Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum
We the People Will Prevail
The final episode of the sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale is now in the rearview mirror. Margaret Atwood and Elisabeth Moss have a message for us. No one is coming to save us. It’s up to us to stand against this tyranny.
The timing of the Hulu series is not a coincidence. It began and ended under the oppressive and dystopian reigns of Trump. It was not planned that way!
Synchronicity is not a random coincidence. The timing of this series provides a meaningful connection that was not causally planned but has relevance for this moment. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel and the brilliant adaptation of the story is a cautionary tale we must not ignore.
In the novel and in the first episodes of the series, June Osborne is enslaved by the Waterfords as a handmaid. In a moment of complete despair, curled up in the closet of her tiny room she found a coded message etched into the closet wall by a previous handmaid. These are the words scratched into the wall:
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
The words are a mock Latin phrase which translates to “don’t let the bastards grind you down”. June didn’t understand the meaning of the message until much later in the story, but the phrase took on a religious connotation for her. She prayed it silently each night, not knowing what the words meant. She prayed the words because;
“It sounds right, and it will have to do, because I don’t know what else I can say to God.”
It was a message of resistance and perseverance and it became a call to action.
We too have been given a message and it must not be lost on us. We are living in an authoritarian takeover of our county. These are desperate times and we don’t have the luxury of despair. Those who are being abducted, starved, silenced, sent to gulags, forced to give birth to a rapist’s child, stripped of health care, fired without cause, capriciously investigated, violently threatened if they oppose Trump and his radical cult—they need us to find our legs, our voice and our humanity.
Let’s be clear. Eventually, they will come after all of us!
We must resist this tyranny and we will prevail!
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
The H4D Team