The Solution To Our Gun Problem (No, Really!) October 26, 2026October 25, 2026 But first . . . MALIGNANT NARCISSISM Jim Stewartson: Hello friends: As I’ve documented extensively, the president of the United States and the world’s richest man are both malignant narcissists—a combination of the worst personality traits known to humans: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, sadism, and paranoia. Despite their innate antisocial behavior, this combination of traits also enables certain malignant narcissists to lie, cheat, and steal their way into power. Psychologist Erich Fromm, who defined malignant narcissism, said: > “It gives them that certainty and freedom from doubt which is so impressive to the average person.” But when malignant narcissists gain power, especially if they insulate themselves to the outside world, they can become psychotic: > “Psychosis is a state of absolute narcissism, one in which the person has broken all connection with reality outside.” The way they keep themselves from going insane is through the acclaim of others: > “Public figures who prevent the open outbreak of their potential psychosis by gaining the acclaim and consensus of millions of people.” When challenged, they will quite literally change the world around themselves to fit their own alternate reality: > “To transform reality so that it fits their narcissism, and to destroy all critics … prevent the outbreak of insanity.” Incredibly, America, and by extension the entire world is now in a scenario where two malignant narcissists have seized power—and are both literally going insane because the world is not bending to their reality. The fact that these are the most powerful people in the world must be a learning moment for all of us. We cannot keep elevating people like this into positions where they can hurt people—because they always will. > Step #1: Wrest the gavels from Republcians too cowardly or corrupt to stand up to the malignant narcissist many of them privately despise. Vote!  SwipeBlue! Step #2: Win! Just as the good guys did yesterday in Brazil (where Lula defeated Trump-backed right-winger Bolsonaro and halted Latin America’s rightward shift) and in Serbia (where a Serbian Nationalist Leader Who Courted MAGA Just Lost in a Landslide). And now . . . THE SOLUTION TO OUR GUN PROBLEM At the end of Fareed Zakaria GPS yesterday — here’s the audio version, with minimal ads — he discusses Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, The American Way of Killing. A ten-minute listen (starting at 29:00) will save you a couple of hours reading, because Gladwell’s conclusions are simple: > The Second Amendment was required by Virginians, who were outnumbered dramatically by their slaves (even when counting each as just three-fifths of a person), and who wouldn’t ratify the Constitution and allow America to be born without the assurance that their slave patrols — which sounded better as “militias” — would not be curtailed. > It’s not that we have too many guns in America — though obviously we do. (No putting that genie back in the bottle.) Or even that Republicans allowed the assault weapons ban to expire. (Though, shame on them.) It’s that we have too few police. > Berlin and Los Angeles are comparable in size. Berlin has 18,000 cops, L.A. has 8,000. Because we have too few cops to get at the root of violent crime before it is even committed, we wind up spending a fortune on prisons instead.  > Our very own Baltimore is a recent success story that may show the way. Ten minutes every citizen — and elected official! — should consider.
It Is To Weep — And to VOTE! October 25, 2026 Fareed Zakaria: Musk and Trump are destroying a priceless American asset. . . . After World War II, the United States pulled off something close to a geopolitical miracle. Japan and Germany became the second- and third-most-powerful economies on earth, yet neither sought nuclear weapons or the ability to defend itself alone. They aligned their security policy with Washington and entrusted their ultimate defense to American soldiers and American nuclear weapons. Think how strange that arrangement was. Great powers throughout history have acquired armies to counter the top dog. Yet America’s allies agreed to depend on it for their survival. They did so not because America was invariably wise or generous but because the entire international system thus created benefited the U.S., too. American power was formidable but trust in America was priceless. That trust is disappearing. A Pew Research Center survey conducted this year found that in 26 of 35 countries, China was viewed more favorably than the U.S. . . . Everything Trump touches dies. The East Wing. The Kennedy Center. America’s place in the world. The post-War world order. How can Carl, and tens of millions of mostly well-meaning people like him, have been tricked into allowing this to happen?! Unwittingly, unintentionally, aligning themselves with Russia and North Korea rather than Canada, Europe, the U.K., and the brave people of Ukraine?  Unwittingly, unintentionally, providing unneeded tax breaks to plutocrats while cutting health care and food assistance to hungry children?  Turning a beloved democracy into a pariah kakistocracy? Don’t forget to vote.
Maybe Prop 40 Does Make Sense October 24, 2026 But first . . . FINALLY: HOW TO STOP THOSE TEXTS! Maybe you already knew this — I wish I had, ages ago — but if you have an iPhone, go to SETTINGS / APPS / MESSAGES. Scroll down to the “Unknown Senders” section and select SCREEN UNKNOWN SENDERS. A few will still slip through (I don’t know why) but most will pile up noiselessly, out of sight. When you go to check your regular messages, you’ll see a bright blue 23 at top right if you have 23 new unwanted texts from desperate candidates facing end-of-month deadlines. You can then (or later) click 23 to see them (click “unknown senders”) and run your eye down the list in case one is from your long-forgotten business partner who’s changed her cell number (so she shows up as “unknown”) saying that — oh, my God! — she just got an unexpected a $3 million windfall and 50% of it belongs to you. This has never happened to me, but I keep looking just in case before I then click EDIT (top left) followed by SELECT MESSAGES followed by SELECT ALL (top right) followed by the trash can (bottom right) and all 23 vanish. It takes just a few seconds once you get used to it; and avoids (in this example) 23 interruptions. Over the course of the year — thousands. Also . . . WHAT ABOUT THAT 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL? Trump’s Cruelty to Abuse Victims Extends Far Beyond Amy Acton. His embrace of the vile smear fits an administration that shields predators and abandons survivors of sexual and domestic violence. The same people who insist on policing public bathrooms to protect little girls from sexual predators are also smearing an actual child rape survivor. This refers, of course, to the JD Vance-endorsed, Trump-endorsed (Carl-endorsed?) Vivek Ramaswamy ad in which the mother who abandoned her 12-year-old daughter nearly 50 years ago claims that her daughter — poised now to be Ohio’s next governor — is lying about the sexual abuse she suffered, from ages 9 through 12, at the hands of the man her mother ran off with so he could escape prosecution. But wait — what about the 13-year-old girl who, according to multiple FBI interviews that came to light via the Epstein files, was allegedly forced to give Trump — who allegedly likes them young, as Epstein allegedly did — oral sex? (But did it badly and made him mad.) The 38,000 references to Trump in the heavily-redacted files thus far released? Nothing to see here. If you’re a star, Trump has explained, “you can get away with anything.” Trump brushes off the two dozen women who’ve accused him of sexual abuse as simply lying. Including E.J. Carroll, who, he claims, he would never have raped because she was “Not My Type” (though when shown a photograph of her, he mistook her for his wife). MAGAns know that Trump couldn’t possibly be lying — or corrupt or cruel — or in league with the murderous centi-billionaire war criminal Vladimir Putin, who is in league with North Korea’s murderous dictator Kim Jong-Un, with whom Trump exchanges love letters — because he is their leader. Their role is to believe and follow, not to question. And yet the evidence of his cruelty to sexual abuse victims is plain to see. And . . . AN ACTION YOU CAN TAKE (FOR FREE) WITHOUT GETTING OUT OF BED It’s not too late to use Swipe Blue. You get it from the app store; it lets you know which of your contacts have not yet voted, and which are in districts where we really need them to turn out. If you choose to, you can contact one or more of them in any way you want. (The app suggests language you can adapt any way you want.) Now is the perfect time to play around with this. It’s illegal to vote twice (I was somehow sent a SECOND absentee ballot several days after mailing in my first but decided not to use it); but with Swipe Blue, you just might be able to inspire a second vote (or two or three) — and, multiplied by the tens or hundreds of thousands of us using the app along with you, that would be huge. And, now, finally . . . WHY PROP 40 — CALIFORNIA’S ONE-TIME WEALTH TAX — MIGHT MAKE SENSE Friday’s post touched on the grotesque inequality that leads to revolution and economic collapse (and invited the wealthiest among us to join the Patriotic Millionaires.) Americans for Tax Fairness notes: Billionaires and big corporations got their tax giveaways. Working families got cuts to health care and food assistance. And yet I’ll admit I thought that the proposed one-time 5% wealth tax on California billionaires, while well-intentioned, was too deeply flawed. Until I read this: Debunking All Myths about Prop 40 If you live in California and haven’t yet voted, it’s worth your time. Thanks for your readership!
Of Putin, His Puppet, Plutocrats and Pitchforks October 22, 2026October 23, 2026 GREAT NEWS FOR THE WEALTHY U.S. corporate profits as a percentage of the U.S. GDP are at their highest level since 1966, while labor’s share of GDP is at an all-time low (as noted by David Stein). Do you know which party has blocked an increase in the federal minimum wage for the past 17 years? Which party has cut taxes for corporations and the rich? If you’re in favor of the kind of inequality that leads to revolution and economic collapse, that’s the party you should want to see retain control of all three branches of our government 11 days from now. See also: Pitchfork Economics: Any society that allows itself to become radically unequal eventually collapses into an uprising or a police state—or both. Join venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and some of the world’s leading economic and political thinkers in an exploration of who gets what and why. Turns out, everything you learned about economics is wrong. And if we don’t do something about rising inequality, the pitchforks are coming. → If your net worth is $5 million or more, me-mail me about joining the Patriotic Millionaires. HEATHER COX RICHARDSON (from Wednesday, condensed): Everything feels out of whack in the United States. The president’s behavior is becoming more and more erratic. Earlier this week, he walked past the open door of his armored car, known as “The Beast,” and wandered toward an open field before Secret Service agents redirected him. At campaign rallies, he has taken to commenting on how he finds Ohio Republican senator Jon Husted attractive. . . . In the news, Trump’s abandonment of the traditional allies of the United States to embrace Vladimir Putin and Russia remains front and center. Today, Hillary Clinton told Kara Swisher: “I continue to believe that Putin has things on Trump. Photos, videos, whatever it might be.” Clinton reiterated that Trump “is a willing Putin puppet. Putin’s not going to stop with Ukraine…. I guess Trump has this idea that he wants to divide the world. He gets the Western Hemisphere, Putin gets Russia and Europe, and Xi Jinping gets the rest of the world.” Meanwhile, Trump claims he had nothing to do with the slowing of Starlink over Ukraine, telling a reporter: “I wasn’t involved.” . . . Americans are beginning to see the costs of Trumpism. Twelve million Americans have lost healthcare coverage — and Republicans put the WORST of their cuts off until after the midterms. Nearly half of those no longer receiving [food assistance] are children. Although Trump promised to eliminate the national debt and balance the budget. . . the budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended on September 30 clocked in at about $2 trillion . . . Economist Justin Wolfers explained: “Washington has discovered a brilliant financial strategy. Cut benefits for people who need them, cut taxes for people who don’t, and borrow the difference from people who aren’t old enough to vote.” In order to stay in power, Republicans are peddling what Jesse Watters of the Fox News Channel recently called “fear porn.” In September, Watters warned that “the Democrat party and its communist base are running against America” and “want to shatter the pillars of Western civilization.” . . . Sean Hannity told viewers: “We can vote to build on the successes of President Trump, his first two years in office, or you can allow our country to be taken hostage by this new radicalized leftist democratic socialist communist movement and their far-left extremist candidates.” He called Democrats “completely insane.” . . . New Jersey’s Republican former governor Chris Christie told the Washington Post: “For the last decade, our party has been infected by a corrupted moral center.” Neil Bush has voted for Democrat James Talarico. “I have been a Republican for most of my life, and I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles. But character matters more than party affiliation. Our democracy depends on leaders who respect our institutions, tell the truth, accept accountability, and seek to unite rather than divide.” → Worth reading and sharing in full. BRAZIL’S RUN-OFF SUNDAY Guess which side Trump is on. (Well, duh!) Have a great weekend.
Ezra Klein: Would You Press The Red Button? October 20, 2026 Virtually all attention is focused on the mid-terms and rightly so. We’re gonna win! Maybe even in such unlikely places as Nebraska, Montana, and South Dakota! But the questions A.I. raises about how to order society, and how to order our own lives (and investments?) in the very near future, are profound. So I interrupt my regularly scheduled harangue to share Ezra Klein’s latest: This Is the Good Scenario? And now, as seen in Kansas and Colorado Satruday: It seems more and more MAGA folks are feeling betrayed. Don’t want us to be on the side of Russia and North Korea killing thousands of Ukrainians for no reason. We should welcome them back with open arms.