"The feminist rage that fuels The Handmaid’s Tale is still omnipresent, as is the harrowing depiction of the torture inflicted by the authority figures of Gilead."

"In the third episode, the first of three this season directed by [Elisabeth] Moss, June is subjected to some especially intense punishments that avoid tipping over into torture porn, but just barely.... While the last two seasons meant sitting through a lot of ugly conflict with no relief, this season brings some truly emotional rewards...

From "The Handmaid’s Tale Gets Its Mojo Back" — a Vulture review of the new seasons — the 4th season — of "The Handmaid's Tale." Did you realize that was still on?! 

The key phrase in that review summarizes why I have never wanted to watch: torture porn.

The review — purporting to resist "spoilers" — gives no information on what the "emotional rewards" might be. Not the titillation of torture porn, one presumes. But what? 

When a person has focused for so long on escaping an oppressor, what do they do when they finally emerge and get to breathe real, liberating oxygen again? That quandary taps right into the “what now?” vibe of 2021, when the Trump era is (at least in theory) behind us and we’re starting to see signs of light at the end of our pandemic tunnel.

The signs I'm seeing are that people don't want to "breathe real, liberating oxygen" when it is available, that they'll go out of their way to construct restraints out of nothing. When people are really locked down, they can long — convincingly — for freedom. But set them free, and they long for captivity.

FROM THE EMAIL: Whiskey Mike — reading the last 2 sentence of this post — sends me this Biblical quote, Numbers 14:1-4: 

And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.