A Handmaid's Tale

Last night, I saw the future and it was terrifying. It was an America where the Constitution had been suspended after a terrorist attack, where the name of God had been used to justify the unjustifiable, where women where subjugated, reproductive rights nonexistent, homosexuality punishable by death, and the powerful procreated in a bizarre ritual where a husband would impregnate a surrogate who was being held in his wife's lap.

Literally, the first thing that came to mind was this is the ideal image of America under a President Pence. It was crafted perfectly, right down to the detail of not being alone in a room with a woman other than your wife. Yet the story laid out in the Hulu production of A Handmaid's Tale well precedes Mike Pence and the President he is eagerly waiting to replace. The Margaret Atwood novel of the same name on which the series is based was written more than 30 years - and that's the scary part. 

First published in 1985 during the Reagan revolution and the birth the modern conservative movement, A Handmaid's Tale demonstrates there were clear signs of what the country could look like if that movement continued unbridled and unchecked. Is America one terrorist attack away from suspending the Constitution and starting on the road to dystopia? In a world where Kim Jong Un continues to test ballistic missiles capable of being zeroed in on the United States and the President continues to become more unhinged on Twitter every day, the scenario is potentially closer than we may want to admit.

Let's also not forget the groundwork the GOP has meticulously laid to justify the unjustifiable. At every turn they have sought to marginalize the LGBT community through discriminatory legislation from the various versions of "bathroom bills" to banning same sex marriage. Women continue to see their right to make decisions about their bodies chipped away by the predominantly white male GOP majority. The evangelical right is fine defending a man like Roy Moore because he stands against abortion despite being a sexual predator on the hunt for children slightly older than a fetus.

The GOP also just put the finishing touches on the setup to pry open the class divide in America to its largest proportion ever by approving the HR 1 tax reform bill just last night. This bill is single purposed. Reward Republican donors that put GOP legislators in office. It was payment for services rendered and has very clear winners and losers. The winners: rich people. The losers: everyone else. 

So what is the possible outcome? Those low and middle class Americans that were angry enough to elect Trump in the first place will retreat further into anger and despair.  The disenfranchised ranks will seek a new charlatan, even more extreme than Trump, to lead the way back to an idealized vision of the past that truly never existed. What they may wind up with will not be the Leave It To Beaver version of the American dream but Margaret Atwood's version of the American nightmare.