Blessed Be the Fruit Loops

 Blessed Be the Fruit Loops

J.Michael Pontious M.D.

April 26, 2025

I have to admit something to you…I have been reading dystopian literature since my time at Enid High School in the early 1970’s.   Brave New World by Aldous Huxley held my attention like no other book ever had.   I must have read it three or four times.   When I was a junior, I used it to write my semester research paper.  I got a “C” on that paper as Mrs. Falls thought it was a bit “anti-American”.  

She was probably correct and I paid the price for my critical thinking skills.

More recently, I have re-read 1984 by George Orwell.  If you have not read it recently I would suggest you dust it off and take a fresh look at this masterpiece.

As I listened to the news last week, my ears were drawn to a recent comment by our “Liar-in-Chief” that relates to his concern about the declining birth rate among white American women.   Seems that our paragon of subtlety and restraint, has once again surfaced from the depths of his polling anxiety to remind us that white women aren’t popping out enough babies to sustain what he quaintly calls “our heritage.” 

Nothing says “Make America Great Again” like treating women as ambulatory incubators with voting rights.

You might remember The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece that’s less a work of fiction and more a working memo for the GOP’s next policy retreat. (Again, if you have not read this book it is essential reading to understand the role of women in at least a portion of our country.) 

In Gilead, women are reduced to their reproductive utility, draped in crimson modesty cloaks, and subjected to monthly ritualized rape—all in service of repopulating a theocratic hellscape. 

I assume that you are seeing the pattern here.

Trump’s lament isn’t new, of course. It’s the same tired tune played by men who view declining birth rates not as a symptom of late-stage capitalism’s refusal to fund childcare, but as a personal affront to their vision of the way our country “should be”. The logic is simple: If women aren’t breeding, it’s because they’re too busy existing—getting an education, tackling a career, or god forbid, finding autonomy. 

So now you also start to see the broader plan.  The solutions proposed by the demographic doomsayers—restricting abortion, gutting reproductive rights, glorifying “traditional” family roles—sound less like policy and more like Handmaid’s fan fiction.  The next thing will be for them to suggest replacing birth control pamphlets with scarlet robes and assigning each MAGA semen producer a rotating cadre of “handmaids” to ensure the “right kind” of babies are produced in our utopian future.

But the reality needs to be remembered, Atwood’s Gilead was a warning, not a blueprint. 

And yet we find ourselves watching lawmakers draft legislation that reads like a “Classics Illustrated” version of her nightmares. Texas’s abortion bounty system?  States criminalizing miscarriage? The illegality of prescribing misoprostol right here in Oklahoma (HB 1168)

So maybe, just maybe, women are not interested in bringing a life into this bizarre morass of craziness that surrounds all of us right now.  As the protest signs recall these days “This is NOT normal”.

And here’s a modest proposal, dripping with the sarcasm this mockery deserves: Let’s rebrand the whole endeavor. Swap out the MAGA hats for red bonnets. Replace “Save America” with “Praise Be.” 

Spoiler alert: Gilead didn’t end well. And neither will this delusional nostalgia for a past that never existed…