Tuesday
I’ve finally read Margaret Atwood’s sequel to Handmaid’s Tale and have enjoyed it a great deal, even though I didn’t find it as groundbreaking as many of her other novels (Edible Woman, Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, Robber Bride, Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, the Oryx and Crake trilogy). Because of our current crisis, one scene in particular jumped out at me.
Regarding our crisis, I’m thinking of how Donald Trump has called upon Americans to be heroic warriors and venture bravely into the teeth of Covid-19, thereby saving the economy. Those he wants to be heroic, of course, are Other People. They are the ones who should sacrifice their lives to insure his reelection. If a disproportionate number of them are people of color, well, at least they died for a higher cause.
This is the situation we encounter in Testaments. Because the birthrate has plummeted (probably because of radioactivity or other environment reasons), the baby always wins out over the handmaid mother whenever that terrible choice must be made.
In compensation, the mother is applauded for her noble sacrifice at her funeral. Here’s the passage:
[Aunt Lydia] said that our sister in service, Handmaid Ofkyle, had made the ultimate sacrifice, and had died with noble womanly honor, and had redeemed herself from her previous life of sin, and she was a shining example to the other Handmaids.
Aunt Lydia’s vice trembled a little as she was saying this. Paula and Commander Kyle [who now have a healthy baby boy] looked solemn and devout, nodding from time to time, and some of the Handmaids cried.
I did not cry. I’d already done my crying. The truth was that they’d cut Crystal open to get the baby out, and they’d killed her by doing that. It wasn’t something she chose. She hadn’t volunteered to die with noble womanly honor or be a shining example, but nobody mentioned that.
Many of those dying of Covid-19, whether meat packers, store clerks, transit workers, or other frontline workers, aren’t choosing to nobly sacrifice themselves. Doctors and nurses didn’t sign up to work without adequate Personal Protection Equipment. While we should honor them, we should also hold to account those who put them in these precarious positions.
Another passage from Testaments jumps out as it helps explain why most in the GOP are buckling under to Donald Trump, even though it is clear to many of them he is unfit for office. Aunt Lydia, the feared head of the Aunts who is actually a secret agent, explains why she buckled under to Gilead’s rightwing fundamentalists—or at least did so until deciding to undermine the system from within.
As you read her explanation, think of traditional conservative values in the best sense—and then think of how, in exchange for rightwing judges, deregulation, and upper bracket tax breaks, Republicans have been willing to stomach Trumpism, including its racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and general incompetence:
Did I hate the structure we were concocting? On some level, yes: it was a betrayal of everything we’d been taught in our former lives, and of all that we’d achieved. Was I proud of what we managed to accomplish, despite the limitations? Also, on some level, yes. Things are never simple.
For a time I almost believed what I understood I was supposed to believe. I numbered myself among the faithful for the same reason that many in Gilead did: because it was less dangerous. What good is it to throw yourself in front of a streamroller out of moral principles and then be crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot? Better to fade into the crowd, the piously praising, unctuous, hate-mongering crowd. Better to hurl rocks than to have them hurled at you. Or better for your chances of staying alive.
And then in a final kicker that is characteristic of Atwood’s style,
They knew that so well, the architects of Gilead. Their kind has always known that.
From the first, the authoritarian Trump instinctively knew how to cow the GOP, from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on down. That’s his particular genius.
Further thought: Are there Aunt Lydias within the Trump administration? Maybe we won’t know until later since those who have stood up to the steamroller have been “crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot.” We can dream.
In the meantime, we have Aunt Lydia’s assessment of autocratic regimes, which is only too accurate:
How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot.
