Since Trump’s return, I have immersed myself in every book I can find that might explain how we got to this moment. Politics. Economy. History. Sometimes I begin a book and then move on to another one — Gaza, Brexit, Ukraine, Trump’s war on the justice department. The books are piled up all over the house. On top of the reading there is the writing. And the video production. Most mornings I start with a coffee and an attempt to map out a new essay or lock down a Meidas Canada interview. From there, I work on these issues back and forth until finally I sit down before bed to finesse things. Obsessive? Yah, probably. But I’m just doing my best to make sense of these dark times. In the first days of Trump, the task seemed straightforward and urgent — to encourage and reassure people by offering possibilities for resistance. Over the last 18 months, Canada has been remarkable at rallying together and standing strong on the international stage. But the intensity is hard to maintain. People get tired. They want to get back to their lives. The “Elbows Up” spirit becomes harder to maintain as we face increasingly complex trade-offs in the economy and democracy, while watching inaction on the looming climate crisis. And the bogeyman in Washington hasn’t gone away. Sometimes I feel like Cassandra shouting into the ether. At other times I have been accused of undermining the team. I don’t mind being written off as a crank. What concerns me is whether I have something to offer that is fresh, realistic and hopeful. Being a “content” creator is not on my bingo card. I felt I needed some perspective — outside the realm of politics. It began with Charles Dickens. This is not to give you the false impression that I am some kind of student of literature. Far from it. On long road trips, usually filled with podcasts, I tried my hand at an audiobook version of A Tale of Two Cities. The audiobook was 27 hours long. I didn’t think I would last more than 45 minutes. But the sweeping narrative, the vivid characters and the beauty of the writing had me spellbound. Sure, I remembered the punchline of “It’s a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,” but I had forgotten the complexity of Sydney Carton. Could we create a believable character today who was as flawed, cynical and ultimately heroic as Sydney Carton? From A Tale of Two Cities, I fell into David Copperfield. I was enthralled with the world of Peggotty, the Micawbers, Steerforth and Uriah Heep. They not only became real, but they made themselves at home in my imagination. They travel with me. I then decided to try my hand at Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, with its long, drawn-out discussions of morality, justice, and faith. Not succinct. Not cut down. Entire chapters exploring questions of our responsibility to the world and each other. These books are considered high literature today. But back in the day they were the stuff of popular culture – serialized newspaper stories that people read and debated. It was popular entertainment. People devoured the ideas, then debated them with one another. Every generation comes of age with the arrogant belief that what came before was less enlightened and less aware than our own time. Dostoevsky and Dickens have forced me to do a major rethink. It is impossible to imagine such compelling plot lines being created today. Who would pay attention? We are busy people. Our sense of the world comes from two-sentence blurbs and the AI-generated memes that flash on our phones. Literacy rates are dropping like a stone. It was reported in 2024 that only 35% of American high school seniors were proficient enough to analyze the arguments in fictional themes. I have talked with teachers and professors who say that, as their students lose the attention span to read a novel, they are losing the ability to process complex arguments. Rose Horowitch, in a recent article in the Atlantic, argues that the end of reading as part of human existence has arrived. She points out that the culture of reading has existed for only a very short period in the long history of humanity. Our phone addictions have led to increasingly short attention spans and even shorter memories. Taking the time needed for the interior contemplation of reading is becoming increasingly difficult. What we are losing is the power of imagination. Without imagination, there is no way out of the dead end of the moment. Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet on a gambling platform, but only 2 percent read to a child on a given day. What a strange reality in a world where access to information is at an unprecedented level. I remember being in a bar in Washington a dozen years ago when a friend tried to convince me that the next great work of literature would come from Twitter. It would be a global effort, he said. “There are millions and millions of people sharing their thoughts every minute,” he gushed. “There has never been like this before. We are watching a global library being created before our eyes. Imagine the potential.” Such was the naïve power of connectivity of the early 2000s. We thought we could bring the world together with the simple click of a screen. If that were possible it seemed possible to transform the future. Instead, this chimera of a global library descended into a toxic tower of Babel of selfies, bitching, and rage BOTs. Rather than becoming more connected, we found ourselves increasingly isolated from each other. Dostoevsky, writing in 1890, wouldn’t have been surprised. He warned that:
One of the themes of The Brothers Karamazov is that in the search for quick satisfaction and easy solutions, people become more and more isolated. The crisis of his time, like ours, was the loss of a sense of shared destiny:
Up until now, I have attempted to make sense of this chaotic age by tracking the connections, deconstructing the spin and identifying the key players who have brought us to this dark moment. I didn’t expect Karamazov to give me the deeper insight on these times. Alone we are fodder for the oligarchs and the far right. They would have us believe that we are nothing more than isolated individuals cast adrift in a chaotic world. The real challenge is to restore the awareness that we are bound together in the “common integrity” of all people. Dostoevsky urges us to see the bigger struggle and to fight for the “common integrity” of people. I will leave you with another thought that has become embedded in my thoughts. Dostoevsky tells the story of a teenage boy who was a cynical, angry youth, but in facing death, he suddenly recognizes the beauty of the world around him. He sees salvation in the birds, the trees, the abundance of life all around us. As he tries to tell people what he sees, they think he is descending into delusion. But he begs them to open their eyes,
I think of this story again and again as I head out on my early morning walk in the bush. It is indeed paradise but I am often walking and staring at my phone screen. In the chaos it is easy to forget that we are in paradise. All of us. Our fragile world has enough for all but not enough for the greed. It was thus when Dostoevsky wrote 140 years ago, it is so much more so now. The Brothers Karamazov are giving me some clear ideas about how to sustain myself for the fight ahead. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.
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