Alexa, watch The Handmaid’s Tale

Having drinks with co-workers a year ago I expressed my concern the US was becoming a dystopia out of my childhood science fiction, with people having lost sense of history, of citizenship, community, having lost their ability to even think critically. I pointed to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Orwell’s 1984, THX 1138, as worlds where people lived glued vicariously to a reified reality ever present on video screens, not participating in anything approaching informed democracy. One friendly intelligent engineer’s face brightened, „I know just what you mean!“ he said. „Here, let me show you,“ pulling out his cellphone, „there’s this show The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s just what you’re talking about. You’ve got to see this!“ I looked for irony, waited for the drumroll cueing applause, but there was none. This guy, and our colleagues were serious in their calling up a video clip on YouTube to show me. Triumphant, „Here, it’s just like what you’re talking about!“

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