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I only recently read The Handmaid's Tale, and it hit pretty hard. Especially because it, like any good story of that type, is not nearly so outlandish as it seems. Things that might have seemed absurd at the time in Brave New World and 1984 have come to pass and been accepted as the way things are, with people even clamoring for the next step.
The dimly illuminated cultural regression from Atwood's novel is far from absurd on modern reading, and in fact we've seen such hyper-conservative cultural shifts play out. It's not that far-fetched to substitute isolationist nationalism for regressive theocracy, when both have the same ultimate goals: reconcentration of power in an oligarchy, just like in the "good old days." Not that we've ever strayed that far from the concept, but still...
I also finished it last week, mainly in anticipation of the upcoming Hulu show.
My biggest issue was the timeline. From what I could glean, the overthrow of the government took place only around 10 years before the events of the book, maybe less. Yet society had changed to the point that basically nothing remained from the past, resulting in the main character no longer remembering much of her early life. On top of this, the new order of society was way too organized given the drastic change in its policies and norms. In a nutshell, the formation of the new society and the acceptance by its citizens was a bit too sudden for my tastes. It would have been much more believable to me if the author had set it up such that the overthrow took place during the main character's childhood.
Maybe it's because I'm used to the expert world building and long timelines of other popular sci-fi works (e.g., Foundation series, Red Rising trilogy, Ender's Game). I actually finished Liu Cixin's Death's End (hard sci-fi, multi-century timeline) a day before I started with The Handmaid's Tale, so that could be one reason why I disliked the progression of events.
Otherwise, it was an excellent novel.
If you read Robert Heinlein's future history stories there is often included a timeline chart. Heinlein wrote stories that spanned the entire timeline.
Except he left a gap where the USA became a theocracy and entered a dark age. Heinlein could not bring himself to write about that depressing era.
Many have observed that Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale fits perfectly in this gap. In fact, Heinlein's Revolt in 2100 feels like a description of the collapse of the dictatorship in Handmaid.
To my knowledge, Atwood has never acknowledged a connection. And it doesn't change that I feel A Handmaid's Tale is a masterpiece.
It is fairly absurd to suggest that the mainstream American right has the goal of "reconcentration of power in an oligarchy".
Even the furthest of the alt-right take their goal as the exact opposite: to break the control of the "cathedral" of left-globalist interests, who are embodied in the now-unified elites of academia, entertainment, high finance, big tech, wealthy industrialists, Democrats, journalists and media, and the unelected deep state.
The term "reconcentration" also makes it sounds like power was concentrated before. Except it wasn't. In decades past, several of the factions listed above were at ideological odds. Their unification under the shaming-enforced dogma of social justice and identitarian victimology is a new thing and is part of what people are fighting against.
Also consider government powers are ever-expanding over new domains of life, and being ever-concentrated upwards towards the federal level. Being against concentration of power is firmly a right-wing position at this point.
On the other hand, leftists - like the people who laud Atwood's book in your way - always want concentration of power because they're utopians who think that all you need to make a great society is more control given to the correct, enlightened technocrats (who always happen to be people resembling themselves in values, outlook, and opinions).
The sad thing is that an outcome like Atwood paints in her book is definitely possible from all this. But it won't happen after the free-speech and power-deconcentrating right succeeds; it'll happen after they fail, because the next reaction will be much much worse.
The right talks about more freedom, but their actions result in less of it.
Arbitrary power used to be much more concentrated in one particular race and one particular gender. The left has been trying to diffuse that power, the right is trying to re-concentrate it.
Furthermore, there is the concentration of power that comes with having vastly more money than the median person, and the ability to use it politically. Or the power that comes from monopolistic control over an industry. The left generally seeks to curb these powers (e.g. the fight against Citizens United, or for more antitrust action).
The Magna Carta is illustrative: it's a set of regulations aimed at reducing the exercise of absolute power. The lesson is: if you restrict the powerful, the net freedom of the population increases.
A more modern example: the regulations that prohibit companies from firing their employees without cause are a reduction in freedom for the employer, true. But with them, the far more numerous employees are now more free to be and say things that upset the powerful within the company (in ways that are specifically unrelated to the performance of the work) without fearing retribution. Overall, an increase of freedom.
The right wing, under the banner of "less regulations", have consistently lessened the protections of the weak against arbitrary power. They fight for the freedom of those with money, corporate power, and political influence to do as they please. That's a retrogression of overall freedom, and (IIRC) exactly what Atwood was talking about.
Freedom is a loaded term, like rights.
Its useful to categorise freedoms and rights as being negative or positive.
How can you argue that the right is against the concentration of power when it works to limit voting systematically among people more likely to vote democratic (young people, poor people, counties where people who aren't white are a majority), as well as to gerrymander districts?
There are many ways to concentrate power: The federal government is one, but it can also act as a check on states concentrating power, like states passing voter ID laws, closing DMVs to prevent state ids from being obtained, etc.
Ultimately all political power should be derived from informed American citizens. Whenever any political group works to undermine the ability of Americans to choose their representatives by disenfranchising them or misleading them, and when it works on concentrating their votes using gerrymandering such that legislative bodies are not representational of their constituents, they undermine our system of democracy.
edits: typos and added an "and" for clarification.
Unfortunately, both sides work to systematically limit voting by their opponents, albeit using different tactics because the targets of suppression are different.
See https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-suppress-... for some details.
The two are no where near equivalent.
Why not?
Note that I personally don't think "equivalent" is even a useful category to consider here: the methods of voter suppression are different enough that comparing them in any meaningful way is a serious research project at best. But apparently people keep feeling like we can place an agreed-on linear ordering of some sort on the horribleness of political party behavior. For people who think that, I would like to know why they think that and why they think that their particular ordering is the "right" one.
My preferred outcome, obviously, would be if people made decisions about this stuff in terms of actual reasons other than "it's better for my chosen party". At least then there would be a basis for discussion and perhaps a possibility to change minds... I'm not holding my breath.
>How can you argue that the right is against the concentration of power when it works to limit voting systematically among people more likely to vote democratic (young people, poor people, counties where people who aren't white are a majority)...
Because you've mischaracterized the situation. Making sure only people who are entitled to vote actually vote is about insuring the integrity of the system.
>...as well as to gerrymander districts?
This happens on both sides of the aisle. To pretend only "the right" is doing it is to be oblivious to observed reality.
Actually, things like voter ID requirements and DMV closings are specifically about putting up barriers to voting for people who do have the right to vote, by making it (in some cases) much harder to meet the requirements to exercise their franchise.
You can't look at policies and their arguments in isolation, you have to look at them in context. In context their purpose is clear.
Automobile-related bureaucracy should have no place at all in anything related to voting. Why should a disabled person who can never make use of the DMV's real purpose have to go there just to exercise a Constitutional right?
If people want voter ID, have them issued by City Hall, or print the voter's name on the sample ballot mailed to the voter's home before the election and have them bring that to the polling place.
>Actually, things like voter ID requirements and DMV closings are specifically about putting up barriers to voting for people who do have the right to vote, by making it (in some cases) much harder to meet the requirements to exercise their franchise.
No they aren't. This is nonsense from people who are benefiting from voter fraud.
> people who are benefiting from voter fraud.
Where is the evidence that this occurs in any meaningful number at all?
If you want to claim someone is benefiting, then you must have some evidence that it even occurs.
Yea Voter ID is adopted across the world. It's a nonsensical argument it is meant to disenfranchise people in 2017.
Example of Countries with voter id laws: India ,Libya,Ireland, Spain, Greece, France, Malta, Belgium, and Italy
I'm not sure there is a mainstream American right. There are several threads that appear to have incompatible ideas. Then the politicians try to give lip-service to all of them, which makes it impossible to actually deliver on any of their promises without pissing off the rest of their supporters.
I think there did used to be a main-stream of conservative thought, from Buckley through Reagan. But they are just one of the threads, now.
This was inevitable. For a long time, they could win elections by catering to the strong, white, male breadwinner and those in his orbit. One identity. One politics.
The left, in contrast, has been working on a kind of "big tent" politics for a long time, packaging reproductive rights (women) with immigration reform (hispanics) and welfare (low income blacks). Each of these stances required the right to come out hard against these things, alienating women and minorities. That necessitated more inflammatory politics to rile up the white male base: the immigrants are taking your jobs, welfare queens are taking your tax money, feminists are destroying your livelihoods, etc... ideas which seem plausible and scary at first but upon investigation are not actually causing the problems they purport to be. Immigrants are growing the economy, welfare queens are mostly white and not nearly expensive as aircraft carriers and old people, and feminists are still largely shouting in the wind.
But the demographics just aren't in their favor. To me, the turn to nationalism is an act of desperation. In the face of "the party of Everyone" they had to go hard into the fear-based "Them is taking over, and they're against you" message. It worked in 2016, but I don't see it carrying the decade.
But regardless, we're past the time where there is a single conservative ideology that can garner 50% of the vote. It's a big tent on both sides now. It's "The party of Everyone" vs "The party of Jobs, I mean small government, I mean Tax Cuts, I mean Deficit Spending, I mean The Military, I mean... God! Yeah, The party of God. And putting Hillary in jail."
Personally, I have drunk the "we live in a time of plenty" Kool-aid, so I think the Republicans will fail. But we'll see. They're doing their darndest to destroy the environment, and cause a resource crunch which would the necessitate the violence and protectionism they seem to enjoy.
As opposed to right wing emphasis on military action, enforcing Christian morality though the power of government, and removing any restrictions from powerful corporations.
If you really believe what you're saying, then be a libertarian, not some far rightist.
Also, alt-right is all about identity politics. That would be the white power thingee.
"Even the furthest of the alt-right take their goal as the exact opposite: to break the control of the "cathedral" of left-globalist interests, who are embodied in the now-unified elites of academia, entertainment, high finance, big tech, wealthy industrialists, Democrats, journalists and media, and the unelected deep state."
Yet the alt-right and pretty much all right wing political ideologies require all to conform to its social values or else; especially on matters of bodily autonomy (LGBT issues, abortion, contraceptive use, plastic surgery, drug use, etc) the right wing of politics fears any freedom to choose. So, I'm not buying your thesis that the right wing wants to leave folks like me (transgender for example) alone.
"On the other hand, leftists - like the people who laud Atwood's book in your way - always want concentration of power because they're utopians who think that all you need to make a great society is more control given to the correct, enlightened technocrats (who always happen to be people resembling themselves in values, outlook, and opinions)."
I think you're confusing what passes for left wing politics in the US and Europe as historically left wing politics. For example, I don't think any legitimate leftist would support concentrations of power in the hands of managers considering the failure of the USSR and even several conglomerates in the West (GM comes to mind here). Tyranny of the managers is still tyranny even to a democratic socialist or to a mutualist (such as myself). So, I don't see where your POV even holds water when there's a plethora of contrary theories by leftist philosophers and political commentators on these matters. I think you need to expand your analysis beyond DailyKos vs National Review when it comes to politics.
Do you ever take a step back and wonder how such a long list of: "academia, entertainment, high finance, big tech, wealthy industrialists, Democrats, journalists and media, and the unelected deep state" could possibly be unified?
Sure, they are all pursuing a globalization agenda.
I have no personal feelings on it, but it seems a growing portion of people in america- trump, england- brexit, and now france - marine are opposing it.
A globalization agenda has existed since nations have been trading, signing treaties, and going to war with one another. We live on the same planet and technology makes us even closer together. The only isolated communities left live deep in the rainforest.
> pursuing a globalization agenda
What does this actually mean?
Is there anyone in politics who doesn't have an "agenda" in some sense - what would that even look like, a promise to be purely reactive without having any long term policy?
Thats good point.
I'm guessing from the examples I've seen.
People don't want global bureaucracy like the EU.
They don't want other nations or other people put before their own country and national interests.
They also don't want foreign meddling in their own countries, whether its through lobbying groups, foreign money or just foreign funded media.
If I had to guess, people are feeling a loss of control of their local geographical areas and lives within it, and reacting any way they can to reassert power/control. In america, you can see it from Trump, and Bernie, to things like the Texas and California Exit.
Some people don't want that. It's not like Brexit or Trump aren't controversial. Other people realize they are part of an increasingly interrelated world. Kind of hard not to be with modern technology. We can easily communicate with anyone, travel anywhere, and stuff is made all over the place.
>because the next reaction will be much much worse.
What does this mean?
He means the next right-wing backlash (so Trump-->Democrats return to power-->next reaction). The term was used in the French revolution to describe conservative reactions against revolution. The most famous would be the Thermidorian Reaction, which saw the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobin faction generally.
So the right wing backlash after Trump will look the Handmaid's Tale because the liberals went too far.
"Now look what you made me do."
It's almost as if fascism is some grotesque caricature of traditional masculinity mapped onto governance.
But it's NOT authoritarian and DEFINITELY in favor of dismantling centralized power. Got it.
The threat of liberalism boogeyman is something made up by Fox News and right wing radio.
Things that might have seemed absurd at the time
No they didn't. All of these were written, in part, as commentaries on their authors' times. Nobody writes fiction so that they're recognized for their prescient insight and patted on the back for it many years later.
Heh well I'm sure some fiction authors do, but point taken! I meant, however, things that might have seemed absurd to readers and critics at the time, many of whom would dismiss the possibility of a state regressing in the way the book imagines, or in 1984 people voluntarily submitting to intrusive surveillance, or in BNW eugenics becoming an everyday practice.
I meant, however, things that might have seemed absurd to readers and critics at the time
Right. I meant this is almost certainly wrong. It's both weirdly self-centered (why don't we think these things absurd? In what way were people in 1948 or 1985 so different and clueless) and ahistorical. The eugenics movement was in its heyday when Brave New World was written, the (not-at-all-voluntary) surveillance in 1984 could have hardly seemed such a stretch right around the peak of atrocities performed by states. The Islamic Revolution in Iran took place only a couple of years before Atwood started working on the Handmaid's Tale. And so on.
Indeed, if you lived through the Reagan years, with its first national-level surge of right-wing political Christianity in decades (one which still hadn't abated), Atwood's book doesn't seem all that out there after all.
"isolationist nationalism" has its goals stated in its name - leave others alone while taking care of your own.
Do you ascribe goals to every ideology based on the actions of the most corrupt people claiming to follow it, or just the ideologies you dislike?
Her other novels are excellent too.
I literally eyerolled at this. The irrational leaps down these non-existent slipper-slopes, is absurd.
Yea its clear this is a puff piece to hype the show.
I couldn't struggle through this tripe. There's too much science fiction that's actually interesting to waste time on the Handmaid's Tale and it's bizarrely nonsensical kinky society.
Michel Houellebecq is a true prophet. From his novel Atomised to The Possibility of an Island (metaphor for social media) to Soumission, he's been years ahead re zeitgeist and social climate since the 90s.