Is this satire? I can't imagine a show being cancelled for this reason.

I read Handmaid's Tale circa 1990. I thought Gilead was feasible back then. Maybe not in the next decade, but social/political forces could shape themselves for a later Gilead. The USA has moved quite a few steps along this path in the past 10 years.

We should note that the USA breaks apart in HandMaid's Tale. A minor subplot is that Gilead is just one piece of this former country and seems to be in a small scale war with its neighbors. But it's been a while since I read the book.