Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again

By Martin Fisher

The reference is to the award-winning author, Atwood, who in 1985 published a dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, that took place in the near future of that time.

The story also ran as a drama on Hulu, premiering in April, just three months after Trump assumed office.

The story focus is a government under the control of “right-wing fundamentalists” who rename the United States, calling it “The Republic of Gilead,” a totalitarian theocracy in which women are subjected to property status, and some are used as sex slaves, or “handmaids” of service, who must bear children for infertile patriarchal families.

As Trump's presidency unfolded, Hollywood couldn't resist the opportunity to paint his Christian supporters as anti-woman and executioners of homosexuals. And it came as no surprise to us that when the soonest opportunity presented itself, Hulu's hateful depiction of Christians would be rewarded with accolades, trophies and self-aggrandizing pats on the back, culminating with a stunning six major Emmys, including best drama, in addition to three more Emmys awarded during an earlier ceremony: nine total.

Given depictions of hated people groups at levels of similar virulence in history, Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale" is more deserving of trophies made in the image of NAZI propagandist Joseph Goebbels than some nameless winged woman.

The virulence of spite from the left follows a pattern.

Those protest signs were based on left-wing ideologue fears that Trump's rise – or anyone other that a left-wing ideologue's rise in power – is ultimately a threat to human freedom. Everything not in line with leftist orthodoxy is such a threat.

So from the signs, and a recent interview of Atwood that was reported in the Boston Review, we may conclude that many on the left think Trump is the second opportunity for a totalitarian theocracy since Ronald Reagan.

There is an irony here in the fact that there actually is a theocratic threat in the world that challenges Western Civilization. Also ironic is the fact that these same left-wing ideologues, displaying snowflake meltdowns because of the fears of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, are themselves aiding and abetting the rise of the actual theocratic threat.

Atwood presents herself as someone who has done her research, and she bases her “jolly good yarn” on actual events she has discovered through her understanding of history. To the Boston Review, she said, “I put nothing into the book that people had not done at some time, in some place. And in some countries in the world, these are pretty much the realities now.”

She did not elaborate to the Boston Review what those countries may be, but the interview did veer into specific fears of rising hardships in the United States. Atwood is Canadian. “In some places in the United States, it is approaching reality,” She said.

Was she thinking about Dearborn, Michigan? Or Islamburg, New York? Again, she did not go into specific details.

She does specify that fundamentalist Christians in her book apply parts of the Bible literally, like naming a training institution for the sexual handmaids, “The Rachel and Leah Center” after characters in the Bible who, with their concubines, gave the patriarch Joseph twelve sons. “It's very literal,” Atwood said. “The real question is, if the United States were going to have totalitarianism, what kind of totalitarianism would it be?”

She passes on indicating any totalitarian threat thing emanating from her left-wing fans. “It certainly would not be communism,” she said.

She did not mention Islamic government at all to the Boston Review, but she may have actually eluded to it. Regarding the story of Gilead coming true in some places, she added, “There are thirteen countries in the world in which homosexuality is punishable by death.”

She did not say so, but these are Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Islamic-controlled areas of Nigeria. We can conclude that Atwood is happy to blame Christian fundamentalism for things that no Christian leader is doing now, but that is in fact being implemented as policy by most Islamic run governments on a global scale.

In her dystopia where Christian fundamentalist rulers apply the Bible literally to impose a theocratic totalitarianism, the rulers toss aside the heritage and legacy of the United States in favor of a theocratic sounding name: the Republic of Gilead.

For some reason, this fundamentalist, evangelical government sanctions rape for procreation purposes, imposes a strict form of apartheid based on favoring the preferred white race, eliminates unauthorized religious sentiment, including those calling themselves Christians who oppose the religious theocracy under the regime, and imposes a stratification of society so certain high-bred families and theocratic officials hold much greater empowerment, privileges of property and opportunities than lower-born families.

Atwood said that despite the use of a fundamentalist Christian paradigm for the theocratic totalitarian regime, the book is not anti-Christian. “That's not the case that is being made,” she said. “Some Christians would resist such a regime, and do in the book. Others would be eliminated by the regime.”

But in explaining differences in her book's reception in England compared to the United States, Atwood indicated Europe is more advanced than the United States, beyond the threat of a theocratic despotism taking hold there, because in Europe, such battles were put behind them centuries ago, according to her.

“In England, it was viewed as a jolly good yarn,” she said. “They didn't think of Gilead as something that was going to happen to them, because they did their religious warfare in the seventeenth century.”

If we encounter left-wing ideologues who squeal at every suggestion of applying Judeo-Christian principles to law and government while seeking to protect and apologize for Islamic empowerment and actions, Atwood is one reason why. Or at least she reveals a reason why. She offers a sample of the inner thinking of the liberal left.

Yet it was classical liberals and Christian protestants among the founders of our nation who pointed to Islamic government, that they called Muhammadanism, as a great threat of despotic tyranny. As a matter of fact, our first foreign war was fought on the shores of Tripoli, against the Islamic regime there.

The reality was back then, as it is now, that jihadist attackers were of absolute supremacist disposition to plunder, enslave, kill and destroy any non-Islamic enemy, viewing them as human garbage for their disposal or use.

Applied to government, non-Islamic residents of such Islamic regimes today are available as property, can be plundered through specific (Jizza) taxes, women can be taken by law for sex slavery, and apartheid style subjugation is applied through Islamic statutes called dhimmitude.

In Atwood’s tale, the supposition is that if a figure of Christian faith rose to political power, they would turn women into sex slaves and manage over hellish despotism. But anyone savvy to the news should see that actual sex predators are already here, and they are rising in capability to apply despotic rule — meanwhile, they are included, shielded, enabled, and promoted in the name of political correctness.

That's called irony, folks.

And this sort of irony is common throughout what is called liberalism today, and among the promoters of left-wing ideology. It would be a whole additional discussion as to why this irony exists, but I would offer the possibility that there are some among the left who see Islamic populations as a means to an end. I think there are some dedicated Marxists who see them as “useful idiots” (to use a term from the Marxist Dialectical Method) that Islamic populations coming into the west become a way of bolstering a leftist bid for power rising from the chaos, regardless of their vast differences in ideological and religious commitments.

Where among any left-wing ideological expression today, persons calling themselves liberals and intellectuals, is there a common-sense observation of Islamic government, compared to Christian-based contributions to the causes of human freedom?