It's somewhat presumptuous of me

to submit a review for

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Attwood

It's been around forever; everyone knows it; and even I had read it already, long ago.  I didn't remember much of it except the frozen bank accounts, the declining birth rate and the surrogate mothers.  I don't remember if I was too young to understand or if I just consumed books too fast in those days.  She creates a society held together by violence and the threat of violence...only through denial can you survive.  It's the American old south--it's Nazi run Holland--it's maybe even now in some parts of the world.  What's it like to be a woman in Khandahar province of Afghanistan?

On the radio yesterday NPR reviewed a book that described how Hitler looked to Americans living in Germany during the pre-war period.  The overwhelming consensus was that it was "simply impossible" for him to have become chancellor.  He was insane; the people were too civilized to accept such a lunatic as a leader.  And then later--no one would start a war against Russia; no one would be crazy enough to try to destroy an entire race of people.  No one took him seriously.

Just like today, only a few crazies nowadays believe that the Holocaust didn't happen, but what about Khamenei's people?  Don't they trust that he wouldn't say such lies?  They don't have access to Wikipedia; they don't travel to holocaust museums; they could easily believe that the thousands of frames of movie footage are all a modern fabrication and the eye-witness books are created by ghost writers hired by the Jewish elders in some weird secret plan for world domination.  Also like today, no one believes Assad can stay in power in Syria except Assad himself, yet he's been murdering his own citizens for two years.  Why can't the world stop him?  Why won't it?

The Handmaid's Tale is a reminder that insane things happen when a minority takes control and the voices of reason are stifled.  No one thought it could happen there either--until it did.  But it's not that simple--in another recent book, The Poisonwood Bible, you get a vivid case against simple majority rule.  Majority rule, without checks and balances and open debate of the issues, is just as dangerous.

One last point from the book and then I hope I'm off women's issues for a while.  Margaret Attwood is a true master of the zippy one-liners. 

A man is just a woman's way of making other women. 

Tee hee.