I recently finished reading ‘The Testaments’, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to her 1985 novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale. It is set 15 years later after Offred, the narrator of The Handmaid’s Tale makes her perilous attempt at escape from Gilead to Canada.
Offred has little to say in this book – two or three lines at most. Instead, the tale is left to three narrators: Agnes who grew up in Gilead as the daughter of an important commander, Daisy, an anti-Gilead activist teenager living in Canada and Aunt Lydia who was an important character in the earlier work and who has a lot more to say here.
Gilead, formerly most of the United States, is still a dystopian, highly misogynistic society that it was in the earlier work and we learn a lot more about how it was founded (and it reminds me scarily of some recent events).
Lydia is the leader of the ‘aunts’ – the gender norm enforcers who preside over the lives of the handmaids and train the wives. But Lydia, underneath her outspoken strong support for Gilead is really collecting information on its corruption and deceit with the aim of eventually bringing it down. We learn that, before the creation of Gilead, she was a judge and used some deft political maneuvering to avoid the fate of most other educated women of the time – execution.
The Testaments is more plot-driven than The Handmaid’s Tale and Atwood is very good at releasing little bits of information that move the plot forward and reveal the relationship between the various characters.
I like it a lot and, if you like any of Atwood’s earlier works, you will too. It’s available on the Maryland Digital Library. Give it a try!!
I have very mixed feelings about the election. On the one hand we won the presidency and got Trump out of office. On the other hand, we didn’t manage to take control of the Senate, even though the polls showed we were likely to and we lost seats in the House despite pre-election predictions that we would expand our margins.
For Democrats to have a majority in the Senate and the House means that we have to elect members in states and districts that may not be as liberal as we might think they should be. Most people don’t eat, sleep and drink politics and are more concerned with putting food on their tables, a roof over their heads and raising their kids than studying policy alternatives. So the words that are used to describe certain policy proposals can, and have been, misunderstood.
‘Defund the Police‘
For most of us these words don’t literally mean ‘abolish the police’, but rather use some of the money to attack the causes of crime as well as using other tool – mental health professionals or social workers to address certain kinds of problems rather than relying on law enforcement officers to handle every problem. This is something I personally support. But the phrase: ‘Defund the Police’ sounds to many like a plan to eliminate law enforcement and that is very worrisome to many and was effectively used by Republicans in this past election to scare people.
‘Democratic Socialism’
Many on the left wing of the Democratic Party describe themselves as ‘Democratic Socialists’. Now these folks are not socialists in the traditional sense of mandating state ownership of the means of production and abolishing corporations. In general they seem to be advocating for a return to some of the elements of the New Deal – stronger labor unions, more regulations to hold corporations accountable, a fairer distribution of income through tax policy and so forth. I personally support many of their goals. But…once again the word ‘socialism’ is scary to many people who equate it with communism. Republicans used this word very effectively particularly among Hispanic populations in Florida and Texas.
‘Medicare for All’
I support single-payer health care in our country. Most do not, however. Surveys show that most Americans are satisfied with their health insurance and are fearful, based on phrases like ‘Medicare for All’ that a Democratic majority in the House and Senate would take away their right to choose how they get their healthcare. Medicare has its own problems anyway. I think the idea of a ‘public option’ is a good way to get folks to understand that there can be better ways to pay for their healthcare than the private insurance model.
‘Shut Down the Oil and Gas Industry’
Climate change scares the hell out of me. We had a record number of hurricanes and tropical storms this year and unprecedented wildfires in California, Colorado and other states. This past winter, one of the warmest on record, the Great Lakes didn’t freeze over. This year we have had sixteen weather disasters that cost $1 billion or more. We need to act swiftly to prevent things from getting much worse.
But hundreds of thousands Americans work in the oil and gas industry. How can we say ‘Shut Down the Oil and Gas Industry’ without reassuring these folks that they will have other jobs, at least as good? We have to be more nuanced in our speech if we expect to persuade folks to support our party and our programs.
These are just some examples – there are lots more. If we want to build solid, lasting majorities across the country we need to be much more careful about how we frame our policy choices and the words we use. Words do matter.
Today’s musical selection, also from ‘Cabaret’ is almost the anti-2020 song. With half the world, it seems, in lockdown most of us can only fantasize about this kind of thing. But we can look forward to its return! Liza Minnelli won an Academy Award for this show as did Joel Grey.
We’ve been watching ‘Babylon Berlin’ on Netflix. It’s set in Berlin around 1920 and watching it reminded me of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories around which the show ‘Cabaret’ is loosely based. So here is the fabulous Joel Grey singing ‘Willkommen’ in the opening of the 1972 adaptation of Cabaret. It’s an amazing scene!
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