Apologies for the second post in 12 hours, I've been rewatching the series and find myself wondering about Gilead's backstory!

I'm wondering about your guys' headcanon/inferences about what caused Gilead's rise to power. A lack of fertility in the population and environmental decline are reasons for outrage, but what kind of promises did Gilead make to the layman about how they should make things better? I feel like the extreme shift in values, including the breakup in traditional family units, mass execution of political and religious dissidents, suspension of the Constitution and a right to a fair trial, ending public education, banning mainstream media publications and banning female literacy are huge leaps to make- people may be outraged and desperate, but most of the policies I mentioned do not offer a solution to the problems Offred cites for the takeover of a totalitarian dictatorship from a constitutional democracy.

In reality, dictatorships happen when they promise to put and end to a corrupt system and promise solutions- in Nazi Germany with the national socialist party it was an end to oppression and poverty from the rest of Europe as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. In Russia after the revolution, an end to severe income inequality and a class-based system. In Cuba (though they are not a totalitarian dictatorship), and end to poverty and foreign influence in government via a communist government that promised socialized medicine, education, freedom of choice in profession and religion and a government that put the wants and needs of the people first.

What do you think Gilead promised in order to gain support in their takeover? Free healthcare? An end to food and goods shortages? A plan to restore the environment? How did they sweeten the pot in order to win collaborarors and end constitutional democracy in the USA?