Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005 by Margaret Atwood (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004)

The contrast in this week’s news between the billions in bonuses paid to Wall Street financiers who benefited nicely from government handouts of taxpayer money and the suddenly exacerbated misery of millions of impoverished Haitians was unbearable.

What is the text message number for AHH!

The anger of ordinary citizens hasn’t risen to a fever pitch yet because there is still a reservoir of faith in the American system. We can watch public coffers being robbed in broad daylight by the invisible hand of the market as long as someone offers us a plausible explanation. Instead of “We had to destroy the village to save it,” we get a “Wall Street bailout” was needed for a “jobless recovery.”

I smell a utopia.

Utopias are ideology on steroids. Utopias work. Not because they deliver peace and justice. They work because they deliver the illusion of peace and justice.

Margaret Atwood writes about utopia by writing about dystopia. The perfect society and the broken society meet head on at full speed in several of her novels. By writing about dystopia, Atwood pulls back the curtain on the dark side of utopia. Two novels, The Handmaiden’s Tale and Oryx and Crake – which revolve around the themes, respectively, of the oppression of women and environmental collapse – aren’t dealing with events that haven’t occurred in human history. That would be a subject for science fiction. Atwood writes about the nightmare that might happen based on the one that already has. In Writing with Intent, Atwood confesses that she has been fascinated by “what if” scenarios since childhood:

“Every novel begins with a what if and then sets forth its axioms. The what if of Oryx and Crake is simply, What if we continue down the road we’re already on? How slippery is the slope? What are our saving graces? Who’s got the will to stop us?”

What if America became a Christian theocracy? Atwood dealt with this scenario in The Handmaiden’s Tale. It may seem unlikely as a real life scenario. Would Americans allow their country to be turned into a Jesus version of the Iranian republic? Well, they already have. Remember the Puritans?

In Writing Utopia, one of the many essays in this exquisite collection, Atwood writes: “What is needed for a really good tyranny is an unquestionable idea or authority. Political disagreement is political disagreement; but political disagreement with a theocracy is heresy.”

Today in Iran political protestors are facing trial as moraheb, “enemies of God.” Who are the enemies of God in America? The Christian right has a list and they’re checking it twice to see who has been naughty and nice. What if the name for “enemies of God” in America was progressive? Glenn Beck thinks so.

Theocracies love enemies; perhaps more than they love God. It’s easy to laugh at Pat Robertson’s callous statement about the Haitian disaster* and overlook its deep roots in a religious utopianism that is embraced by millions of Americans: God has blessed America and cursed other nations. Atwood isn’t writing about dystopia because it hasn’t happened; not only has it happened before in America, it’s happening again. And this time the Puritans own cable television networks.  

The idea of a Christian theocracy in America may seem like pure fiction to many people. Let’s hope it is. I would rather read about it in a book than a newspaper. People would probably argue that it will never happen here simply because the majority of Americans would never permit it. Really?

The American people would never permit their government to deny basic Constitutional rights – such as the right to a speedy trial instead of indefinite imprisonment – to its own citizens. Oh right, that’s already happened. Guantanamo. But the American people would never permit religious institutions to successfully lobby their government to deny basic Constitutional rights – such as the right to marry – to its own citizens. Oh right, that happened too. Prop 8.

What if questions have a peculiar grace. They open us to possibilities that we aren’t prepared for and would rather not contemplate. Their value isn’t in what they allow us to imagine, but in what they allow us to see about ourselves. Whether we have the cajones to confront the truth about ourselves depends on our capacity to stay with the what if question. Atwood’s genius is asking the what if question in a way that always captivates us.  

*Robertson said that the Haitian people brought the earthquake on themselves by making a “pact with the devil” in the 18^th century during their rebellion against French colonizers.