Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale paints a grim picture of a country under the iron fist of a theocratic dictatorship, which rigidly controls the lives of women and tolerates dissent from no one of either gender. The Republic of Gilead occupies New England and parts of New York, and may be trying to expand its borders through a war that Offred, the protagonist, occasionally mentions. A patriarchy ostensibly based on Judeo-Christian values, Gilead assigns specific titles and duties to each citizen based in part on their ability (or inability) to have children. As mentioned in my previous blog, Offred’s role as a Handmaid is to bear a child with the “Commander” of the household to which she is assigned.

Many people who have read Atwood’s book believe repressive Gilead-type regimes already exist in some parts of the world; some even believe the U.S. is taking steps in that direction. The curtailment of access to abortion, and the political maneuvering to seat Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court are cited as potential precursors to the emergence of a Gilead-type government in America.

For my part, I don’t think Gilead would occur in the way Atwood describes in her book. For one thing, it’s hard to imagine such a repressive, intolerant government taking over an area as liberal as New York and New England. Despite its Puritanical history, New England today seems the least susceptible of all regions in the U.S. to a theocratic takeover. If outsiders tried to impose such a government on New Englanders, there would likely be a civil war that the outsiders would lose.

It’s also true that the conditions that opened the door for Gilead haven’t occurred on the scale described in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the future “Symposium on Gileadean Studies,” Professor Pieixoto suggests that “plummeting Caucasian birthrates” were a major reason for the emergence of Gilead. He goes on to cite a variety of possible causes for the decline: “Stillbirths, miscarriages, and genetic deformities were widespread and on the increase, and this trend has been linked to the various nuclear-accidents, shutdowns, and incidents of sabotage that characterized the period, as well as to leakages from chemical- and biological-warfare stockpiles and toxic-waste disposal sites, of which there were many thousands … and to the uncontrolled use of chemical insecticides, herbicides, and other sprays.” To be sure, all of these “causes” have happened — Flint, Michigan, Three-Mile Island, Love Canal — but not so frequently and so widely as to bring about a substantial decline in birthrates for Caucasians or any other race. *

Another condition that led to Gilead is harder to discount: terrible violence against women that apparently became so widespread women were willing to sacrifice their freedoms to protect themselves. Indications of this violence emerge gradually. Offred, relaxing in a bath, reflects on how easy it was to ignore this rising tide of violence: “There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men.” In another part of the book, Offred recalls Aunt Lydia showing her and the other Handmaids porno films “with women hanging from trees, or upside-down, naked, with their legs apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed.” In response to the films, Aunt Lydia says, “You see what things used to be like? That was what they thought of women, then.”

Again, we haven’t reached a point where violence against women is so widespread that females are ready to jettison their basic human rights (Gilead will not allow them even to read), but it’s worth considering whether we are moving in that direction. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 1 in 3 women will experience some form of sexual violence during their lives while 1 in 5 will be raped. In addition, 20-25 percent of college women will be victims of forced sexual contact while enrolled. Another agency, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), places the number of women who’ve experienced attempted or completed rape at 1 in 6 and further notes that an American (usually a girl or woman) is sexually assaulted an average of every 98 seconds. Paralleling these frightening statistics are recent news stories about female joggers being brutally murdered, making Offred’s recollections all the more plausible. However, it’s worth noting that the long-range trend in sexual violence appears to be downward. RAINN, for example, points out that sexual violence in America has fallen off by 1/2 in the last 20 years. In any case, with the rise of the #Me Too Movement, it seems extremely unlikely that women will be willing to sacrifice their rights any time soon regardless of the violence and harassment many of them have endured.

With these thoughts in mind, I find it highly unlikely that the U.S. or a large section of it is going to fall prey to a theocratic dictatorship. But it’s possible — even plausible — that a Gilead-like regime could grab control of a community, perhaps even several communities, especially if they isolated themselves from others who did not share their beliefs. In light of what happened with Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple and David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, it’s fair to say a miniature Republic of Gilead could arise somewhere in the U.S. at almost any time. Perhaps the best way to keep that from happening is to recognize it as something that could happen unless civilized people are vigilant. Atwood makes that point herself when facing the question of whether The Handmaid’s Tale is a prediction. “No, it isn’t a prediction,” she asserts, “because predicting the future isn’t really possible …. Let’s say it’s an antiprediction: If this future can be described in detail, maybe it won’t happen. But such wishful thinking cannot be depended on either.”

• According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2016, the fertility rate in the United States was the lowest it has ever been. The Center reports that birthrates declined to record lows in all groups under age 30. Among women ages 20 to 24, the decline was 4 percent. For women 25 to 29, the rate fell 2 percent.