Originally published at: Margaret Atwood says the Supreme Court is making The Handmaid's Tale a reality in the U.S. | Boing Boing
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Going back to the book’s original publication, Atwood’s always made it clear that every horrible aspect of her dystopias has happened at some point in real human history. When Alito cited the 17th-century witch-hunter I immediately thought of what she said.
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If you think about it, not much is “deeply rooted” in the “history and tradition” of north america; it’s pretty much white supremacy and the system of a patriarchal landed gentry all the way down.
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Women could neither consent nor withhold consent, because they could not vote. That remained the case until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, an amendment that many strongly opposed as being against the original Constitution.
i do wish she would have pointed out that many women had to wait until 1965 to vote… when white men were finally forced to let them vote. roe v wade was only 8 years after that 
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And pretty recently too from the time she was writing it. The hijacking of the Iranian revolution by religious hardliners was a big influence.
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I think Americans who stand up and proclaim that they have THE single greatest country in the World … it’s only great because The System hasn’t found a way to fuck them - yet.
Enjoying your rainbow streets and high school diversity support clubs and family planning offices? That all goes away if you become a Red State. So you move to another Blue State … then in 4 years, might have to move again because your kid is still under 21 and exploring their gender fluidity and you don’t want to be arrested for grooming. It’s so fucking ridiculous.
The experiment has failed. Elections this Fall might put a final nail in that coffin.
How can you be patriotic to a country that would really rather you just crawl under a rock and die?
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6,5,4 Years ago: Oh no, the president is a criminal and a moron. You better vote Democrat in September and we’ll investigate and bring charges. We’ll impeach and convict. We’ll fix it.
3 Years ago: We impeached but didn’t convict, we’ll get him next time, you better vote Democrat in September. We’ll fix it.
2 Years ago: You voted us in. No convictions, no investigations. You better vote Democrat in September. We’ll fix it.
This year: Oh no. They are banning abortion. There’s nothing we can do about it. You better vote Democrat in September. We’ll fix it.
I’m in a blue state. I keep voting Democrat and they just seem to be happy to do nothing. Their happy because they get to keep their jobs. They don’t actually do anything. What can I do? Can’t vote them out as the other side is worse.
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Sure, and the party who is actively obstructing literally anything that isn’t tax cuts and hate bears literally NO responsibility for the current state of affairs. /s
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The Democrats are garbage as a party, but they also don’t have the political power to do whatever they want. i.e. fix things.
On the flip side, voting Republican this day and age means an intrusive government that will wield its power against anyone they don’t like, and actively work to strip people of civil liberties.
So even if the Democrats aren’t bailing out the boat, they at least aren’t punching more holes in it.
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In Brazil abortion is illegal, with some legal exceptions: rape, anencephaly and when the woman’s life is at great risk like ectopic pregnancy.
Evangelical Protestant do their best to make anyone that was raped’s life hell. The last notorious case was when Damares Alves, a religious extremist Minister of Bolsonaro tried to force a 10 year old child raped by her own biological father to have the baby even medical consensus saying that this decision would kill both children. The most horrifying thing is that Damares herself is a survivor of child sexual abuse.
Also: abortion rights here exist for anyone that can afford them and pay good money to go to clinics or risk buying unregulated misoprostol pills that can be fake and you just got scammed or badly manufactured so people have to rush to the hospital.
Poor and black people disproportionately die horrific deaths from botched abortions. A LOT of them are married evangelical mothers with more children that end up orphans.
Also, although people tend to think that abortion is some kind of contraception used by nymphomaniacs, 1 in 5 women will be raped at least once in their lives. In Brazil, 75% of reported rapes are minors or kids.
While we are fighting a long battle against theocrats for the lives of all these women dying like flies your government keeps trying to kill more women? Do better!
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I agree with you, the other party is batsh!t crazy and a threat to the continued existence of the United States of America. About 50% of them should be not allowed to vote in elections until they pass a basics civics course. The other 50% know civics and the law, but just don’t care as long as they get their tax cuts and deregulation.
But, the Democratic party (not the people who vote Democrat, but the party apparatus) seem to like having these bugaboos to scare us into donating $$ and returning their candidates to office year in and year out.
Likewise, the Republicans loved having anti-abortion to bring in the single issue voters and for fund raising. A lot of people who are anti-abortion voted for a Republican president every 4 years specifically because the president appoints Supreme Court Justices and for no other reason. Now that the court is packed, there goes a reason for a lot of zealots to vote in the presidential elections.
In order to drive that kind of voter in, the right are going to have to promise more and more extreme measures: no IUDs and then no Plan B pills. After that, no birth control pills. Then no other contraception. They don’t actually want to accomplish that, they want to promise that and not deliver. They’re scrambling now because their crazy schemes are actually being enacted and they don’t know what to do about it except follow through.
The Democrats are the same, the want to investigate but never bring charges or jail anyone, even in the face of massive evidence. If they just string people along for a little bit more, they can fund-raise and get re-elected. Meanwhile people suffer, the country deteriorates and will soon collapse.
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I remain convinced that all this shit started to go down in earnest when Hulu started airing “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 2017. I saw a number of right wingers on family facebooks and the like posting images from the show and aspirationally thinking it’d be a great idea for America. Before then, I bet none of them read it or comprehended it, but when it showed up on TV, it gave them /ideas/.
Now mind you, it’s kind of always been going on, but for some people it seems like the TV show was a blueprint to a better America instead of the Cautionary Tale it was intended to be.
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Tl;dr:
“Democracy hard. Give up.”
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There might be some who are like that, but there are also plenty of Democratic politicians who actually are working to improve things for all of us. Let’s not forget that the House has been passing a ton of productive bills with a democratic majority. The problem is the Senate, obstructionist Republicans, and a couple of corporate democrats.
The problem right now is the fascist party. Nothing changes until we can fix that, and that does mean supporting the non-fascists. That requires all of us to be more active and push the more moribund elements in the Democratic party to do the work we elected them to do (or maybe running ourselves and to stop pretending like government is something we have no control over, but is instead something that is a part of civic life that we’re all responsible for…). Bothsiderism gets us nowhere right now.
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No, they absolutely do want that. With all of their hearts and souls. I grew up with them and can assure you that this is precisely what they most desperately want. This isn’t just a cynical ploy to gain power, though it is also that, this is 100% an attempt at regression to a theocratic state. And they are succeeding massively.
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Last year during a moment of frustration during the BLM marches, Mrs Peas, who is in no way a cynic prone to defeatism, said something along the lines of “It just sucks that it’s always a fight.” To which I responded, “But that’s exactly how you know it’s working.”
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