What great writers might say about living in the Trump era

I have always been an avid reader. In recent years, I developed the habit of jotting down notes on what I personally took away from my readings. Having just looked over some of these notes, I noticed that many of them have relevance to the confusion and chaos we’re living through under our current government.

Below are a few of these notes that seem especially relevant. Most of the notes are not direct quotes, just my thoughts about what these writers said in the books I’ve read. The only direct quotes included in the following list are those from Michael Didbin, Julian Barnes and William Butler Yeats.

Samuel Beckett: If you think things can’t get much worse, just wait.

Homer: For some leaders, being strong not weak takes precedence over being either good or bad.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: It’s easy to be sidetracked by the right and power to do whatever you want if you don’t have a moral compass.

Anton Chekov: Members of the ruling party are, for the most part, sick of the status quo but are too comfortable, lazy, uninspired and unmotivated to address their own despondency and decline — not to mention the problems of society in general.

Gustave Flaubert: Fools fail to see things as they are and instead look at life through a lens that sees things as they want them to be.

Ian McEwan: Some people who really do know how the environment actually operates simply can’t resist denying this knowledge.

Michael Didbin: Too much stability is the last thing a politician wants. Politicians have a vested interest in problems, crises, and general unease.

Julian Barnes: It is useful to be reminded that some men mistake boorishness for honesty. Just as others mistake primness for virtue.

George Elliot: It’s not the possession of fame and good fortune that make life palatable. It’s the possession of humanitarian sensibilities like compassion, empathy, humor, sociability, and friendliness.

Martin Amis: The state of modern human nature, our alienation from nature and our polarization makes us yearn for protection against rapid change, unpredictability and impending chaos.

John Le Carre: Effective intelligence is multidimensional. It must not categorize information in either all black or all white terms but rather in shades of gray that separate what portion of information can be put to good use for society and what should be isolated from society to protect it from harm.

Virginia Woolf: If only we could all think of things in themselves — with no anger or ideology.

William Butler Yeats: The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Shelby Foote: Achieving change, especially that which helps those least able to help themselves, has been a constant struggle throughout U.S. history. Compromise between the powerful and the disenfranchised is the only way to avoid long-lasting catastrophic conflict and to advance socially and economically.

Jacob DeSeut: To defeat negative forces it’s not enough to be fair-minded, honest, tolerant, idealistic, and principled. You have to be willing to put your well-being and comfort on the line to preserve your humanity.

Toni Morrison: Community voice is perhaps the only hope for bringing about change.

This list is bracketed by quotes from Beckett and Morrison. The first foreshadows the difficult times that loom on the horizon as Congress continues to sit on its hands and as Trump’s corruption continues to fester. The last suggests that the public needs to stand up for change and get out and vote.