Can the Handmaid's Tale Lead to Civil War?

Margaret Atwood's prescience and my own culpability in where we're at as a country.

Reminder: If images are not showing up for you, click the OPTIONS box in the upper right hand corner of your email and select “Show remote content in this message.”)

Can Reading The Handmaid's Tale Lead to Civil War?

“Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.   

For a few months now, I've been quietly (sometimes not so quietly) talking about the possibility of civil war -- or at least severe civil disturbance -- in the U.S. Mostly, my thoughts and concerns have been met with "It can't happen here."  "Oh, MC, that's never going to happen."

The truth is I started thinking about the potential for serious civil and political disruption in our country well over a year ago, but the reasons I believe in the potential for such chaos became vastly more clear for me last October after I hosted a group of women friends at my home.

Being a part of this group has given me the great gift of friendship with whip-smart women who have true hearts of gold. We've got plenty of differences, but one major thing in common --  a love for reading.  (It doesn't hurt that we all also share a healthy appreciation for fun, good food, laughs, and yes, just a wee bit of wine.) 

So last October, they all trekked on over to my house where I plied them with shrimp, guacamole, brie, and always-necessary vino.  After about an hour of munching and catching up on each other's personal and career news, we finally came around to the purpose of the evening.

The book we'd all voted to read and discuss was a book I’d read before back in the 1980s — Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale,” which because of its relevance to current politics had been made into a Netflix television series that ran for three seasons beginning in 2017.

Predictably, the conversation began with timely comparisons by several of us to Trump's thumb nosing at Greta Thunberg, which was that day in the news.

But the discussion was derailed in fewer than 10 minutes.

The reason? One woman felt I was taking the discussion in a political direction and made it clear that she was very uncomfortable. Chastened by an inordinate desire to play nice in the sandbox, I meekly submitted. I gave up on meaty dissection of the novel and stayed safely on the surface -- why'd the handmaids have to wear those weird hats? -- for the rest of the night.

But my head was reeling. Is there any book more political -- and perhaps more politically important for women living under a Trump administration -- than The Handmaid's Tale? How could I reasonably keep “politics” out of my comments?

The group continued chatting amiably, albeit somewhat awkwardly after the "upset," while I was mentally, silently, revisiting other books we'd read: books like "Night," "Daring to Drive," and a host of other overtly political books. But even the light books -- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society-type novels -- always had a political thread ... I mean, really, what book doesn't?

But now, in the Trump era and with a book specifically about women's risk for being subjugated by a maniacal political regime, now, of all times, of course, I was hearing "Politics shouldn't be a part of the discussion." And worse, I was going along to get along.

Conversation resumed mostly normal flow and eventually the night wound down. When I opened the front door of my home an hour later as the women were saying their goodnights, they didn't get two feet before they were confronted by a massive, and I mean MASSIVE, spider web that was stretched from a nearby bush to the eave of the house, draping dramatically in front of where we stood stopped in our tracks. In the middle of the web was a large spider spinning her heart out creating this magnificence that hadn't been there just two hours earlier when they’d all arrived.

We took photos, oohed and aahed, and the women finally ducked around the web and went on their ways. But as I tidied up plates and stole a few more bites of brie, I couldn't shake the symbolism ... on such a night as we'd had. I recalled a quote learned when I was quite young: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

Because that's what I was doing -- deceiving myself by not confronting the issue in the moment and by not being brave enough to respectfully argue it out. But also I was deceiving the woman who didn't want to discuss politics -- by pretending that I was doing it for her, when really I was doing it for myself, keeping myself safe in a cocoon of friendship I didn't want to lose.

I stayed up late after they left. Around 1 or 2 am, I checked on the spider's web before going to bed. It was swaying a bit in a slight breeze. By the time I got up around 6 am and went to the door to see it again, it had disappeared. Just one wisp of a slender thread was left hanging from the bush.

Over the next few weeks, after giving it a lot of (probably too much) thought, I decided to take a couple of months away from the regular meet-ups with my friends. I was trying to wrap my head around the confluence of the intimacy of the group -- so personal and comforting, with the increasingly acrimonious national division -- so political and scary.

The whole thing, as small in some ways as it was, actually shook the core of who I perceived myself to be: in 2008, I'd quit a weekly newspaper column over pressure to stop writing about politics, and in 2015, I'd left my biggest employer because of my support for gay marriage.

Was I now going to become silent in the face of an uncomfortable political climate?

The thought that kept coming up repeatedly for me as I pondered whether to permanently leave the group or not was this: If one person voluntarily silences their voice for the sake of a community, how will that weakened voice ever be strong enough, alert enough, swift enough, to protect those whose voices are one day silenced by force?

Eventually, though, I returned to the fold and made an uneasy peace with the tacit agreement we’d all made to generally eschew talk of current political conditions. I've been conflicted about it ever since.

And while the dynamic at recent gatherings is pleasant, I find myself silenced -- silenced by my own self.

I no longer bring up obvious connections to what's going on in our country.  For example, we recently read "Unfollow: a Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church," and despite the obvious parallels with 2020 evangelical Christians and the Trump/Pence administration, I kept my mouth shut.

That fall night in 2019, self-censorship was the canary in the coal mine of my mind.

Recent events -- a planned kidnapping, treason trial, and execution for Michigan's governor … can you even believe this is happening? -- have me more conflicted than ever.

And lately, Margaret Atwood is looking more prescient than ever: the planned takeover of the Michigan State Capital by the “Wolverine Watchmen,” mirrors her Handmaid story line that kicked off with the “Sons of Jacob” executing a coup d'ėtat by bombing Congress to smithereens.

We've got a real live handmaid nearly appointed to the Supreme Court. 

Our president is an intellectual Luddite, lurching our nation willy-nilly toward idiocy and infection.

The exodus of intelligence from our government and scientific strongholds has increased alarmingly.   

Our CDC -- once the most respected authority on disease control in the world -- has become an avatar for ridicule.  Our nation's global reputation is in tatters.

Scientists?  People who actually understand facts? People like Rick Bright, a senior vaccine scientist turned whistle blower? Read this report and weep. 

Our democracy, public and personal rights, responsibilities, and liberties are under grave attack.

And worst of all, normal, every day people are fighting about wearing masks, revealing a rotting, twisted distortion of what it means to be a patriot to one's country and countrymen.

The United States is standing in front of the gates of hell. 

And it began with people like me -- who, in the privacy of our living rooms, around our kitchen counters, began acquiescing to insanity long ago-- in the smallest of ways, sometimes out of the best of intentions for others and sometimes out of self-preservation.

My childlike desire to keep the peace among a circle of friends has lead me down a path of self-betrayal and betrayal of my duty as a patriot.  I'm hanging like that last slender thread to a web of my own making.

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel

Over the last year, I didn't take a side. Instead, I contributed to the emboldening of the Trump mentality.  And I'm sorry for that.  Democracies fail when citizens keep silent.

Am I ready to take a stand for truth, for transparency, for open dialogue even when it’s difficult? Am I willing to lose friends if necessary and alienate family? Will I finally walk my talk?

I better decide now. Because my cowardice, amplified by millions of others who have similarly self-censored for the sake of preserving relationships, has brought us all ever closer to precipice: the activation of the militias and madness of the man who would be king.

“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas