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I’ve written about Margaret Atwood before. But in one chapters of our book.\u00a0 The Shift: Reports from The Mystical Underground<\/em>, we write about the kinds of precognition writers experience. Let\u2019s take Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Handmaid\u2019s Tale.<\/em><\/p>\n The novel was written in 1987. If you haven\u2019t read it or seen it on TV, it\u2019s any woman\u2019s worst nightmare. Infertility is rampant. The totalitarian government rounds up the small minority of women who are fertile, then they are assigned to affluent families whose wives are infertile. These fertile women, handmaids, are kept in line by Aunts, older women as despicable as the government, and are forced to have sex with the man in the respective families to whom they\u2019re assigned. The sexual act takes place with the wife at the handmaid\u2019s head, her hands gripping the handmaid\u2019s shoulders, her movements mimicking the thrusting motions of her husband. When the handmaid gets pregnant and gives birth, the infant belongs to the wife.<\/p>\n A handmaid doesn\u2019t have a normal name. Instead, she\u2019s called OfFred, OfJoe, OfRick\u2026OF followed by the the name of the man who heads the family to which she has been assigned. In other words, the dude owns her.<\/p>\n The novel came to TV on Hulu in the early days of the Trump administration and, according to Rolling Stone, \u201cwas heralded as an allegory for our times.\u201d As Atwood told Rolling Stone in the May 19, 2021 issue: \u201cMy ever-present question, since I was born in \u201939, is: If there were to be a totalitarianism in the United States, what would it look like? What would be the slogan? What would be the excuse? Because they all come in with: \u201cWe\u2019re going to make things so much better, but first, we have to get rid of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n When she was asked how she viewed the rise of Trump, she noted that he followed the playbook. \u201cThe big propaganda lies, the replacement of people in pivotal positions in the judiciary \u2014 because every totalitarian regime controls the judiciary. The attempt to subvert the Constitution, the attempted coup.\u201d<\/p>\n These motifs, she said, have happened repeatedly throughout history. \u201cTotalitarian regimes also try to seize control of the media or at least to eradicate the idea that the media can\u2019t be trusted as a source of information. Then they replace that with other sources that are telling you there are blood-drinking Democrats in the cellar of a pizza parlor that didn\u2019t have a cellar.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Trump administration put migrant children in camps at the border, as they separated children from their families, as they dismantled the government from the bottom up, Atwood undoubtedly cringed and lost sleep. \u201cIt was either Hitler or Goebbels who said if you tell the big lie often enough, people will believe it. Make the lie big and make it often. We saw that. And it\u2019s not a question of left or right \u2014 so-called left regimes have done the same thing. It\u2019s a question of totalitarianism or not totalitarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n And now, of course, in trump\u2019s second term, the situation has gotten worse – book bans, the abolishment of the department of education, ICE & military in American cities, laws that suppress voting and red state redistricting for midterms, trump\u2019s hold on the republican party of sycophants, cowards, and morally void individuals, most of them aging white men. The republican party has become, as one friend said, \u201cA death cult.\u201d And it looks as if now – less than a year intro trump\u2019s presidency- we\u2019re mired in dictatorship.<\/p>\n What trump is doing isn\u2019t new by any means. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Putin, Pinochet, Chavez, Maduro\u2026the world\u2019s worst dictators followed a playbook. & it sure looks like trump and his sycophants read it. Word by word, play by play\u2026Project 25 in action.<\/p>\n Can we, the people, make a difference?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve written about Margaret Atwood before. But in one chapters of our book.\u00a0 The Shift: Reports from The Mystical Underground, we write about the kinds of precognition writers experience. Let\u2019s take Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Handmaid\u2019s Tale. The novel was … Continue reading