Scott Stossel

Sociopaths are terrific at spotting other sociopaths.

{gift link} www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

The Ruthless Benevolence of a Great Editor Ann Godoff, who died this week, cared passionately about her writers—and much less about her own ego.

"The essence of editing is ethics; it’s the act of caring for the expression of the thoughts of another as if they were your own."

www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

The First Couple of a Dysfunctional DHS A forthcoming book reveals new details about Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski.

“Oh yeah, they’re still fucking.”

www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

The State of the Union Revealed a Sad Reality Donald Trump misused the annual presidential tradition in ways so radical as to call the ritual itself into question.

"President Trump’s State of the Union address last night was very like the man who delivered it: divisive, abusive, and childish."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

President Trump’s State of the Union Variety Show Were you not entertained?

"Beset by scandal, facing multiple defeats in America’s courts, and hitting levels of unpopularity that would make President Richard Nixon nod with empathy, Trump turned the State of the Union into a vulgar, populist carnival."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Coming Election Mayhem Donald Trump’s plans to throw the 2026 midterms into chaos are already under way.

Donald Trump’s plans to throw the 2026 midterms into chaos are already under way. @dgraham.bsky.social reported on the coming election mayhem in our December issue:

The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem How did the GOP become a haven for slogans and ideas straight out of the Third Reich?

"If wannabe Nazis now confidently roam the halls of power—and the streets of American cities—it is because Republican leaders have made them feel at home"--longtime (& now former) Republican @radiofreetom.bsky.social.

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Hitler’s Greenland Obsession After creating an economic mess with ill-advised tariffs, Hitler looked north in pursuit of resources and national security.

History check.

Hitler eyed Greenland during WWII for its North Atlantic strategic value.

Fast forward.

In 2019, Trump, sitting in the Oval Office, floated buying Greenland for its military positioning in the Arctic.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Hitler’s Greenland Obsession After creating an economic mess with ill-advised tariffs, Hitler looked north in pursuit of resources and national security.

"Greenland appears to have been a lifelong preoccupation of Adolf Hitler’s."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Worst-Case Future for White-Collar Workers The well-off have no experience with the job market that might be coming.

"If AI quickly eliminates white-collar work, the country is going to end up in something much stranger than a downturn, and something much harder to recover from too."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Rod Dreher Thinks the Enlightenment Was a Mistake The influential author derides secularism and the modern world. Conservatives—including the vice president—are joining him on a march back to the Middle Ages.

"'That man is the future of America,' Dreher wrote of JD Vance in April. If Trump represents Armageddon, Vance for Dreher may be something like the Rapture."

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

If you know anyone not vaccinating their kids, make sure they read this story. Effective and nauseating use of the second person.

The Literary Ecosystem Is Dying In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation.

"Certain critics, such as John Leonard and Elizabeth Hardwick, were usually better stylists than the writers they were reviewing."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Democrats Aren't Built for This ... ken martin has one of those resting dread faces ... (Mark Leibovich/The Atlantic)

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The Democrats Aren’t Built for This They say they want to save democracy. First they’ll need to get out of their own way.

Trump "'is so fragile that he builds this simulacrum of strength...It looks strong, and it’s enforced by other people thinking it’s strong. But if you actually got in a physical fight with Donald Trump, you’d kick his ass.'”

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

The Democrats Aren’t Built for This They say they want to save democracy. First they’ll need to get out of their own way.

"'If I was bullied as much as these Republicans are by President Trump and his followers, I would be so ashamed to see my family.'”--Senator Ruben Gallego

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

The Democrats Aren’t Built for This They say they want to save democracy. First they’ll need to get out of their own way.

“'You cannot credibly tell the American people that democracy is in danger and the world is ending, and the people that you are putting up on the front lines of fighting back against that genuinely belong in a nursing home.'”

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

The Democrats Aren’t Built for This They say they want to save democracy. First they’ll need to get out of their own way.

“'Republicans are over here being straight-up mercenaries,” Longwell said. “Democrats give everybody Fridays off and talk about work-life balance.” She apologized for yelling into the phone. Democrats “are not built for when the fascists come.'”

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs Does anyone have a plan for what happens next?

"Mainframes are like Christopher Walken: They’ve been going nonstop since the 1960s, they’re fantastic at performing peculiar roles (processing payments, safeguarding data), and nobody alive really understands how they work."

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

A Foreign Policy Worse Than Regime Change The world is threatened by the president’s self-absorption and incoherence.

"Trump doesn’t do 'policy.' Or philosophy. Or grand strategy. He does Donald Trump," his former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes. "His incoherence on regime change is only one piece of evidence in the larger picture of his unfitness to be president."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Murder of The Washington Post Today’s layoffs are the latest attempt to kill what makes the paper special.

"We’re witnessing a murder.

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special."

www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Jung’s View of Christianity “Today we need psychology for reasons that involve our very existence.”

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."--Carl Jung

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Why, yet thy scandal were not wip’d away

Tim Walz Fears a Fort Sumter Moment in Minneapolis The Minnesota governor warns of a national unraveling.

Governor Tim Walz: “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter? It’s a physical assault. It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens.”

www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

What Should Americans Do Now? We need a mass movement for basic decency.

"Trump is taking the country on a path to tyranny. The first obligation for each of us is to see it and name it. The next is to figure out what to do about it."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Yes, It’s Fascism Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.

"The United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Minneapolis Is a Second Amendment Wake-Up Call The federal killing of a Minnesota ICU nurse should worry every American.

"Apparently, the federal boot heel is now colorblind, one of the Trump administration’s more notable anti-DEI achievements."

www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus Trump is causing incalculable damage to the Christian faith, yet most evangelicals will never break with him.

"Huge numbers of American fundamentalists and evangelicals...prefer the MAGA Jesus to the real Jesus. Few of them would say so explicitly, though, because the cognitive dissonance would be too unsettling. And so they have worked hard to construct rationalizations"
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus Trump is causing incalculable damage to the Christian faith, yet most evangelicals will never break with him.

"The message the Trump administration is sending is not subtle: ICE is doing the work of God. The brutal and sometimes lethal tactics being used by...ICE agents are divinely sanctioned. Come join this holy campaign.

Leni Riefenstahl would have approved."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

“In normal liberal democracy terms, the United States is in bad shape,” the international-relations scholar Nicholas Grossman wrote recently. But, he went on, considering that the country is struggling against an attempted authoritarian takeover, “we’re doing pretty well.”