Scott Stossel
@stossel.bsky.social
National Editor, The Atlantic. Author of My Age of Anxiety and Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver. Bostonian in DC.
"Trump's rant yesterday about the Reflecting Pool was a warning that the president has encased himself in the hard amber of irrationality that inevitably surrounds authoritarian leaders. He has become detached from reality—and that is extremely dangerous." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Trump’s Irrationality Is Dangerous
The president’s recent rant is a sign of serious dysfunction in the Oval Office.
theatlantic.com
"You know Chekhov’s famous stipulation that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it must be fired in the third? Well, here’s a corollary: If you introduce a penis on the first page of a book about psychoanalysis, it will go off, or fail to, or both, very soon."
What if Freud Was Right and Pharma Was Wrong?
A neuroscientist dares to argue that old-fashioned psychoanalysis—not drugs—holds the key to curing mental illness.
theatlantic.com
Adrienne LaFrance@adriennelaf.bsky.social · yesterdayI will always read anything by @stossel.bsky.social—and this one is fascinating. Highly recommend: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
"No mistakes by blue America or the scientific community begin to compare with the brutal indifference to the well-being of Americans—and the betrayal of their own cruelly deceived supporters—that disgraced MAGA and the broader right wing in the pandemic years" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Anthony Fauci Is Not the Villain in This Story
The doctor was thrust into his pandemic-leadership role because of Trump’s deadly dereliction of duty.
theatlantic.com
"Whatever Fauci’s intentions might have been, the document has become an instant classic in the genre of bubble-world anthropology that confirms everyone’s worst suspicions about Washington being a cesspool of pampered, preening, and panting self-regard." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
What the Fauci Diary Reveals About Washington
His musings seem to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions about the capital.
theatlantic.com
"Unless the Democrats respond forcefully to the DSA’s entryism, they risk being overrun by extremists who will poison the party’s national brand and sap its capacity to compete with an already radicalized GOP." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The DSA Is Only Using the Democratic Party
The left-wing faction is a parasite.
theatlantic.com
"What genre are we living in, living through, today? Epic? No chance. Farce? Sometimes. Porno-pastoral? Holistic satire? Digital picaresque?All of these, sure, but only in spasms. No the all-encompassing genre of where we are right now is obvious: horror-comedy" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Why 'Widow’s Bay' Is the Show of the Summer
Its blend of horror and comedy channels the spirit of the times.
theatlantic.com
"Hegseth’s push-ups wouldn’t pass muster in any branch." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Pete Hegseth, You Call That a Pull-Up?
Military fitness experts say the secretary of defense fails on form.
theatlantic.com
"J.D. Vance’s new book, Communion, answers a question no one had thought to ask: What would Augustine’s Confessions have looked like if the saint’s greatest literary influence had been Hillary Clinton’s immortal classic, Hard Choices?" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
J. D. Vance’s New Book Wasn’t Meant to Be Read
Why does "Communion" exist?
theatlantic.com
"He opened with long, slow clauses; picked up speed with shorter ones; withheld all commas for a gloriously terse thesis statement; and then, crash! A mass-casualty pileup of appositive phrases. Grammarians, I married him." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Punctuation: A Generational Divide
Can parents ever learn to text like their kids? Should they even try?
theatlantic.com
"When I asked Graham about his keys to manipulating Trump, he was remarkably transparent about some of his go-to formulas. I was struck by how, in Graham’s telling, Trump was a big, fat mark." www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
What Lindsey Graham Wanted
The senator always sought relevance.
theatlantic.com
Lindsey Graham "made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Quintessential Politician of This Era
The late South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham made a mid-career turn to MAGA.
theatlantic.com
Lindsey Graham was one of the main subjects of a @theatlantic.com cover story I wrote in 2020, on why people collaborate with regimes they know are immoral. Here's a gift link: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
History Will Judge the Complicit
Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?
theatlantic.com
"Lenin’s ghost would be similarly unimpressed with contemporary American socialism—too much democracy, too little murder. " www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
The ‘Consumer Socialism’ Trap
The wrong way to solve the affordability crisis
theatlantic.com
Classic, very astute critical piece on Trump from 2016 by some guy named JD Vance. Not sure what he's up to now. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
Opioid of the Masses (From 2016)
To many, Donald Trump feels good, but he can’t fix America’s growing social and cultural crisis, and the eventual comedown will be harsh.
theatlantic.com
"I don’t know whether the U.S. will reach its tricentennial, but if it does, it will be because the narrow tribe that Trump & Vance represent has been defeated and removed, and because the country is once again governed by people who believe in an American union." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Trump and Vance Ruined the Fourth of July
Celebrating the ideals of the Declaration of Independence is hard if you don’t believe in them.
theatlantic.com
"Normally one would have to pay a lot of money to a discreet professional to be humiliated this badly. Watching Trump and his aides sell the deal is in some ways as humiliating as the deal itself. “ www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Iran Has Humiliated Trump
Officials in Tehran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation.
theatlantic.com
"The director of national intelligence...is a job that demands judgment, wisdom, expertise, and integrity. To install Bill Pulte in this high position is to put every American at risk of abuses of power at home and dangers from abroad." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Why the Worst Get on Top
Trump’s choice of Bill Pulte for acting director of national intelligence is both terrifying and predictable.
theatlantic.com
"The only thing he had to do was—for once in his life—not act like an insane egomaniac. He couldn’t do it." www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
Trump’s 250th Celebration Is a Fiasco
The president has turned a solemn occasion into a Day of Trump.
theatlantic.com
“From Trump’s standpoint, Paxton’s record constitutes an advantage. The president seemingly both relates to, and badly needs to rely on, allies who share his predilection for violating laws and human decency” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
John Cornyn Lost With His Boots Off
Like fellow Republicans exiled by the president, he still accepted Trump’s claim to inhabit the will of the party.
theatlantic.com
"As this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn’t know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn’t know how to get out of it." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat
Even the president’s supporters are alarmed.
theatlantic.com
"Trump no doubt hopes that he can slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of this defeat....The president may also hope that he can change the subject by launching another military operation, this time against the government in Cuba." www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
Trump’s Endgame Is Surrender
He seems to hope to slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of this defeat.
theatlantic.com
"Anti-Semitic violence in the Western world is quickening in tempo and intensifying in lethality. Much of that violence can be blamed on anti-Jewish incitement that draws on the deepest foundations of anti-Jewish myth." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The New Blood Libel
This is what globalizing the intifada looks like.
theatlantic.com
"Almost any time Trump talks to a foreign strongman, he seems both charmed and intimidated, and ends up defending his autocratic friend rather than his country. These dictators appear to bring out a kind of neediness in Trump." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Why Does Donald Trump Refuse to Defend America?
The president has long articulated a moral equivalence between the country’s interests and those of dictatorships.
theatlantic.com
Relevant piece from 2015 for anyone needing a primer on the Thucydides Trap: "In 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been bloodshed." www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
In 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power confronted a ruling power, the result was bloodshed.
theatlantic.com
"In the age of Trump, there are no half-gestures of loyalty. You’re MAGA or you’re not. Cassidy traded his legacy for an attempted show of loyalty by voting in Kennedy. But it seems to not have even registered with many voters in his state." www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...
What Did Bill Cassidy Do It For?
The senator from Louisiana offered an olive branch to MAHA, but still lost MAGA.
theatlantic.com
"To judge from this report, America’s counterterrorism policy is unfocused, run by amateurs, and concerned more with Donald Trump’s many grievances than the security of the United States." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Trump Counterterrorism Strategy Is a Dangerous Joke
The policy is unfocused, run by amateurs, and concerned more with the president’s many grievances than the security of the United States.
theatlantic.com
“Democrats keep pushing for race-based affirmative action, to their own political detriment—rather than supporting a much fairer policy of providing a leg up to economically disadvantaged people of all races” Richard D. Kahlenberg writes:
The Democrats Can’t Let Go of Racial Preferences
How to persuade skeptical voters to take a fresh look at the party
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