes of the majority.”
At a certain stage of development one learns, hopefully, the wishing won’t make IT so. Whatever IT is; however needed. Equitable and menschlich. When human resources, needed to ACTUALLY make sustainable differences for wellbeing for ALL are unavailable/inaccessible because of active complacency, willful blindness, deafness, indifference, the silence of words in lieu of targeted outraged-action,
“majority” is misleading.
“And where [and how] you end up living is going to depend partly on what you do now.” Ourselves. With others. BEing sufficiently sensitive to reality’s ever-present interacting dimensions. Uncertainties.Unpredictabilities. Randomness. Lack of total control, notwithstanding one’s efforts; timely or not.
A paradox: fictionalized dystopia, named, is a best seller. Daily, toxic, WE-THEY cultures, all around, which anchor and foster violating created, selected and targeted “the other,” are enabled.
And one of the interesting parts of this is that Margaret Atwood is not an American.
6
"The water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek", courtesy of Jim Hightower.
We have to get the hogs out of the creek. Vote!
12
We are already living in a dystopia. Wake up.
6
Minor point but, Illegitimi non carborundum has been around since WWII.
2
Michelle. once again you would like people to believe the nation is devolving into a fantasy you have of concentration camps run by religious white males. 50% of the nation doesn't agree. Your mention of 1984 is appropriate as a substantial majority of the Democratic party and certainly the politicians it is choosing are aggressively seeking to limit discussion, opinion and positions of opposing points of view. There are well documented statements by prominent Democrats arguing that rights can be suspended if you are accused of a crime without conviction. Slurs are the mainstay. Organizations like Antifa (neo-nazis of the left) are given a subtle wink and acceptance by many liberals. Yes, 1984 is here and it is the left, not right, that controls the direction.
1
It took a lot of persistence, sacrifice and personal risk-taking to crush the Nazis and Imperial Japan. A culture of loyalty and an allergy to dissent and evidence made their downfall in the face of such resistance inevitable.
The same is true for the corrupt institutions and enterprises that threaten our society from within. Crying foul for a couple years might win a participation trophy but accomplish little else. Staying in the fight without an expiration date and committing to the truth will eventually tumble any house of cards, even a house of Trump cards.
3
So many men are responding to Goldberg's column, and so many find her wanting. Wassup wid dat?
22
@MARY it's almost like it's organized, for sure.
9
"reactionary populism."
Face it. "reactionary" = "regressive", It's not simply re-acting to some act. It's "nostalgia politics"--adoring the ignorant prejudices and wrongful discriminations of the past.
And "populism" refers to majoritarianism--or at least large minorities. It is the reductio ad absurdum or "democracy" defined as "majority rule" --or in Lincoln's hyper-charitable spin--"government BY the people".
And the associated delusions that it must also be FOR the people--where "the people" are commoners. The further assumption (common in economics) is that 'the people" are always rationally self interested. But fed enough "opitates of the masses" they will believe anything.
The US Constitution was clearly and explicitly intended as a safeguard against tyranny of the [prejudiced, deluded, gullible] majority. So is academia--education--as opposed to godstory indoctrination.
No wonder Trump and Trumpies love the uneducated.
10
Well done Michelle. Now what? What will it take for the majority of Americans who abhor what is happening in our country to take to the streets ( and also vote the tyrant and traitor out of the Oval Office)? What makes the Hong Kong patriots so much more involved against oppression, lies and tyranny than us? Probably our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln must be ashamed at what is happening now after the sacrifice during the Civil War. This dystopia permeates every section of our society, especially corporate and fundamentalist religious America, which has no patience for compassion and truth and has led us down this path.
9
A profound, eloquent and deeply depressing column.
20
Michelle Goldburg usually manages to be power controlled - she speaks softlly and aims her vast knowledge and intelligence lightly but with the deadly accuracy of a stainless steel harpoon.
This is a pungent, right-on-target, and terrifyingly accurate depiction of why every last person caring about the United States worries every day about what horror the Trump Administration and his minions will bore and terrify the world with today.
Here Michelle encases us, her faithful readers, in her own vast miasma of dense underbrush: "the weight of digital simulacra and epistemological nihilism."
What?
Have mercy! We love you, Michelle!
11
That truth no longer has user value today comes in part from evangelical Christianity’s marriage to Trumpism. The universalism exemplified by Christians promoting civil rights has evaporated. In its place is a post-modernistic view of truth and an ethic where the ends of suppressing abortions and gay marriage justify the means of aligning with a man who has values inverse to those of Jesus Christ and whose rise to power was powered by the big lie of birtherism.
In 1633, Galileo was forced to recant his claims that the Earth moved around the sun. “And yet it moves,” he said. Christians in the amen corner of Donald Trump also will have their “and yet it moves” moment. As their leaders are revealed as grifters and opportunists, their churches will depopulate as those within their congregation start to inquire if the ethics of what they are professing is real and the truth of what they are preaching is true.
The point of Atwood’s book is that lies, propaganda, and dishonesty are aberrations and contrary to the nature of the realities of life. In the moment, we can interpret such aberrations as the way things are and will always be. But, as Emerson reminds us in his essay “Compensation”, there are profound reasons why “things refuse to be mismanaged long” and why there will always and inevitably be ethical compensation that will effect even people such as Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell, Jr.
14
@Philip
I hope you are right.
2
@Phillip
I hope you’re right.
Well said.
2
The Hunger Games is not so much “the nightmare of fascism run as a reality show” as claimed, as what it feels like to live in Puerto Rico, the coal country of West Virginia, an Indian Reservation, Reading PA, most of Connecticut, or the South Side of Chicago.
And not just during the Trump Administration, but for 12 god-blasted years now.
2
By now Donald Trump has shown himself to be merely a total incompetent whose only talent is exploiting the racist vein in American society. If we don't vote him out next year, the US electorate will be even more inept than he.
Those young people in Hong Kong are teaching us a lesson we need to remember.
8
I got my digital subscription to NYT so I could read Michelle Goldberg. I am not interested in some of her columns (like this one) but I read them. Today I will contemplate the meaning of
" digital simulacra and epistemological nihilism.
5
I have never watched, or read, The Handmaid's Tale, because it is too creepy, too frightening, and too possible, in this counry. Be wary. Move left.
7
When fiction becomes fact, print the fiction.
2
Another ridiculous article by the NYT for it’s hysterical readers. The US may be going through a short conservative period but let’s not be overly dramatic and claim we are a theocracy. Please let’s grow up. The real reason I worry about these articles is that young impressionable people read them and with no perspective of the past believe them and get anxious and depressed. We are living in the most prosperous, freest country in history. I think bored elites are looking for enemies to keep their ranks believing this nonsense. BTW I am a moderate, not a Trump voter, just someone with perspective and common sense.
7
@Paul
"We are living in the most prosperous, freest country in history."
It depends on your skin color whether this is true or not and whether you are male or female.
11
Regarding the demagogue played by Emma Thompson: does Michelle not see that the quote is a satire on the liberal feminist narrative? That it doesn’t matter if something is factually true, only that it “feels” true? The character was turning the sloppy emotional logic of feminist victimhood against itself.
3
@David
Thompson's character is loosely based on France's far right wing populist Marine Le Pen.
5
"...stunned that a brazen misogynist, given to fascist rhetoric and backed by religious fundamentalists... taking power despite the wishes of the majority of the population."
The best summary of the incredible, unbelievable low-point in our socio-political history as a nation.
It is always good to boil things down so it is so very clear what happened.
19
Ms Atwood should be far more concerned about the thought police who exist in her native Canada where free speech is becoming nonexistent—you must toe the destructively PC line or suffer. In the US, almost all of our grandparents would be sued if they held their traditional values that would have made most of them refuse to make a cake celebrating a gay wedding. Real tyranny comes from the left.
1
Ironic that Elisabeth Moss who is a scientologist in real life playing the lead role in a production such as this.
I'll add I think she is a very good actor and have enjoyed her other projects she has been involved in.
5
Let's bottom line it Michelle.
Yes Trump is an ego maniac, bigot demagogue and those are some of the nicer things I can say about him.
The way you fight him is by calling him out but offering moderate, progressive solutions for all Americans re the issues he demagogued.
What not to do? Neo feminize the issue. Only bring up when he degrades women, use it as a pulpit to promote neo feminist ideas, ie women should get 50% of everything because they are women and in the process condemn present day men for five million yrs. of existence.
When you do the above you serve up Trump on a silver platter and if you continue help his re reelection.
2
Thank you for the spoiler warning so I could stop in time :)
1
Spin-doctor rule 1 -- the first "truth" told becomes "the" truth...
1
Epistemological nihilism? I don't get it.
We are in a "slow boil" toward totalitarianism. Why? Because those who should have put up the first and last lines of defense, the educated, progressive class, have for too long been more concerned about what bathrooms or pronouns to use, while the masters of the universe have been plotting a putsch, a takeover of the government, for decades. Now, when it's probably too late, that same educated class asks, "Why don’t we ever have a say?"
Try to raise this issue, try to alert these cosseted, educated elites that their preoccupation with identity politics makes them derelict in their civic duty, and complicit in the rise of totalitarianism, you hit a stone wall of defensiveness, cemented with stock answers such as, "but the Right does it more, or the Republicans are much worse."
That defensiveness is even built into this comment space: if I dare use the word, "l——l" (synonym for "progressive"), it is almost always blocked by The Times’ artificial intelligence bots, which apparently have been programmed to treat it as an epithet.
Such defensiveness goes even further, to demonizing anyone with a different worldview, a different, class-based set of values. Progressives pride themselves on diversity, but it is a diversity that is only skin deep, and ultimately must rely on accusations of racism to justify its exclusiveness and intolerance.
What can be done at this late date? Stop treating the white working class as the enemy. They are victims too. We need them to beat Trump.
3
trumpism and racism and white might must be defeated.
It took 40 years of the two party gerrymandered electoral system of our forefathers NOT foremothers to end up with a globe full of hurt for the “ common man”.....
Apathy and trust combined by populations governed by opportunists and ego driven leadership led to our total demise.
Fake news is real news is fake news . A new motto.
1
And perhaps the women will save the day this time around, too.
2
@Robbie J.
Well, women and girls forever have the thankless job of cleaning up after the elephants at the men's religious/political club.
4
Watching a documentary on Nina Simone. When asked what is freedom, she answers, "freedom means to be unafraid'.
Virtually everyone in America is afraid.
Both ends of the political spectrum are afraid ... for their future.
But only one end, the extreme right, seeks to promote that fear.
Trump and his minions promote fear of change, fear of differences, fear of equality, fear of regulation, fear of opportunity, fear of education, fear of taxes, fear of allies, fear of everything that is not endorsed by them and by HIM.
11
@One Citizen
Yeh, and one group - 170 million females - is especially afraid. And with good reason ever since the GOP in 1980 began its strategy to control and then own all 3 branches of govt. by using Catholic and evangelical voters who genuinely hate females and believe them to be inferior mammals on the same level as breeding livestock.
4
Interesting. I’m a big fan of Atwood. In Gilead the truth is obscured by all these rituals which everyone is subject to adhere to. Even rituals for mundane activities like walking, there’s a prescribed way people are supposed to be seen in public.
This administration seems to employ a lot of ritual too, and we know there’s little room for the truth. In this reality these rituals serve The Great Deflection. The rituals of tweeting, and headline-seeking. The rituals of sacrificing people on trumps Altar of the Arbitrary. The rituals of rallies, and saying the right words in the correct order. Everything a church-trained audience wants to hear.
To those of us with a critical mind, or an ounce of cynicism, we can spot the propaganda for what it is. Personally all the ritual speak of the trump administration reminds me of work too much. Not good work experiences, but BAD work experiences. Like the company where the CEO didn’t have a clue, and all the office rituals were in place to placate him. Sound familiar?
19
@Studioroom
For what it’s worth the Madd Adam series by Margaret Atwood, a fabulous read, is scarier than The Handmaid’s Tale. I highly recommend it.
11
From the Baby Boomers on down, we have lived in a country with unprecedented wealth, prosperity, safety, progress and freedom. Huge gains have been made for minorities, for women, for children, for the old and for persecuted groups like homosexuals.
No great calamities have occurred. No Civil War, no slavery, no World Wars, no Dustbowls, no famines, no Spanish Influenza, no polio, no Scarlet Fever, no fascism, no communism.
Might it be that people who have only known plenty have a greater penchant for fear than those who have really lived through tough times? Maybe we don't know what bad really is because we haven't experienced it?
We are no better off allowing ourselves to be carried away by the phantoms fears pushed by those on the left than we are by those pushed by Trump and other on the right.
We need to clearly see our country and the world as it is, not as we fear. We need to think clearly and logically and act and set policies based in reality, not run away fantasies and fears.
18
@Chris
'No great calamities have occurred. No Civil War, no slavery, no World Wars, no Dustbowls, no famines, no Spanish Influenza, no polio, no Scarlet Fever, no fascism, no communism... We need to clearly see our country and the world as it is...'
I beg to differ. Tell that to the Bahamians, or those farmers flooded out by unprecedented floods in the heartland, or increasing numbers of Central American migrants suffering from climate change. Tell that to the countless Yemenis being bombed and starved by our 'friends,' the Saudis, or the Syrians being killed or displaced with massive help by Trump's friend, Putin. Tell it to Puerto Ricans after hurricane Maria or the people of greater Houston after Harvey. And what about an opioid epidemic, or stalled economic progress for the middle and working classes, many of whom couldn't manage an unexpected $400 bill. Or a broken and haphazard medical system that's provides too little while costing way too much. And what about women who face relentless assaults on their bodily integrity and freedom of choice. Or minorities who are being systematically disenfranchised by a greedy minority out for political power. Or the majority of Americans who are appalled by a criminally unfit president who defies congressional oversight and is also a national embarrassment, not to mention a menace to democracy and the planet.
No, things are not ok, and there's plenty to worry about if we remain on the current path.
13
@Michael I was speaking about the United States, not the entire world. Still, the world as a whole has experienced unprecedented progress in health, wealth, freedoms and safety. Everything is relative and relatively speaking this is the best of times.
The chart below can speak to deaths in wars since 1900.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/11/08/which-countries-are-most-likely-to-fight-wars
3
@Chris
Safety and wealth for whom?
There is not one square inch in the U.S. where all ages of females are safe from boys and men, particularly those who rape and play with guns.
There is not one region or state in the U.S. where females are economically even on par with males, particularly those with equivalent and better educations and skills set.
6
I've concluded that the dystopian appearance of current events is a manufactured product, a giant fraternity stunt run by an entity that has gained control of the media. But "fraternity" here means either men or women. It's impossible to tell whether it's being run by men, women or some combination thereof, no matter how many clues are dropped into this newspaper through its headlines and photos. Assuming the truth of the notion itself (and here your Conspiracy Theory Immunity Response may be kicking in), I think its beginnings can be traced back to the early 20th century in the curious nexus of the Christian Science Church, Mark Twain and his infatuation with Joan of Arc. This would weight it heavily toward being of feminist origin.
2
Imagine if there was a video of Trump and some of his cabinet members at the US-Mexico border using night-vision glasses and sniper rifles to shot those attempting to cross the border.
Most of his supporters would applaud such murder. Some would not vote in 2020.
Such is America.
17
We have a president and GOP that do not care about
facts, science, law or the truth
Lying has been official GOP policy for years. Trump
is just the latest itieration
Truth will only prevail in Fiction
Voting out Trump will restore Truth
22
@bill b
The conservative movement in America doesn't care about the truth. It only cares about its ideology and gaining political, economic and social power.
The fact that Trump is their leader and 80% of Evangelical Christians support him shows they are willing to do anything to achieve their goals.
4
Recently, a Facebook feed featured a Black woman lying on a blanket alone in a jail cell. "Woman gives birth alone in jail cell" was the headline. I've dismissed it as fake, but there is always the possibility that that is true, given the way our prisons are run. The fake news is destroying our faith in the real news and that may be even more destructive than madeup stories. Facebook should have the same responsibility as a newspaper to curate what is allowed to be posted. That means more curators hired at Facebook.
7
@annabellina It *is* true, it happened in Colorado, and she has filed a lawsuit. I agree social media companies have a much greater responsibility than they're taking; however, it is also our responsibility to seek out reputable sources if we want to confirm the veracity of the stories we encounter. It's not enough to "dismiss it as fake," not without checking.
13
@annabellina
Yes, I read that same story - which has been carried in virtually every major media outlet in the US. Sadly, it appears to be true. Were it not, I suspect it would have been exposed by now given all the attention. But that you bring this story up bears direct relevance to Ms. Goldberg's column. It seems clear that, as corollary, in any state coming under the rein of creeping autocracy one of the first places you begin to see outrageous abuse manifest is in the prison system itself. The incarcerated are most vulnerable to the whims of the state. And there have been a lot of jaw dropping stories of abuse and negligence coming out of the US prison system in recent years.
9
@annabellina, you've dismissed it as fake based on what? The coverage of this story in the NYT, Washington Post, Guardian, CBC, USA Today, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox?
The fact that the Denver Sheriff's Department changed its policies afterwards "to make sure nothing like this happens again"? Or is that fake news too?
9
Thank you Michelle Goldberg for your always keen insights and ability to illuminate truth to your readers. You are always a joy to read, no matter how dismaying the topic and how cynical or passive we’ve become in this time of fascism. Any time you write in the Times or appear on TV is when I feel hopeful that there’s still people with minds and souls left in America.
16
The "environmental catastrophe" in the novel caused a huge infertility loss (like 90%). That's the conceit of the story, isn't it? Like religious mania during Black Plague. Total catastrophe, post-apocalyptic dystopia that leads to desperate sicko government to preserve humans.
You write, "You could argue that all this is melodrama." I think that's an understatement. It's usually the liberal agenda to silence all opinions that are not liberal. You're the ones who want to force the rest of us to embrace every sexual oddity (and it's not enough if we love people but disagree). You're much more of a danger than the fundamentalists. They just want babies to be safe. (And despite the hysteria, even if there were no abortion, you'd all be fine. You could adopt babies away.) So yes, when Atwood is hailed as some prophetic figure, you've officially gotten it all backwards.
7
To my knowledge, there is no political movement is afoot to deprive women of their equality under the law. Women being subjugated under a tyrannical theocracy is about as likely as zombies coming to eat our brains. It is beyond me why so many should feel that feminist exploitation literature is visionary.
7
@George
Are any of the functions inside of YOUR body under threat of being regulated by the State?
Women feel the same way about our bodies as men. What happens inside our bodies is our business, just like what happens inside your body is your business.
But we live in a country where others think our bodies are THEIR business and they are eager to pass laws to prove their point.
15
@George, Jeffrey Epstein had
created his own little republic of Gilead where women had become
his slave. Ms. Maxwell was aunt
Lydia enforcing the recruitment
and slavery. #METOO has exposed
many men in power exploiting
women. Equality of women now
is a pipe dream. It may happen
if the feminists continue their campaign.
3
Of course such political movements exist. In Iran women cannot attend sporting events, and removing the hijab can result in 24 years in prison; in Saudi Arabia until last year women were forbidden to drive; in Pakistan women are punished for being raped. But the common denominator here is not Atwood’s authoritarian Christianity...
3
The main reason I don't want to be led by the Left and certainly not anyone a Michelle Goldberg supports is because of their profound sense of hysterical defeatism in the face of one or two elections.
They are even worse than the Fox aficionados during Obama's two terms. For eight years, Fox spewed out the same sort of vitriol against Obama that the Establishment press is now spewing against Trump. My in-laws would sit and watch Fox all day and get so wound up that their hate tinged every aspect of their life.
I once said to a neighbor: "I can understand why people don't like Obama but I can't understand why they hate him so much." Big mistake on my part - His head exploded and I was subjected to rant of extreme verbal diarrhea such that I had to make a run for it... Sort of like the columnists from this paper.
To the commenters and readers: THE WORLD HAS NOT ENDED! BE CALM!! The pendulum will swing back your way eventually. Democracy WILL take place every two years - Just like it has since 1789.
In the meantime, be happy for me in particular. I finally have a President who is working to kneecap China and all her environmental/human rights/mercantile excesses. I've been waiting for this since Clinton opened the door to their menace in 2000. Trust me, the world will be better off.
You have to look for the good.
8
@Arthur Taylor I don't trust you, and I'm not happy for you. This isn't about the "pendulum swinging" back the short distance between mainstream Republicans and Democrats, but about a president who has told literally thousands of lies, is so thin-skinned he gave us "Sharpie-gate," feels his primary task is to stoke the ire that elected him, his only responsibility to the people who voted for him, and who almost every day brays out aggressive, lunatic nonsense on twitter, exhausting and draining us all without actually doing any of the work of governing.
9
@Arthur Taylor
“I finally have a President who is working to kneecap China and all her environmental/human rights/mercantile excesses”....this comment borders on comedy.....Your Trump is chaotically destroying our(ie: USA) environment,human rights and business gains. Unless you agree that Failure Trumps edicts to destroy legislation on clean water, mine forests , separate families and throw legit asylum seekers into detention centers without due process , not to forget the ill advised tax changes that have affected small businesses here.....if you agree with these policies then you are aligned with Your President as a a first class hypocrite as far as dealing with China.
8
@Arthur Taylor You pat yourself on the shoulder for not jumping on the bandwagon or getting too wound up by any particular piece of propaganda when it comes to politics, but you have bought totally and completely into the US-created narrative that China is the “enemy.” Did you know that the US is the only country that outpaces China in terms of carbon emissions? I find it incredibly ironic, also, that you refer to China’s “human rights” excesses when at this very moment, our president is sanctioning the detainment of migrants at the border.
1
I never read Atwood, but I agree with the op ed. But what is epistemological nihilism please?
5
"Epistemological:" How we know what we know. "Nihilism:" dismissal of any explanation or sense. She's referring to the inability or unwillingness to care about whether what we're seeing is true or not.
8
The truth doesn't set you free, it just makes you aware of the inherent suffering built into life, suffering that our species works hard to erase in some ways, but via anthropogenic mass extinction and fascism is relentlessly increasing.
The Handmaid's Tale prophesied the truth about gestation slavery advocates such as the Trump/Pence cult, a cult rooted in sky-father monotheistic delusions, and a bizarre worship of fetuses, with no respect for adult females.
These sick cults embrace the vertical power hierarchy of the strongest apex predators acquiring power, and using it ruthlessly.
The war against women's reproductive freedoms, like the war against Nature, is rooted in dominance, brutality, and violence.
Unless the prey learn to effectively fight back against the predators, the truth is merely an alarm bell that troubles us as we watch the worst people take over the world.
17
@Steve Davies
Our “fight back “is to vote these “predators” out of office overwhelmingly.
3
Most of us who read these pages are not very good at imagining how a society can emerge from religious fascism.
Earlier today, my doorbell was rung by two women from a well-known cult. Argument would have been pointless. I refused their handouts and closed the door on them.
What happens when you can’t close the door? There are already quite a few people in our society who can’t “close the door” in a figurative sense, but society’s thought leaders are not amongst them.
16
Margaret Atwood is a fine writer. It is sad, embarrassing and morally nauseating to see American and British women, the most privileged in the world, adopting the message in these futuristic novels as if it actually applied to them. They would do better to help the millions of women worldwide who really are oppressed. So much easier to dress up and whine ...
10
@Jenny Falloon - I see — so every American and British woman is privileged - not abused, raped, impregnated against their will or forced to live subservient to an authoritarian male? We “whine’ since we are not “Really” oppressed? The issue is not degree or type of oppression but how women worldwide can band together to oppose all of it. So much easier, Sister @Jennie Falloon, to suggest we help but omit any specific suggestion as to how.
7
@Jenny Falloon
This is a bit of a weird comment. The millions of women worldwide who are "really oppressed" are also--many of them--working on reducing their own oppression.
How are average American and British women supposed to help them from afar, exactly? Rush in and protect women in local communities? How far do you think they would get, doing that, not knowing the culture or what will actually help? Everyone has to work mostly where they are.
"Dress up and whine"???? Dystopian stories get written, as Michelle points out, to figure out where societies might be going and to prevent the problem of the gradually heating bathtub, where you are cooked before you realize it. We ARE in a very problematic period. The Supreme Court has been stacked by Trump and Mitch McConnell and will be handing down out-of-step with the population decisions for YEARS.
I dunno Jenny. If you are "sad, embarrassed, and morally nauseated" by women worried about and trying to prevent the complete corruption of humanitarian possibilities in ANY AND EVERY society, I just can't quite get what you are actually up to in your thinking.
I am much more interested in AOC's work and commentary...
She is calling this stuff out daily, because it needs to be done. So you don't like her work?
7
@Jenny Falloon
This is a false dichotomy. Why is it morally nauseating to want to want to address what is happening here? If we don't, it will just be a matter of time until we won't be able to help anyone else either. And no one is saying that we shouldn't also do whatever we can to help oppressed women in other parts of the world.
7
Our voting system has been compromised and the electoral college is an affront .
Nothing will change for voting citizens. If you are not producing about 80000 of income for a family or single parent than nothing will change other than loss of....,
Social security , Medicare , Medicaid.
In order to receive food ..... no stamps and regressive taxation on foods the poor must buy.
Rentals are exorbitant and landlords are absent. Corporations own all aggregate housing in our country and get federal welfare thru HUD which they use incompetently and not for assistance in chapter 8 housing units.
We are rolling in a dystopian muck all over ourselves.
It is exactly what the elites want. In 40 years there will be less humans due to their current set up for those they control.
US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5
It's a world in which it's hard to distinguish dystopian fiction from reality. In which you can actually think that the despicable President Frank Underwood from House of Cards would be preferable to the clown who currently holds the office.
1
The problem here is Michelle Goldberg's assumption, typical of her writing, that she is on the side of the angels and everyone else is a devil. What if it turns out the other way around? The bad guys in the Handmaid's tale don't think they're bad guys, either.
4
@Michael Livingston’s
hmmm. What if her assumption is correct?
4
In Orwell’s “1984,” Winston Smith is tortured into believing
2 + 2 = 5.
This is nothing compared to what Trump supporters have been led into believing about their man.
13
@A. Stanton
BEST. COMMENT. EVER.
3
I wonder what it must have been like for German workers to "process" thousands of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau, taking their corpses from the gas chambers to the ovens and then sweeping the ovens clear of what little remained after they were fired up. When they completed their shifts at the "plant", why didn't they just walk away?
Today our Border Patrol agents and the contractors who manage the detention centers continue to do very similar work, imposing conditions on others they would never accept for themselves or their family. Why don't they just walk away?
Is the human psyche so fragile it can be depended upon to break under the assault of endless predation upon others? I fear this to be the case. We have lost the ability to be shocked by this administration as corruption has just become "how things are done here" and societal guardrails have been squashed by this juggernaut. And similar to the first descriptions of a juggernaut in the 13th century, a succession of characters has jostled for the privilege of being sacrificed to the wheels of this chariot today from Cohen to Flynn to Manafort and now Bolton.
Testaments, like the Handmaid's Tale before it is a work of fiction. It is time for us to close the chapter on our all too real dystopia.
10
@Douglas McNeill
Some Border Patrol agents ARE just walking away. Read about this in today's paper, too.
2
There's a theme threaded in this mornings Times between this and Ms. Dowds column and the ultimate irony and reality is the writers really don't get it. It's actually the ultimate expression of the tragic comedy. Try this as an exercise. Take a snap shot of the Trump Presidency and let it longer their for a minute. Now envision the explosion of social media and what that means. Then put that in it's own bubble and let it longer. Now consider the Bush presidency starting with 9/11. Think long and hard about Saudi Arabia and then picture yourself in a car in traffic. Look around, what so you see? Then consider low interest rates, a boom in housing and Greenspan thinking in toungues. Put that all aside in a bubble. Now think about the collapse of 2008. How did it impact you? Do you know what happened? If you said poor people getting in over their heads, WRONG! Put all of that in its own bubble and then visualize the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Tea Party, and Arab Spring Movement and put that in it's own bubble. Now for the crescendo. Imagine Wall Street bailouts and dark money political machinations. Picture the Koch brothers, Mercers, Adelson, and then Putin. Envision massive migration from Syria and Central America and Khashoggi and bone saws. Now have them all from together in your head. See the truth yet? It's been in front of your eyes the whole time.
6
A major reason we won’t see a physical uprising here is that the police and military slavishly work for the establishment. Our legal system has a serious case of Little Boy Blew. They need the money.
6
More to the point in gun soaked America is The Lottery where innocents are chosen by chance to be killed every year. That short dystopian story describes our America today. School children once heard English teachers describe it as a sort of sick fantasy.. Not anymore.
6
Dissent is NOT disloyal.
Call out the lies, the liars and CONTINUE TO DO SO.
And VOTE 2020.
9
The new civilization will need two kinds of women. The women used as sexual toys and those who will be guarded to become the authentic reproducers of the few. Literature?
3
Ms. Goldberg has nailed it, America is well on its way to becoming a dystopia like the ones in “A Handmaid’s Tale” or “1984”. O tempora, o mores.
BTW, shouldn’t we warn asylum seekers from Central America that the US under Trump is worse than the countries they’re fleeing?
2
Our present Trump predicament may be stranger than fiction, but he reality of Trump, the perversion of everything we have held dear, is dangerous, ignorant and potentially lethal to not only our country but world sanity and order. Dystopian tales have been with us for centuries, but did any of us ever believe that we would be living one?
5
"Images of scantily clad women..often as lurid and cacophonous as a casino,,," as cited in "Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media..." Well, I have been trying to stop Google ads that pop up as I read the New York Times that are inappropriate and are sexist images of scantily clad women, to no avail. Google has a long checklist that somehow claims that my age and tastes as exhibited through my online searches and purchases means I have to see these embarrassing images with no attempt for the Times or Google to get rid of them in spite of my x-ing them and complaining. My age is 72 and all I did was buy the most modest bathing suit online that I could find. How does that justify these constant visual insults?
4
You nailed it with "Everybody Knows", Ms. Goldberg. Unfortunately, even though they represent the majority, only one group of Americans want something to do done about the big lies that scaffold this execrable president and his captive party's rotten policies. Those who populate the other group either believe the lies or excuse them to maintain the power to impose their authoritarian desires on the majority by any means necessary.
4
Not Everyone Knows some of us still believe in Cohen's Anthem.
3
The biggest dystopian nightmare and existential threat are those among us who don't vote in the midterms and are even too disengaged to vote during the presidential cycle.
You know who you are and you forfeit your opportunity to bellyache.
3
If you want dystopia neat on the rocks, try John Wyndham's 'The Day Of The Triffids' (heavily mined by many horror films including '28 Days Later) and see how the emerging fascist military leadership decided to apportion and control breeding. Also, the incomparable Richard Mathison novel 'I Am Legend,' (nothing like the apalling films loosely using it as a source) in which a cadre of less-afflicted victims of a worldwide vampire plague end up exterminating and overthrowing the last unafflicted man alive — much like the pallid bloodsuckers presently doing much the same from the White House.
2
Something that I don't think we've come to terms with is that it always was at least this bad in the past, but before the internet it was hard for the awfulness in human beings to be expressed so widely and effectively in the immediate term. It would be perfectly possible to write a world history in which the main theme was the development of more and more effective means for people to be cruel to each other.
3
Everyone speculating from their various perspectives as to the meaning of Atwood's novel, can save their breath because the author was recently interviewed and once again, told us bluntly what her work was about.
It's a warning about the creeping influence of RELIGION, and in our case, Christian religions, in our official halls of power, despite the First Amendment to the Constitution that sets up our nation as a 100% secular country.
We need to snap our attention back to what Atwood's story warns us of -- the reality is way more scary than her fiction because it's real and happening now.
42
@Entera I agree. The insidiousness and yet constant invasion of religion into our secular government is a danger which we do not appreciate. Fundamentalists backing Trump are orthodox believers in a certain way of life and this makes compromise with regard to legislation nearly impossible. Furthermore, with their control of the courts and the Republican Party, they can impose upon us of which the majority of us do not accept. They have created a myth that the founders of our government and the writers of the Constitution we're nothing more than Christians channeling the Bible. This is hogwash. The constitutional convention decided against having daily prayer and the Constitution they produced reflected this attitude. God is not mentioned in it and it specifically prohibits religious test for political office. Madison, Jefferson, Jay, and many others were men of the Enlightenment they knew more about the ancient history of Greece and Rome then they did of the Bible. It was in fact the political philosophers from these great civilizations who were to influence them more than Moses.
20
No mention of the United States Constitution in Ms. Goldberg's column about The Handmaid's Tale and the other cultural references. And it is the United States Constitution that I am clinging to like a life raft as we navigate the stinking, dirty waters of the swamp where we currently find ourselves.
To me, the Constitution is the truth we must defend, protect, enforce. But it is difficult because as Ms. Goldberg says: "Truth is less suppressed than drowned out" by the noise emanating from the swamp. But freedom--like truth, like our Constitution-- is fundamental and will triumph. We Americans are watchfully waiting now to determine what course of action we need to take to ensure the survival of our United States Constitution.
14
@Wes Montgomery
Revolution.
And we liberals must prepare ourselves.
Because the evangelical patriarchy has infected and sickened nearly everything.
2
@Wes Montgomery, but in the end it's all about who gets to interpret the Constitution. Just take the 2nd amendment as Exhibit A.
2
“even if women have little power in Gilead, truth does.“
If truth and a craving for news are key in fighting totalitarian governments, then we’re in big trouble. Trump and Putin cry” fake news “
at every chance they get for good reason. Once truth is made relative, news can be called fake. Mainstream news is already discounted by a majority of our people right now. The descent into a post truth society seems to be upon us.
7
It's hard not to be embarrassed for people who bring up science fiction as a reflection of who we truly are. I watched Star Trek when a was a kid and later. I didn't have cable, so what to do at midnight. Part of it's theme was to be current. Some times it could do it well but when people would bring up the show they were normally dismissed.
Star Trek was replaced by the mind numbing and DUMB Star Wars. Not much there except are hero's are good and the other guys are bad. I stopped reading comic books when I was twelve but find myself seeing the Marvel movies. They're treatment of ecofascism was (An evil character killing half the people in the universe because of it's limited resources) relevant but still a comic book.
I still don't get cable and never read Handmaidens Tale's but I seems the woman who celebrate it believe that a replacement of the patriarchy with a matriarchy is without any real thought a great idea. So I'll pass. Don't get me wrong there's great science fiction that deserves respect but when feminism has deteriorated to a shout by entitleded woman that you're not in my league why should I bother.
May the Force be with you.
1
@JoeG, not a matriarchy. Just equality. Equality in practice, not just in theory. And not as in treating women exactly like men either because that isn't true equality.
Not everyone believes in extremes.
9
Which part of Atwood's ending (and those of similar fictions) do you find utopian? That a corrupt regime has fallen, or that the "People" have risen against it?
Guess what, Michelle: the "People" have risen against a corrupt regime already, or how would Trump have been elected? The belief (on your part and mine) that the "People" have been deeply misled and that the cure is worse than the disease, has nothing to with the problem, and everything to do with the solution.
The dystopia in America starts with the fact that we are a functionally illiterate society. By that I mean that large percentage of citizens, even the college educated, do not bother to read for the sake of improving their minds and knowing their world, as well as learning about the big, wide world beyond the borders of their particular immediate milieu. This is the real knowledge gap that we are facing, and it has already cost us drastically, in terms of defense of our constitution and our values from the malignant enemy within.
22
A small point to make in this context, but a valuable one: "...taking power despite the wishes of the majority of the population..." is a little misleading.
Out of more than 128,800,000 votes counted (Dem&Rep), the "majority" was less than three million, just over 2%.
2
This does remind me of the taking down of Romney when a waiter recorded his speech at a fundraiser where he talked about "the 47 % of people . . .who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it." That really shocked many people in the middle and all liberals. It helped him lose the race.
8
From her lofty perch in a fancy Toronto neighborhood she and her self-righteous Canadian elite love to inveigh against the USA. I don't understand why people like her - her dystopian novels are convoluted, barely readable, and to the extent that you can call it such make for poor science fiction. I can give her a new idea - she can train her sharp pen next on her own country, its poor treatment of the First Nations, its reflexive and often unseemly nationalism, and its own brand of greedy, natural resource-based petro-capitalism.
5
@Tom
Fair enough, but her work is nonetheless very relevant in the U.S.
2
Is life imitating art?
Are the dark forces in human nature - the cruelty, absolutism and authoritarianism - there for writers and political leaders alike to draw from?
Do authors like Margaret Atwood have uncanny prescience for society?
Ultimately, the mysteries are secondary to what we do know. The reactionary, misogynistic, unjust agenda of Trump and other Republicans must be stopped. We need to take back the White House, the Senate and control of the Supreme Court. We won’t have the luxury of re-writes.
7
"Truth" has been in free-fall for quite awhile. The current administration has been wildly adept at the trapeze act of ignoring it completely while whirling through the air and dazzling those who prefer spectacle to analysis, reason, or anything approaching fact.
What staggers me is that somehow, the millions of us who are shocked and enraged by the circus act have been unable to stop the kind of outrage of anti-abortion laws passed in Alabama and other states, or the lack of legislation to deal with gun massacres on the other hand. Why have we not been able to rouse Republicans and Mitch McConnell and white male Christian state legislators from their privileged positions of power?
Voting is one legitimate answer. But we have seen that subverted, and will again. I fear we are headed toward dystopia more quickly than to any utopia, ballot box or not. We are being rendered, each of us, handmaids by those who think they have a divine right to tell others how to live, what to think, and what to believe. That's very, very scary.
12
The most dangerous part of the destruction of our country is the Republican Supreme Court. The Court where five justices, firmly dedicated to protecting wealthy white men and corporate America, overturn decades of legal precedent, authorise Republican gerrymandering, authorise seizure of government funds which congress has withheld from spending for a useless wall, and blithely authorize discrimination against Muslims, putting children and their parents in cages and, now, shutting the door on legal immigration. The Republican five are overturning the lower courts without even holding hearings or issuing decisions, and at least in one case, without even giving the other four justices the ability to be included in the decision. This is only the beginning, soon all decisions will be made only by the Republican five. This is truly the destruction of our country. The only way to fix this may be to fundamentally change the Court itself. A very steep hill to climb.
21
Ms. Goldberg,
From the 4.54 billion year sample space of evolution on Earth:
Fundamental, selected relationship code, conserved across species:
Fitness is > Truth.
From Donald Hoffman, cognitive scientist, UC-Irvine:
"Fitness and truth are utterly different things."
“Evolution is quite clear, it’s fitness and not truth that gives you the points you need to win in the evolutionary game.”
"Organisms that see the truth go extinct when they compete against organisms that don't see any of the truth at all ... and are just tuned to the fitness function."
"Perception is not about seeing truth; it's about having kids."
2
Margaret Atwood's futuristic books are so compelling because she only includes details and plots that are firmly rooted in history or are based on current scientific trends (such as genetic engineering). I am glad she sounds an optimistic note in "The Testaments" but history proves that many decades of misery can be experienced before a totalitarian regime falls. It is hard not to think that we are ignoring Offred's warnings about slowly boiling alive in a bathtub. Buffoons like Trump and Johnson eroding democratic norms every day, the temperature is rising in the water, but so many people are distracted or misinformed they don't feel it.
As another wise Canadian woman once wrote: "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."
15
I agree with and share Ms.Goldbergs frustration and sense of despair, however, I firmly believe that reality has a way of asserting itself. It may take a while and the 40% will likely not admit that they were wrong for years, but, this is the United States of America, and not a dystopian novel. Eventually, facts and reason will return to the public arena (assuming the jerk doesn't get us all killed in the meantime)
5
@Larry From Motown
big assumption...
1
Very melancholy column. It made me remember the lines of an Auden poem: “That girls were raped, that two boys knife a third, were axioms to him, who never heard, of any world where promises were kept. Or one could weep because another wept.” This will be how I remember Trump.
9
“Truth is less suppressed than drowned out.” Absolutely correct. What is the remedy?
9
The most dangerous part of the destruction of our country is the Republican Supreme Court. The Court where five justices, firmly dedicated to protecting wealthy white men and corporate America, overturn decades of legal precedent, authorise Republican gerrymandering, authorise seizure of government funds which congress has withheld from spending for a useless wall, and blithely authorize discrimination against Muslims, putting children and their parents in cages and, now, shutting the door on legal immigration. The Republican five are overturning the lower courts without even holding hearings or issuing decisions, and at least in one case, without even giving the other four justices the ability to be included in the decision. This is only the beginning, soon all decisions will be made only by the Republican five. This is truly the destruction of our country. The only way to fix this may be to fundamentally change the Court itself. A very steep hill to climb.
6
What is tragic is a generation of elites seemingly incapable of defending American values and institutions.
While The Handmaid's Tale is very disturbing, to really understand how Trump got elected, go back and read Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind", a non-fiction best-seller published around the same time, describing the failures of American higher education.
6
Some forty percent of our nation, mostly white males, is determined to make America a racist Republic of Gilead. And they're well on their way. Putting Trump aside, his voters now have five far right votes on the Supreme Court, ready to approve criminalizing abortion, even when the mother's life is at stake. And the decisions of these five men will affect not only our lives, but our grandchildren's lives. This is where we are, folks. Here. Now.
With these voters, Trump could easily win re-election. Three years on, in this train wreck of a presidency, his voters are still in lockstep with him. He has delivered on the only things his base wanted from him - bigotry, misogyny and hatred. Targeting women. Insulting them. Bragging about rape. These words are oxygen to Trump voters.
And they love that they may now use their "religion" as a blunt force instrument against the rest of us. Atwood's description of a sacrament as an vehicle to legalize rape is instructive. It is clear that Trump voters need only create some "religious freedom" fiction out of whole cloth, to do serious harm to the rest of us.
Remember, Trump is a reflection of his voters. He's promised them an America where those of us who are women or minorities must accept the scraps of second-class citizenship. That we will always be under the white man's boot. And this is exactly what they want. This is all they've ever wanted.
12
Halfway through this piece, michelle Goldberg admits her piece may sound “melodramatic”, and she’s right that her viewpoint stirs up apocalyptic excitement and dread in her preferred audience. Gilead is led by Christian fundamentalists and Trump was supported by Christian believers in the millions. But The two events equate only in a naive literary way. Goldberg equates opposition to abortion as a sign of fundamentalist authoritarianism, but I know many good Protestants and Catholics who oppose it on civilized grounds. If Trump supporters lean toward fascism, then half our country are fascists. If Trump is acquiring unlimited power, there is no sign of it in the fierce opposition he receives in the press, from Democrats, from future election he may not win. But Goldberg prefers melodrama and the stealthiness of the evil all around us.
5
Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" is a stark reality check. ("Everybody knows the dice are loaded..." ) But his song, "The Future" is most prescient: "I've seen the future, brother. It is murder."
Killing a leader's adversaries was commonplace in 1930's Germany. It is happening in many parts of the world today, and it will happen in the United States in our lifetime.
6
Perhaps I am an outlier but I am thoroughly tired of dystopias produced by cosseted celebrity writers. What we need are utopias to tell us how we might do better rather than self-indulgent wallowing in the worst of all imaginary worlds to come.
3
I think Phillip Roth's 2004 novel "The Plot Against America" in its imagining a Lindberg-like figure winning the 1940 election is more prescient in anticipating the Trump administration's propagandistic distortion of language and political discourse..
2
The bottom and most squalid, for me, were the images of Abu Ghraib , torture being okay, warrantless wiretaps, black ops torture sites, and the destruction of Iraq- which led to the draconian Homeland Security and police state we live in now.. To me, Cheney was the darkest evil. Trump is morally degraded and continuing the destruction of our functioning government that began with Reagan in 1980. But the table had been set for him for decades.
12
Holy Cow, Michelle! You are always accurate and powerful but this essay is eloquent, erudite, articulate and energized in a way that one rarely sees in any columnist. Ms. Dowd could take a page from you, as she tends to complain more than analyze.
The issue is: how do we rest information from FOX, SINCLAIR, the Wall Street Journal and the likes of Russ Limbaugh?
The people who get their information exclusively from FOX or the internet (and there are millions of them) are being told daily the truth is a lie and lies are true. With this propaganda, little can be done to quiet the loudly negative noise.
That we are no longer a country of laws is terrifying. Power, greed and rigid ideology rule. If the DOJ is corrupt, what is to be done? When did allowing people in power (McConnell, Miller and Mnuchin, among others) to operate with impunity become a welcome thing?
The path of electing DJT again is thickly dark yet we may indeed be heading there if Joe Biden wins. He thinks he can "reach across the aisle" in his old boy way, except the old boys of the GOP will never respond. Biden was close to a black man with "socialist ideas" and that's a crime to many of them.
I would love a utopian fantasy. Elizabeth Warren is our best hope. Sadly, the very people who should be lining up behind her, wouldn't understand your column. (Too many big words and abstract concepts.) Without them she will lose and, even if Biden wins, we will daily see more of a "Handmaid's Tale". Chilling!
2
"Salvific" is seriously a word? My spell-check underlines it in red and suggests 'sacrificial.'
Since 'balm' could be a synonym for 'salve' - and the Bible (or is it just an old church song?) says, "There is a balm in Gilead" - then perhaps 'balmific' is a word, along with 'ointmentific,' or perhaps 'ointmific.'
My old Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary allows 'salved' and 'salving,' and no 'salvific.' But Google finds the expected definition, 'leading to salvation,' so perhaps I need a newer dictionary.
Thank you for a new word, even if it's unlikely to be playable in Scrabble.
I guess those bell-ringers during the holidays are the Salvific Army. Praise be!
5
A key difference between the Handsmaid's Tale and now is that while the former was an unmovable and overwhelming force, but what we have teeters, is irresolute, is self-serving, is weak and will either implode due to its festering internal rot or will topple at the next election. Indicative of the end is that Republicans are leaving the Congress in droves, that this president cannot hold on to his corrupt, incompetent and ideological helpers, that even the folks he's out to help - farmers and coal workers - are doing poorly, and that an increasing number of Americans have had enough of his continuous lies, self-serving behavior and cruelty.
4
Excellent piece, Ms Goldberg. Your reference to Leonard Cohen zt”l was most apropos. I also think we should be reading WB Yeats as well.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
2
If Gilead comes to America, by way of our 18th Century Electoral College, our preposterous rural Senate, our Trump Supreme Court, our lower federal courts now richly seeded with religious whack jobs, that will be in large part because not enough women cared enough about politics. Unfair? Quick now: How many women do we know who have actually gone to Seneca Falls? Even here in the Northeast? Have many have taken their daughters? How many know why Seneca Falls is as fundamental to American liberty as Philadelphia was in 1776? Moving to the 20th century, how many know about Margaret Sanger, and the long, hard legal and medical fights for elementary reproductive control? How many know what the death rates were in childbirth prior to the 20th century? Want to see lots of women’s eyes glaze over at dinner parties? Try bringing up tough political topics such as the environment. Much more likely to talk about travel and children. Yes, the women who contribute to these Times comments care passionately about public events. Yes many millions do. But not nearly enough. Certainly not in 2016.
5
While fictional Christian fundamentalists are easy targets for progressive hatred, when progressive fundamentalists take over the federal government, the joking about the hysterical green new deal and similar comedies will end with a gray silence enforced from D.C.
The biggest shame about an extended progressive/socialist control of our country is that the one place on the planet where any poor worker could come here and peacefully rise to the economic and social top would be over, and the glorious experiment in personal freedom begun in the 1780's would end.
4
I am in awe of your ability to tell us who, what and where we're at, and not terrify us at the same time. You always remain hopeful. I think that is the point of someone like you. The world does move on and one day, this too shall pass. Of course, much ugliness will pass before this blasphemous regime does but you point that out without getting us to panic. Thank you!
1
Another masterpiece of analysis and writing by the brilliant Michelle Goldberg. Praise be.
3
Michelle Goldberg and readers, I name my sources up front to help you realize this is in the end a serious comment on Ms. Golberg's fine column:
1) BBC World Radio - Class of 99 members who took guidance from the Sunscreen Song are interviewed on The Documentary 09/15
2) Ali Smith review of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
1) Each 99 member tells us that he or she did not then find guidance from such as the Handmaid's Tale but rather from the Sunshine Song, and now in 2019, they still do. Does this tell us something about those who will vote in 2020?
2) Smith writes: (Gilead) "A book about the damaged heart of America, it is part vibrant and part timeworn, a slow burn of a read with its 'crepuscular' narrator, its repetitions, its careful languidity.
"In Gilead, Robinson is addressing the plight of serious people with a calm-eyed reminder of the liberal philosophical and religious traditions of a nation whose small towns "were once the bold ramparts meant to shelter peace"
"John Ames, a preacher in his mid-70s is writing letters to his only child, now aged six, so that when the boy reaches an adulthood his father won't see, he'll at least have this posthumous one-sided conversation: 'While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been.'"
Should we be writing such letters, believing that after 2020 the damaged heart of America will be revived?
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
2
My mother, and my female friend from Butte, Montana, are of eastern European descent. The women from that area of the world are warriors. Trump's wife Melania is from Slovenia and I can see the warrior in her eyes and in her signaling. Three years ago I cast Melania in the role of Charlotte Corday in the movie version of the painting "The Death of Marat." Ever since Trump was elected I have been singing two songs, Simon & Garfunkel's "Richard Cory" and Leonard Cohen's "Everybody knows..."
"Everybody knows that the boat is leaking,
Everybody knows that the captain lied,
Everybody's got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died..."
2
Dystopia is here, now: stating truth, for example, that the definition of “woman” is “adult human female”, is broadly condemned as bigoted hate speech, with the result that women’s rights, safe spaces and sports are being unraveled right before our eyes.
1
Before Atwood there was Robert Heinlein and his novella "If this goes on...", part of his Future collection "Revolt in 2100" about the US being taken over by religious fanatics.
I remember reading it in high school and thinking, nah this could never happen here.
4
It might be a symptom of her trade that she worries that truth has lost it's ability to stun. What's the point of the press if even when it's accurate and undeniable it's just ho hum. When i was homeless, aimless, just a smashed head on a few bones, I met a guy who had had 13 heart attacks. He'd been an environmental engineer and then his health problems ruined his career and he was out on the street. he'd probably died a few times, been revived. It was within our first and only meeting that he told me about his heart attacks. i had a cast on my broken arm having my own trouble with getting an honest assessment of the break. About the thirteen heart attacks all i could do was laugh. Later on, in the process of telling others about him some of the awfulness sunk in. But when the truth is horror what can you do? I mean a white supremacist was a key advisor to the president. Maybe she's asking where is the outrage. The outrage is probably late for work. Most people are docile. I mean we all willingly go into an office and register our vehicles, give a bunch of information to the govenrment which is totally against our own interests and freedom but it's routine. The only complaint people have is the line is long.
2
And to find out recently that top tier scientists at MIT, and Harvard ( ITO, Lloyd, Church etc.) and others in the scientific community were willing to overlook Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes against young girls and women and continued to visit him in pursuit of funding, even after his Florida conviction, tells women that the scientific community is no more immune to rank misogyny than Evangelicals, politicians, entertainment moguls or our current president.
7
Although I am no fan of Islam, aspects of Muslims' approach to female modesty actually make sense.
The male gaze is stripped of its potency when all it encounters is a fully clothed female form.
This custom may also influence--for the better--attitudes toward prostitution and sex trafficking.
So Atwood made a lot of money with a book that depicts a completely unrealistic (but politically correct) hellish future. Now she will make more money describing a righteous victory over the forces of oppression that she concocted earlier. That's a pretty neat trick, especially for someone with poor writing skills.
3
I love your writing, Michele, and I think your voice and Charles Blow's voice are essential among the major journalists of our day.
Yet I keep coming back to the fact that 86% of those identifying as Republicans back Trump. In many ways its astounding to me.
I'm an architect. A number of my developer clients are Trump supporters. My clients are kind to me, and some of them consider me more or less family at this point in my career. As far as I can tell their support of Trump lies with tax cuts and with a sense that Progressives over-react to everything, and that the liberal ethos is inherently overly emotional.
I don't even know where to start to convince them otherwise since I am fully in another economic class. Even if I was as wealthy as some of my clients, how could I convince them that Progressives won't take their money and give it to "others".
Among the less economically fortunate Republicans I am far more baffled. Family by family, these Republicans are probably not "bad" people per say.
They have been made to fear the "other", though, and to turn away from the suffering. When their churches essentially defend White Nationalism, then, indeed they have full cover, inclusive of their church's defense of the AK-47.
Climate change? These folks think its liberal over-reaction along with the fact that environmental degradation effects mostly those "other" people of color.
That's where we are folks. Fascism, by way of Trump, has come in, like a ghost.
7
@David Kesler Where ever would your clients get the idea that progressives overreact to everything?
1
The type of society we're living in may have been foreseen long before "A Handmaid's Tale", and even "1984", to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", written in 1931. This is the thesis behind the 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business", written by Neil Postman in 1985. This was all foreseen quite a long time ago, and the problem has only become worse.
For a quick, accessible version of the thesis of "Amusing Ourselves to Death", search for "stuart mcmillen huxley orwell".
8
When presidential election cycles occurred every 4 years and ran for 9 mos ending in Nov., Americans took seriously the question, 'Where do you want to live?' It was a healthy touchstone underscored by generations of trust that the day after that election, we could go about the business of reset and rebuild and refocus on our daily personal lives.
But now that paid media madness has turned this cycle into an almost 2 year process followed by the daily obsession with the President's every move and word as reality tv, Americans have lost the seriousness of the matter and grown cynical of its sincerity to even be real.
Sounds like Atwood also gets that truth always finds a way into the sunlight eventually. I'm not sure what that will look like in 2019 America, but I do rely on all of us to keep searching for it.
5
Isn't it the case that much of feminist social criticism relies on a positive outcome? I mean, what would it mean if women are reduced to their reproductive role under the strict domination of men, and although that can change, in the end, it never really changes?
2
Thank you, Michelle and NYTimes, after years of drifting in the print ocean, you have provided me with another star I can navigate by, as we cling to this raft in ever wilder seas...
4
In the eyes of many Americans, NYT columnists are part of an oppressive and exclusionary elite that exploits the people with the governments laws and regulations. Trump is the truth-telling revolutionary who wants to destroy the system so that we can create a better one. The Democrats are scrambling to preserve a corrupt and decadent state so that their educated and cultural elite can continue to determine the future of America, rather than surrender to the deplorables.
The Democrats are not leading a revolution; they are defending against one. Republicans, Reagan through Bush, talked about reforming the system, but mostly they just left the system in place. Trump truly wants to tear it down. The Democrats don't need a revolutionary; when Obama tried to make changes in 2009 that led to victory for Republicans. The Democrats need somebody who will improve the existing system so that government is trusted again. They need to rebuild a reputation for competence; the people don't trust them.
Democrats are not an oppressed minority under the thumb of a cruel leader. On average, they are richer, more educated, and have a brighter future than the average Republican. Stop pretending to be victims. Reform education for those not going to university; reduce health care costs without forcing people to give up their current insurance; make the civil service deliver more for less. Democrats are playing defense, not offence. Prove that our system can work, or lose it.
59
@Tom Meadowcroft
That isn't true. SOME Democrats are well off, many are not. Many of us are poor. It's true that we tend attract better educated people; that's because our ideas make sense and aren't a misinterpretation of the Bible.
As for health care, it might be impossible to greatly reduce costs without taking out the insurance company middlemen.
Americans need to get real. We can't be spending an absolute fortune every year making the rich richer.
157
@Tom Meadowcroft
I appreciate your thoughtful reply, and it is one reason I comment here- with remarks that often seem to go against the grain for many in this comment section. Unfortunately, Obama, while eloquent and a good family man, ran on “ hope and change” but bailed out Wall Street- not Main Street. Taking corporate money and appointing a cabinet from Wall Street, what else could be expected?Speaker Pelosi is against the Green New Deal, which she dismissed as “whatever”, against some form of healthcare for all. Such views will not convince the working and middle classes, let alone the poor, to vote for any candidate trusted- or not objected to - by corporations and the upper classes.
24
@Ellen
Rewind about ten years ago: when asked about the bailout of the banks, James Grant said "let them fail."
Now we have oceans of cash sloshing around, looking for safe harbour.
My Swiss friend recently sold his house. Now he has to pay the bank to keep his money.
6
The Handmaid’s Tale has a 5.4 reading level, which means its vocabulary is pegged at a fifth grade level. I read it as an adult. I thought it would have made a great picture book. Way overrated. Feminist fifth graders would probably disagree.
27
@michjas "Way overrated." I look forward to reading your critically acclaimed, deeply resonant novel.
72
@michjas
I taught "The Handmaid's Tale" regularly at the graduate level twenty years ago and all of my students--men and women--enjoyed the novel.
There is obviously someone on the Nobel Prize for Literature committee who shares your views, which is why Margaret Atwood has not yet won her long overdue Nobel.
They obviously have a problem with her feminism.
41
@michjas What an odd way to judge a book. The narrator is not the kind of person to use academic or poetic language, so the prose is straightforward.
That said, it would make an excellent "picture book" in the vein of Maus or Persepolis.
18
Those of us who do care about the truth need to join together and make our voice heard, repeatedly and firmly. We need to proceed under the rule of law, ignoring the efforts of would-be dictators to avoid consequences for their words and actions.
All I could think of when reading’ Ms. Goldberg’s excellent column was that sure, we have the truth about Trump out there. But let’s turn our lens of truth to every single Republican in Congress, particularly Mitch McConnell, and get those truths out there. Let’s start with a trip taken by Republicans to Russia over the 4th of July. What actually happened there? What was promised? Let’s keep going and find out what individual Republicans who wield power in this crazy time are actually doing with it, and what they are promising, and to who.
12
In the Handmaid's Tale, Christianity factors in largely and manifests in the most callous way that those of us who are say are, "run of the mill" Christians, were alarmed, but it started us thinking how and where we want to live if this were to happen to us.
We never really imagined this type of stringent behavior and the possibility that the mindset and policies of the fundamentalist point of view could take over. It is alarming, because for us, it was always in the mid-west, or the deep south, and to be honest, at times, laughable, and remote.
Well, here it is, the rise of the evangelical right in our politics, and in our faces. We need as many, Aunt Lydias as we an get (Republican Senators) and we as citizens need be asking ourselves the very serious question of, "And where you end up living is going to depend partly on what you do now.”
7
For a far more clear-viewed approach, see Allison Pearson on "The appalling vanity of Western feminists who think Margaret Atwood writes about them" in the Spectator, yesterday.
Neither the Handmaid's Tale nor 1984 bears more than a misleading glimmer of similarity to how we live today in the west. Both offer scenarios that overexcited catastrophists and professional outrage merchants peddle as an emotive mirror of the present.
No criticism of the authors here: that's their trade. But to think the Handmaid's Tale a fable of life today, in the west, where women and men alike are more free than they have ever been; or 1984 a parable of a society which is perhaps the least repressive in human history -- this is deeply bizarre.
When sober analysis is out to lunch, Trumps get elected.
12
@MikeThank you, Mike. That was well said.
When we call current conditions in the US a "dystopia", when we refer to anybody to the right of us as "fascists", when we refer to detention centers as "concentration camps" we do ourselves no favors.
3
@Mike[s]
Dystopia does exist for a lot of people now, in the U.S.
That is how Trump got elected, actually. People wanted it to be different and were hoping for MAGA. The slogan blinded them to what was really going on with this person who bellowed and smeared others so effectively.
7
Ms. Goldberg forgets one thing here. Mere truth-telling is not what brought down Gilead - it was the type of truth that was told. It was not truth about the masses or just isolated dirt about the leaders. It was dirt about what leaders wanted to do to other leaders. It was leader-on-leader dirt, so to speak. That is what made it dangerous. The other stuff could be dismissed as fake news. Threats from within the leadership to leaders - that could not be dismissed - hence the purges and the beginning of the end.
7
@C.L. Exactly. Trump is very sensitive to truth, when the truth in question is the disloyalty of an underling. Mafia tactics (and/or ideology) not withstanding, the more enduring truth is that "there is no honor among thieves."
5
I read Atwood's early novel "Surfacing" years ago and found it so awful I've never gone back to her.
For the rest, there seems to be a lot of "end is nigh" melodrama in the comments on this piece.
6
It's struck me for a while that all of these contemporary so-called dystopian novels actually have happy endings. Unlike 1984.
1
While women undoubtedly have it worse in Gilead than the men, all of the focus on The Handmaid's Tale as a feminist rallying cry misses the point.
The story isn't really about the oppression of women. It's about how an oppressive government - in this case a theocracy - oppresses everyone, including the oppressors. NO ONE is free in Gilead. Commanders fear being hung on the wall and have arms cut off at the behest of their Wives. Members of the security force can be drowned for falling in love and running away with their beloved.
And let's not forget, the Commanders are also required to have sex with the Handmaids. Some of these men are undoubtedly actually in love with their wives, and some of them undoubtedly feel as violated by their forced participating in the ceremonies as do the Handmaids themselves.
The story of Gilead is not the story of oppressed women. It is the story of an oppressed people, and one that is absolutely relevant and timely. And here's a truth that still matters, and still can save us: We are only going to get off this dangerous path we're on by working together. Men aren't the enemy, and too many women have lost site of that. In doing so, they only add to the divisiveness that is weakening us and making us all the more vulnerable to takeover by exactly the kind of oppressive rule The Handmaid's Tale warns against so well.
28
@Kristin
A side note to your comment - the ways the term “patriarchy” has often been used these last 40 years, particularly as a snarl word and as an ad hoc explanation for whatever it is that many users of the term disapprove of, probably make the term unsuitable for good faith serious analysis nowadays.
Besides, on general principles I’d think we’d all want to view the process of correlating virtue and vice with gender with skepticism. Seems like a good way for misandrists and misogynists to vent their spleens while cranking out narratives calculated to create yet more misandrists and misogynists.
6
My heart will always be with what Michelle Goldberg describes as the real life "unfortunate class" of women, who produce children for the women of, and/or serve as toys for the men of the more fortunate classes. Margaret Atwood once said there was nothing in "The Handmaid's Tale" that hadn't already happened somewhere. The 2014 film "Philomena" is based on the real Irish woman Philomena Lee whose child was taken from her and transferred via adoption and for money, to a more prosperous American family. My heart sunk when, at the Golden Globes, actor Steve Coogan's call for such things to never happen again was not met with the thunderous applause I had hoped. Indeed, among the educated and prosperous, child-bearing is often delayed until infertility is an issue and then, rearing some other woman's child becomes the solution. Women and their status in whatever scheme of things exists had always signaled how it will be for everyone. The garb worn my the women of Gilead reflects the sexualized and denaturing uniforms worn by some nuns, the Amish, fundamentalist Islamic women, FLDS women, and many more ideologically and religiously defined women everywhere. The Handmaid's costume is and was not a costume for many of us.
10
Great shout out to Hunger Games, but to be fair, the notion of a future where blood sport reality TV is used as a tool to oppress the populace is at least as old as TV itself. See for example the 1975 cult classic film Death Race 2000. SciFi writers had reality TV figured long before cash strapped and content hungry TV networks started producing it. Another case of life imitating art.
9
Great shout out to Hunger Games, but to be fair, the notion of a future where blood sport reality TV is used as a tool to oppress the populace is at least as old as TV itself. See for example the 1975 cult classic film Death Race 2000. SciFi writers had reality TV figured long before cash strapped and content hungry TV networks started producing it. Another case of life imitating art.
2
Is truth stranger than fiction? Despite all the revelations about Trump and his administration, he is still President and has a good chance to be re-elected. What does this say about the USA? Does it mean our institutions are not as strong as we believed? Does it mean that there is no objective truth because there are no longer accepted truth-tellers (where are you Walter Conkrite)? Does it mean the citizens are apathetic? Maybe a mixture and one hopes we can emerge from this situation as from a troubling novel with a happy ending.
15
@Daniel Salazar I would say that it's not that our institutions are not as strong as we thought (or hoped), but that the framers were operating under different conditions when the Constitution and its Bill of Rights were written: only white, wealthy, educated men could vote. The thought of our current nation and our current plight was not imaginable to them.
6
@Peter Hornbein Whether or not the framers envisioned today's circumstances, they did realize that they were embarking on a completely untried experiment. They were creating a nation out of disparate peoples of disparate religions (although "religion" in their usage was more like "denomination" in ours) and their words in the Constitution include all the concepts of equality which we have discovered or amended into existence. Many of us seem to want the experiment to fail and are working to accomplish that failure. I don't think that effort will work. The current phenomenon is, hopefully, a last gasp from the dying Brontosaurus. He'll not be missed.
3
Another book comes to mind. Lord of The Flies. But then again it takes an eternal optimist to think things will come out right. Progress is evolutionary and takes place over a relatively long time. Europe when through the dark ages for decades.
12
The problems of today are so much larger than the ones in this book. In the book women are the target of all the disruptions and attempts to control them. Now we have many different scenarios -- innocent people being gunned down in their daily lives, guns easily obtainable for hunting human beings and the resulting mass murders even of small kids, a political party that is acting like thugs instead of representatives of the people, an ongoing discourse about racial problems which are never solved, State governments that are rebelling against a false government led by a crazy man, an unequal amount of money going to those on top, an unease among everyone that we are stuck and cannot get out of the mess and the fact that we wake up every day with a fear that it is all crumbling around us and we are helpless to stop it ------- We have been here before but it was not easy to define or even look for solutions. Time was an important element in change and the end result was not definitive for anyone. Some improvements came but it always reverts to the same elements. Liberty is not free.
18
As I read your excellent column I sunk lower and lower in my seat, weary from the weight of your words as they described the American version of modern authoritarianism. I will read Atwood's utopian "The Testaments" for clues while keeping in mind her question to you, "Where do you want to live? And where you end up living is going to depend partly on what you do now."
50
@NBN Smith
I would suggest reading (or re-reading) Orwell's 1984 again. It is, sadly, more closer to the state of our nation in 2019.
"Where do you want to live? And where you end up living is going to depend partly on what you do now."
Rather than sinking lower and lower in your seat, Vote! Organize! Contribute!
3
One earlier comment correctly identified one of our big problems as "structural minority rule", such as the fact that small population states have as much representation in the Senate as the large ones.
On the positive side of things, they are a minority. They would have no power at all except for their enablers: the well to do and the corporates who buy elections and who use them to get their own agenda passed, which is more tax cuts and more privatization of public institutions.
I think we're going to get started next year remedying this situation, by voting out an imposter President. But it will take many years to undo what's been done.
38
What will save us from what I believe was an outlier election, is facts on the ground and diversity. Whether it be climate disruptions or our economy--the American people know something is not right. And, you can't sit in any public venue, even in Red States, and not notice that we live in a multicultural society. Yes, from the Oval Office you can call the weather fake, that all immigrants are members of MS-13, and that I am a stable genius--but, the truth, will ultimately break out come November.
40
Yes, to "Everybody Knows". That is our situation in a nutshell. Everybody knows that is it not only Trump but also his primary enabler, Moscow Mitch.
What I am waiting for, and silently wish Bernie would adopt, is a different Cohen song, "Democracy Is Coming to the USA".
37
How is it that a minority of politicians and voters are capable of pulling us in the direction of totalitarianism?
I would argue that the “slow boil” we are experiencing in America is the direct result of structural minority rule, undermining the will of majority, thanks to deficiencies in our democratic process (Electoral College, Senate power in hands of low pop mostly white states, gerrymandering).
Founding Fathers Hamilton, Madison, Washington, strongly favored "proportional representation". It was necessary to compromise with smaller states to birth our country.
Today we are living with the dilution of the "will of the people" they feared. The door is open for authoritarians and their lapdogs.
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@Doug Dib
It is partially caused by the fact that low population states have more voting power in the House of Representatives that large population states, which is not what was envisioned by the Founders. We need to lift the cap on the size of the House so that all districts represent about the same number of people. Wyoming has just under 600, 000 people and they get one vote. My district has almost 800,000. Multiply that effect across populated districts in many states and you can see how much this effect adds to the power of rural states.
10
When full-blown totalitarianism emerges in the US, its origin won't be petty hacks like D. Trump, but a corporate-state system that prioritizes profit for the .01% over all other considerations -- even the survival of the human species. Trump's apparent disdain for the truth is the same disdain that has given us a Congress in which half of our so-called "representatives" are climate change deniers, a media that habitually ignores and minimizes the growing glut of evidence that the climate crisis is accelerating rapidly, or the mounting public acceptance of the need for dramatic action.
84
@ando arike
Trump is the distraction. He is the guy in the middle ring of a three ring circus. We are so focused on him, we hardly notice the privatization of everything and the fact that Big Brother is indeed watching every move you make.
Bring down the power of corporations and you will bring down Trumpism with it.
102
@nora m
Very well said nora m. What we are seeing now and is so focused on the admittedly warped personality that the longer historical reality that "democracy" in the U.S. has mostly been a polite veneer to the true powers that be ( mostly economic ones ) and the true religion of the U.S. which is Capitalism and nothing else. All the dehuminzation from (Racism, Sexism, Imperialism are rooted in the this and are just personified in this "figurehead" at this time. Plus we must remember that a significant portion of the population ( salvery, economic exploitation, sexism and LGBT discrimination, dismissal of the vulnerable ( disability rights are the youngest of our liberation movements) of the U.S. has lived and been living "dystopias" since it's beginnings.
10
“Illegitimi non carborundum” was the pseudo-Latin phrase that I learned in the 1960s, which, I assume was the precursor of “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”. According to Wikipedia, the phrase was invented during WWII, and it is the older version that I see on t-shirts, etc.
11
@Granny Franny at Harvard it's " Illegitimum non carborundum" since the 1950s, and is the motto of the Harvard band. I've always wondered where and why Atwood got her version of this dog Latin - given that she attended the school and that Tale is obviously based in Cambridge (from remembering the Humphrey Bogart festivals at the Brattle Theatre to "the wall" being the one surrounding Harvard yard)
4
Liberals have for way too long maintained an irrational optimism about our freedoms. They refused to be sufficiently alarmed by the actions of the GOP back in the Clinton days. Shutting down the government was a win-win for Republicans from Gingrich on down. When Obama was elected, the GOP openly renounced the social contract that binds us as a country! They meant it too. Watching hundreds of individual Congress people falling in line with the party dogma over facts and truth terrified me. Obama and Michele embodied that irrational liberal optimism that assumed being nice-really, really nice-would warm the hearts of angry white men and lead to a balanced country. I cried when I watched Pelosi diss the proposals of the newbies. Didn't she see she was giving Trump an opening to crack the Party in half? She blew a golden opportunity to turn the political focus to jobs, infrastructure, climate. Anybody know who's in charge there? Nobody can tell all these hopeless Senators running for President to give up for the good of the country. Barack's MIA politically. Clinton should keep quiet. If Dems do wind up with Biden (lol), his gaffes won't hurt him anymore than the truth hurts Trump. Just never say you're wrong.
27
@Martin Veintraub
Hmmm
Saying you're never wrong sure seems to be a theme of politicians. Can't be seen to change one's mind, even over a lifetime and a whole new generation of issues.
Not very scientific. The best scientists see professional and personal mistakes or incomplete or bad ideas and use them to lever up new good ideas. Even the most popular Democrats don't live up to that standard.
Kills me how the Republicans have branded Socialism as bad based on 30 year old experiences when their version of Capitalism is about greed, corruption, and inequality. Tax cuts for everyone doesn't pay the piper beyond last Saturday night.
Geez. Makes me think they're all anachronisms.
7
Like a zillion others I have been waiting for the release of this sequel, I was not disappointed.
The book is hopeful, and I am also full of hope, perhaps we need a redo of the iconic Obama era logo.
I agree with Ms Goldberg why do we not hear the 'This Is Not Normal' mantra so much anymore or for that matter 'Resist'. That word was powerful enough to get at Trumps core, to a point where he mocked it at his rallies. Perhaps our focus on the Squad has made it passe, 'like they are enough' , to do our work.
For a few years I proudly had my Resist sticker displayed on my laptop bag, it was sometimes a topic of conversation among my fellow Suburbanites on the train on my way into the city. Those conversation were never negative , creating no sense of conflict, Trump is poison on the leafy Main Line Philadelphia .
I know as Ms Goldberg alludes to the fact that "They' Trumps people, are not the majority, now more than ever we need to show them that.
There is a lesson to be learned from both of Ms Atwood's excellent books for Democrats We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I hope by 2020 this is a lesson learned.
25
Outstanding column Ms. Goldberg. Thank you. The only solace we get these days is knowing that there are many sane like-minded people who are equally horrified by the current state of affairs in our country. Even a few as clear-sighted and eloquent as you are. Hopefully there are enough of us to rescue our society in 2020.
41
I’m currently reading Stanley Greenberg’s new book RIP GOP, recommended by MG last week. It paints an accurate picture of an America destroyed by Republican misbehavior going back to Nixon. I spent a couple of weeks in Europe this summer and was struck that they seem to have everything Americans want but can’t get from their GOP overlords - higher taxes on the rich (leading to more income equality), healthcare, good infrastructure, gun control, action on global warming, reproductive rights, etc.
In our culture wealth and power are synonymous. Extreme wealth concentration leads to near-absolute power on the part of the elite. This power corrupts as the elite’s demons run free across the horizon (Jeffrey Epstein is one example, the Sacklers another).
Conclusion: our once proud nation has been looted, polluted and perverted by a small group of political entrepreneurs posing as conservatives and evangelicals. Donald Trump lost the popular vote once and will lose it again next year. If he’s somehow handed another four years in office through the voter suppression and outright fraud that the Electoral College so richly rewards, that’ll just about wrap things up for the Good Ole US of A.
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@Skinny J
I'll offer the notion that the system you admired in EU was born of the need to rebuild after WW2.
We escaped WW2 with a trajectory of tremendous power and economic growth.
That mindset of unlimited resources and world domination is now challenged by reality. Donald J Trump rode a wave of nostalgia for it. It's a reverie, not a revolution. Reality has a habit of biting from behind as one moves along the primrose path of notions of the day. Trump is after all the real president even if he is a fake and a product of international fakery.
4
@Skinny J, in what human culture of the last several thousand years have wealth and power not been synonymous?
I agree that technology and an apathetic public—or maybe just one exhausted (and distracted) with too many gadgets, overloaded with too much information—will augment any future totalitarian regimes, but Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where the citizens are happier courtesy of sex and drugs, seems to be the most likely scenario.
2
@Thomas Bennett
I vote for sex and drugs. 10 Democrats running for office and hardly any mention of either. Love from Ms Williamson just isn't my ticket to paradise. But with the right dose and an out of the way corner in the Rock N Roll hall of fame with loud music and no camera in sight, who knows. Do I believe in magic? Show me magic and I'll let you know.
The contrast caught my attention. Rather than suppress the truth as in Handmaid, it's out there for all to see on twitter and those in power don't care. A cacophony of truth with seductive ads thrown in. What is to be done when the truth is not suppressed, it's just not affective to those who can do something? Those in power just grow their power to keep it. And those are the minority in what was once our democracy. Disconcerting and chilling for where this nonfiction will end.
16
I believe the current cultural climate in which most Americans live is not the controlling "big-brother" world of George Orwell even though there are certainly elements of his vision which are alive and well today. Actually, it is Aldos Huxley's Brave New World that we're living in today. The culture has been easily co-opted by the search for pleasure and consumerism. Today, Trump is the "soma" so many angry, resentful Americans consume every day in the form of talk radio and FOX News. No need for facts or reality. Just a constant stream of ugliness manufactured by think tanks and dark money. Quite scary when you think about it.
64
We consume it every day on CNN or MSNBC, too. I have started tuning in at 10 minutes before the hour, to catch any snippets of real news. Because the first 50 minutes of every hour of cable news is all Trump, all the time
9
@Portola, recently I read that 80% of middle America gets most of its news from talk radio and that FOX constitutes only a fraction of the constant "resentment drumbeat" that Americans are listening to.
4
A very engaging and thought-provoking op-ed that I will reread again while I continuing in The Testaments.
18
The line “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” seems appropriate just now. That what was once beyond the pale now seems almost expected. The trouble with fire is that it can exceed the ability to contain it before much is lost.
The fire that Roger Ailes lit is rapidly consuming civil society. Of course he had lots of help from corporatists, fundamentalists and white supremicists but the conflagration may consume them as well. If Trump gets a second term and gets st Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid the Red State voters will take a huge hit (as will we all).
The only question left then is just how far can ordinary people be pushed before it all comes apart.
75
Perhaps it shows the overprivileging of many American women when the scary worlds they fear are fictional, and there really aren't that many real-life issues to contain their imaginations. If there were, why not focus on the non-fictional instead of fear-mongering fiction? Most women in the world simply don't have the luxury of worrying over utopian fears. Better to address reality, and real-world truths, to make the minor changes in the world that add up to real difference.
I only wish the new news media were writers and observers, not activists hunkering for change. It shows in the work.
17
@Midway
I heard an interview with Margaret Atwood where she said that everything in the 2 books and the TV show were to be based in history. Reality as reported, not fiction. Now, she mined different times and pulled it together into one. But that's a fair approach.
For example, the states were founded as a theocracy. Puritans were quite cruel to women because they could consort in a witchcraft that men feared. We are born of ignorance and live with it to this day.
8
What's ""nonfictional" about being a woman in the US is the freedoms we have (nt priviledges) ar currently, and have been under constant assault since won. Roe v Wade is a prime example. The fact that culturally accepted expressions of repression are ultmately often codified suggests you are not only not a woman, but also not a historian.
11
@Midway
Dystopian works of art reveal uncomfortable truths because they crystallize ideas and actions we should be heeding and evaluating. The Handmaids were baby containers - objects. When Roe v Wade is under threat, when our president laughs about groping women, when Epstein gets a free pass, and I could go on, I don't think my concerns are fictional.
8
Michelle Goldberg has emerged as one of the best op-ed writers of our time. Her writing is precise and engaging. She juxtaposes facts and quotes to remind us of the absurdity of our current reality, and also reminds us that is imperative that we act to change it.
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@Steve
I was trying to think of how to say what you just did about Michele Goldberg’s gift for expressing the importance of looking directly at the problems confronting us. Your comment does that for me. Thanks.
12
@Steve Perhaps you should expand your reading horizons and include the top opinioneers from such places as National Review or articles picked up by RealClearPolitics.
1
It's been said that the human condition is such that we quickly normalise behaviours once deemed dysfunctional. Atwood's voice is, in part, brilliant in reinforcing her audiences' pre-existing biases. In relation to where we are today, it would seem a better parallel is Madonna's vulgarity and coarseness, while once deemed shocking, it quickly achieved acceptance, directly enabling the rise of Trump.
15
@Dean You know, I've said for a long time that that one pop tart has done more to debase our culture over the last few decades than we realize. Think what the acceptance and normalization of vulgarity has made possible--just as Sarah Palin, ultimately, paved the way for Trump.
11
@Dean
Coupling MADONNA with TRUMP is pretty far-fetched.
She would make a better president. Madonna, at least, is a THINKING HUMAN BEING ... and, we might note ... a SUCCESS!
4
@Dean It's all Madonna's fault? Seriously?
No matter the ill, men always find some Eve to bear the blame.
6
Exceptionally good piece. I've always thought Margaret Atwood should have had the Nobel Prize, not because of her one prescient novel The Handmaid's Tale, but because of her moving and perceptive body of work on a range of subjects over many decades. Nevertheless, I recommend to readers Jonathan Franzen's recent piece about how we might proceed if we honestly admit that the cause is already lost (in this case, global warming). I personally feel we're beyond Utopian hope, and need to mobilize for a future none of us expected.
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@johnoho
Jonathan Franzen's recent piece you mention.
Does anyone know where this writing can be found?
Is this a new book by Franzen ?
Can not find anything on the net this comment is referring.
thank you.
2
@johnoho
Americans will just roll over and go back to sleep!
1
"Everybody Knows" is the song that made me a Leonard Cohen devotee. (I'm surprised he didn't think of "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" before Kristofferson & Foster did.) Every day in the news there seems to be another clash of a government with its citizens, sometimes becoming violent. The concept of overcoming tyranny with truth is inspiring, but it seldom works. Truth, determination, and even humor are needed, starting with the work of persuading and convincing others to join the crusade. Then there might be a chance. But there's still an Electoral College.....
37
@Carol Robinson
Sometimes I think that “Freedom’s just another word” for being one percent.
5
I've long by-passed the 'Millennials' when I think of our chances and have cast my lot with the Parkland generation.
58
A truly chilling column, Ms. Goldberg. I think that it is true that, ultimately, totalitarianism becomes so degrading of the human spirit that the degraded humans ultimately refuse to continue tolerating it. But a successful resistance to total state control takes a long time to achieve.
In today's world, I see our president as a supreme embodiment of evil. In his profound intellectual dullness lies a sharp cunning capable of dragging a critical mass of a once-proud nation into the raw septage where he malevolently dwells.
So, yes, brighter days might lie ahead for us, just as the did for Russia in 1917. But in Russia, a dark curtain of malignant control dropped back onto a hopeful people in very short order. Under Stalin and his heirs whole generations were lost to the iron fist of oppression.
Here at home today, the distant horizon might beckon cheerfully. Who knows? Perhaps our Aunt Lydia is Kellyanne Conway. (Dream on!) But in the meantime, I have grandchildren coming of age right now, and I worry myself sick about the world that their mindless, or much worse, elders are leaving them.
251
@John LeBaron "In today's world, I see our president as a supreme embodiment of evil. In his profound intellectual dullness lies a sharp cunning capable of dragging a critical mass of a once-proud nation into the raw septage where he malevolently dwells."
This is the best evaluation I've seen yet of Donald J. Trump.
22
I was watching an episode of "Washington's Spies" when I had to stop it and write down a quote because to me it spoke to today's America. The line was; "One cannot speak truth to power if power has no use for truth." It seemed the perfect way to describe the current Administration.
639
@Michael It does describe our current Administration and our current Justice Department and Supreme Court.
17
I’m reading The Testaments right now.
I never did read The Handmaid’s Tale; it sounded so far-fetched and melodramatic to me when it came out. I was wrong. Now, watching the series seems more familiar than I could have ever dreamed only a few years ago.
Will truth ever mean what it should mean in this country again? Will women ever obtain personhood? Who knows.
Oddly, the song that I keep hearing in my mind is also a Leonard Cohen song:
There's a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it's written in the scriptures
And it's not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
73
Part of the problem with using ‘1984’, as a warning of things to come, is that it was a warning meant for the people of 1948.
Instead of wondering how any of us might come to believe that “two and two makes five,” we should have been more focused on how one and one make two.
Personally, I see the world as some strange combination of Philip K. Dick novels, far more than it could ever be about the quaint concerns of individual freedoms.
Corporeal, corporate...what’s the difference? Origami animals.
18
Along with Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale," I also suggest that readers investigate her novel, "The Year of the Flood" that weaves into the dystopian landscape the reality of climate change along with a new religion. Readers should also pay attention to the writing of Octavia Butler (now deceased) whose incredible 1990's dyad, "The Parable of the Sower" and "The Parable of the Talents, manage to forge together the collapse of society in Los Angeles and north. BTW, she also coined the phrase, make America great again---a slogan for the president-elect who is much too close for comfort to the person now in that office .
50
@RichardM While I adore Octavia Butler, "Make America Great Again" was first said by Reagan in the 1980 campaign. Others have used it since. She was referencing that. And Trumps entire campaign was presaged by Stephen King in 1979 in "The Dead Zone." This flavor of dystopic American politics has been in the ether for at least 40 years.
39
@pjm
Thanks for the correction....So, I guess I should have said that this was the first instance of that phrase I came across. Wish I didn't have to even think about it still......
13
@RichardM
Yes, the Year of the Flood is part of the Maddaddam Trilogy, which is a believable look into a near future shaped by humanity’s degradation of nature. I found it riveting and read it right after The Handmaid’s Tale.
It comes to mind when each crazy pronouncement is made by this administration that unravels environmental protection.
The chillingly possible themes of these works don’t seem nearly far fetched these days. They are also completely related to each other.
1
Most Americans of all political persuasians know who Judge ]udy is, but can't name a Supreme Court Justice. They love ranting about Trump on social media, but aren't active with their local political party, Indivisible, or government. People here who support recalling Oregon's governor can't explain why they do. People watch the latest series on HBO or Hulu, but don't have time to watch or read the news. Many agree Trump and his administration are a problem, but are happy to let others resist.
The correct theme song of our era is "Who Cares?"
195
There are so many amusements offered that it’s hard to pay attention to real life.
@Cordelia28
I’ll bet most NYT readers know the names of SCOTUS justices.
9
Thanks for an excellent and thoughtful column. Such a mixture of despair and hope.
47
I read the whole book the day after it was released. Margaret Atwood is one of the most gifted, compelling authors of our time. Michelle Goldberg’s observations are spot on. If only the ugly, blatant truths staring us in the face could effect change.
215
Margaret Atwood has long been a guiding light for me. I’m around her age, and her work helped me see things more clearly back in the 1979s when I really needed perspective.
I suspect, were she to speak of our country now, she would urge us to ignore the incessant disparagement of Bernie Sanders and see him as the non- corporate, true and honest antidote to the rampant corporate dominance that is destroying our country.
Fake news abounds in the media, and corporate/1% money runs our political parties. Bernie is the only candidate who can and will beat Trump if given a chance.
No dirty tricks...though there are many already. The NYT called the latest debate a Warren- Biden affair. This is completely untrue. Bernie towered above the rest, as so many of them “ borrowed” his views.
32
@Ellen
Bernie did not tower over Elizabeth Warren; she is his intellectual equal; she is capable of going beyond vague promises with no tax plans outlined to support them. She understands the waste of having empty military bases in each Congressional District. She does not need the support of gun manufacturers, as does Bernie in VT, where they are a major industry providing a tax base.
89
@Ellen
I agree with every word you wrote. Thank you for being so clear and concise.
1
@Linda Miilu
Bernie gets an “f” rating from the NRA and does not need money from gun manufacturers. Warren is a former Harvard professor, female ( are “we” ready to elect one?) takes - or will take - corporate money, , and is perceived by many as a “scold” or “ hectoring school marm”. I see no way she can win - many of my friends don’t think so, either. She would be unsuccessful - in the mode of Dukakis and Kerry.
1
Well, at least we know that Trump won't get any notions or inspirations for imitative criminal behavior from reading Margaret Atwood. He is as likely, and able, to read her work as him reading St. Augustine in the original Latin.
When he tweeted that Pete Buttigieg looked like a character from Mad Magizine, Mayor Pete quipped that at least he is capable of making a literary reference.
Pete was channeling his inner Dorothy Parker.
543
@Matt
My guess is the last book Trump read included the words "see Spot run, run Spot run."
21
@Matt
And the Mayor was definitely casting his pearls (of wisdom) before swine, if you would enjoy another Parker quip.
17
@Matt
What is it about these presidents who can’t read? Remember President Bush reading “ My Pet Goat” to schoolchildren upside down?...on 9/11?
14
I suspect that when it comes to the show there are parts of the country that are rooting for the Commanders. I'm thinking Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, places like that.
177
@Jay bird: the NOVEL and TV series are actually set in BOSTON, Massachusetts. Not in the South at all.
I think this reflects Margaret Atwood's complete lack of knowledge of the USA and the regional differences we have here.
6
@Concerned Citizen She was thinking of an older, Puritan Massachusetts, where witches were burned and upon which the play, The Crucible, was also based, an authoritarian, religious society where heresy was punished with death.
64
@Concerned Citizen + @Jay bird - I'm led to believe her focus is more about addressing rather than strengthening tribalism/stereotyping. Her education & upbringing gave her a strong understanding of American history & geography.
12
I don't have to read or watch stuff like this to know it's true. That's what's truly mind boggling to me. Once the truth is no longer the truth and the law is no longer the law, that's when fiction becomes reality and reality becomes fiction.
Our compass is broken. Time for some serious dead reckoning.
Vote.
416
@Guido Malsh
“The truth is no longer the truth and the law is no longer the law,” is so evident; Clinton’s emails, James comey, open borders... we have one set of rules for the elite, and one for the masses. How did we get here?
1
@Guido Malsh
Yes, we are living it. It struck me how inconsequential “the fabled pee tape, the Mueller report or rumored outtakes from “The Apprentice” where he’s said to spout racial slurs” seem considering the onslaught of atrocities and outright lies we are being fed every day. Rather than spitting it out in disgust, it has become the pablum of the masses. People have indeed begun to believe this behavior to be normal. I am putting my faith in the state judiciaries, where the long, corrupt arm of William Barr cannot reach. While I hope someday we will study the atrocities of this administration with how-could-it-have-happened-here disdain of the fictional a Gileadean studies academic symposium, the wish fulfillment I seek in the short term is first to vote him out and then to “Lock him up!”.
7
"(This phrase has since become totemic, reproduced on T-shirts and in tattoos, necklaces and needlepoint.)"
One of my favorite T-shirts when I was in college in the late 1970s had a variation of that phrase. It was very relevant for a woman majoring in engineering.
41
@Chris
If only it had been written in real instead of faux Latin. Now people all over the place think they know one thing in Latin, but it's fake--a sign of our undereducated times.
I'm crazy about this book. I'm awestruck by something I hadn't known before: The women of Gilead are they're playing the long game. While the tv series gives us a one-dimensional impression of the Aunts and the Marthas, The Testaments shows us how Gilead women are are so much more than the dutiful and submissive women we see on the screen. They are biding their time, hanging on until the day they can overcome the totalitarian regime. I'm very impressed by the author's skill at delivering insights into the very complex character of Aunt Lydia who is savvier than I ever imagined.
90
@Bill The TV show has been repetitive I believe in part due to the anticipation of Atwood's sequel/book. Now that it's out the showrunners can decide which way to take the TV show.
3
Perhaps Ms. Atwood is providing an instruction manual for anyone inside who might be longing to get off the crazy train. Nice to think so anyway.
There's a line from a not well known song from the mid 90's, seems prescient now too:
A permanent picture of hope
Is what I hate the most
I think John Oliver put it best a while back. Whenever someone caught Big Cheese not telling the Truth he'd pull out a red "We Got Him!" button but then before hitting he'd realize no ... no we don't got him. I've become convinced the ultra elite of this world have to want something, otherwise it's all uphill. Do you know some way to get through?
34
These times (the last 3 years) have come to be under a magnification because of 77,000 votes. Furthermore, our perception of what is going on is amplified still when collaboration buffers against our sense of moral decency.
What that means is that power does not work in a vacuum.
The maxim of first they came for ... and then they ultimately came for you can happen if we are not vigilant. I think the backlash to this administration is going to be even more fierce that what it was in 2008, after 8 years of disaster from another republican administration.
Then we can get back to enjoying fiction for what it is.
283
@FunkyIrishman-I hope you are right as the GOP ha repeatedly shown willingness to suppress votes, subvert the will of the majority of voters, and do everything it can to amass power.
261
@FunkyIrishman "because of 77,000 votes" means that this country is so divided that its polarization comes down to a veritable handful of people. That is bad news even in the unlikely event Trump is not re-elected.
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Honestly it’s the other 62,200,000 that voted for President Trump that concern me.
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