Canadian author Margaret Atwood published her classic Dystopian novel in 1985. I think I read it when I was pregnant with our daughter, Megan, around 1989. I was horrified as I read it in a couple of days and comforted myself by believing now that someone had written this terrifying novel, it would never happen in real life.
Now, 40 years after it was published, the book stands out as an example of an author who saw the future, the world where we now find ourselves. Except this version we’re living is worse than anything Atwood envisioned.
Atwood captured the sexism, the idea of women as tools for men to use however they want, women as slaves to male patriarchy in all its disgusting nuances.But she didn’t capture the utter chaos and cruelty of what happens when a democracy is turned inside out by an administration that has no idea what the hell it’s doing or why. It’s as if a bunch of wild, untamed, uncivilized human beings have been unleashed on the country and the world.
While they’re cackling away in D.C., congratulating themselves on how well they’ve cut waste in the U.S. government – how many thousands of federal workers have been fired to date? – children worldwide who depended on USAID are starving, dying. The elderly and disabled are getting robbed blind. Schools and universities are losing critical funding for students, scientists, research. That’s just the surface of things.
Hurricane season begins on June 1. But with NOAA on the cutting block, many of its workers fired, who is going to track the storms this season? Trump, with his sharpie pen? With the CDC shrinking and RFK Jr. in charge of health & human services, measles are spreading, kids are dying from too much vitamin A and cod liver oil that the man with ZERO medical experience is advocating.
The stock market is tanking. Books are being banned. The Department of Education has been obliterated. This points to one of their goals: make the population stupid so they’ll believe anything we tell them.
So here we are, well beyond the Dystopia that Margaret Atwood wrote about. Yet, there are still people who are applauding for Trump.
A retired attorney: Trump’s intentions are good.
A retired physician: He won’t touch Social Security. We paid into it.
A brainwashed neighbor, after being told that ICE was in the neighborhood, trying to round up Mexican immigrants who work in the equestrian industry: Trump’s doing great.
A Jewish woman I’ve known for 50 years told me she was voting for trump and when I pointed out that he hates Jews, Latinos, people of color, women, anyone who isn’t a white guy, her response was: it’s the border.
“Have you been to the border?” I asked her.
“Well, no, but on Fox News…”
And right then, I knew that nothing I said would change her mind. Right then, I knew tht 50 years had been swept away.
