10 times The Handmaid’s Tale got way too real

The Handmaid’s Tale — “Late” Episode 103 — Offred visits Janine’s baby with Serena Joy and remembers the early days of the revolution before Gilead. Ofglen faces a difficult challenge. Ofglen (Alexis Bledel), shown. (Photo by: George Kraychyk/Hulu)

“They can’t do that” “They just did”

How often have I found myself saying those words over the last few months? “They can’t do that.” “There’s no way.” “It won’t happen, not here.” Well, they can, and there is, and it did. Over and over, whatever “it” is, however seemingly illegal or ridiculous or obviously morally wrong, happens again and again.

I don’t want to sound like an end times doom-sayer on the sidewalk. But I’ll admit that current events make it difficult to distinguish how bad things really could get. As of now, we’re all still leading mostly normal lives, the same ones we lived before the election. And we may get through this one way or another and continue right on doing just that. But never before has there been such day to day concern about potential war, nuclear weapons, corruption in the government, rampant racism and sexism, economic concerns, rights-trampling, I-could-go-on as there is now.

And lines like this alongside every other item in this slideshow remind me that we’re always only a few “they can’t do that”s away from something awful if good people with power don’t fight back. Because heaven knows June, like us, didn’t have the power to meaningfully fight back.