Excerpt from a Handmaid's Tale

[Generic Other]

Link to tweet

🐝Kingfisher @pjKingfisher

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.
Margaret Atwood

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPpf1tIUYAAhJqy?format=jpg&name=medium

[global1]

1. Watching The Super Bowl.....

I wonder how many Repug Senators were at the game?

[dewsgirl]

2. When Opus Dei, Barr, Pompeo or the danger some members

of Congress very well could be in, I often quote the full passage.

When they slaughtered Congress, we didn't wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the constitution, we didn't wake up then, either. Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.”

I don't think they could quite pull something like this off, I wouldn't put it past them to try.

[Generic Other]

3. Margaret told us decades ago

I always called it the ultimate feminist dystopian nightmare when I taught it in class. Shudderingly scary in an Edgar Allan Poe sort of way. Still, I believed it more fictional than possible. I no longer feel this way. Testament was pretty frightening as well. Have you read it?

[dewsgirl]

4. No, I have watched the Family on Netflix. I haven't read the

book, have you read the Family? What is Testament about?

[Generic Other]

7. The sequel to Handmaid's Tale

The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985).[2] The novel is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. It is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Testaments

Not quite as rivetting as The Handmaid's Tale but still worth reading if you liked the original.

[dewsgirl]

9. I have heard of it, I'm a big Handmaid's Tale fan, I've even read

the book twice, didn't realize Testaments took place in Gilead. I have read so many political books in the last few years, haven't had time to read anything else. I've read 4 in the past 3 months. Thank you, I will check it out if I ever get a chance.

[Pacifist Patriot]

6. I'm afraid to read it.

[lindysalsagal]

5. Nothing in Handmaid's Tale was fiction:

It's all really happened in different parts of the world at different times. Our size, alone, does not protect us.

Until he's gone, we're all Marthas, and we're all we've got.

[Generic Other]

8. That is what makes it so disturbing

I even loaned it out to young women in hijabs who read it surreptitiously.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

10. It's more upon us than you may realize. If vultures Trump & McConnell get their

...wish and get to re-fill RBG's SCOTUS seat, it's widely expected they'll do so with a 40something female fundamentalist Christian judge, anti-abortion hardliner, natch, whose name I forget right now, but get this:

She is the daughter of a literal, no-shit... Handmaid.

Margaret Atwood took the term and the basis of the concept from a Christian fundie sect that designates and assigns handmaids to sect families to watch/guide/counsel/ monitor/report on, and thereby keep them on the sect's straight-and-narrow. As a godly service, dontcha know. The sect is present in several cities but if I recall it's biggest number is in Louisiana. The handmaids watching you in your house aren't used for blessed-is-the-fruit-making, though, I don't think.

This judge, who was on Trump's 2018 short list with Attempted Rapist Kavanaugh, was raised in this sect, the daughter of a Handmaid.

The sect changed these Watchers' names from Handmaids to something else only recently, due to the unwanted attention the HBO adaptation was bringing.