I had to study the book in High School, and it was nowhere *NEAR* as shrill as the TV adaptation is making it out to be.
Reading the book, it was very clear to me that Atwood had meant for it to be a speculative story, and not a piece of shrill propaganda.
Ditto. It's not Margaret Atwood that is pushing the most extreme "Christian Taliban" nonsense about the current administration. And, of course, the first season of The Handmaid's Tale would have been in development well before Donald Trump announced his candidacy. IMO it would have made a pretty good one-season miniseries, as season 1 was a faithful adaptation of the novel. It's subsequent seasons that get increasingly shrill and preachy.
(Not to mention that if current trends continue, by the time the series ends, episodes will consist exclusively of Elisabeth Moss staring into the camera while 80s hits play on the soundtrack.)
The tragic irony is that she was right - about fundamentalist Islam.
ISIS, Boko Haram and Al Shabab have had slavery and sex slavery. ISIS had AUNTS, female enforcers beating women for not adhering to the dress code and women who supervised the sex slaves.
In this regard, she was prescient. Problem is, she was irrationally afraid of Christianity. Plus liberals are so Christophobic. That’s why “The Handmaid’s Tale” is required reading by so many college students, thus creating the large fan base for the show AND public knowledge of it.
Yet liberals are so irrationally protective of Islam that they ignore the actual Taliban killing school girls and ISIS sex slaves ... while smearing Christian neighbors as wanna-be Taliban, just eager to rape their liberal neighbors into submission.