There is a modern idea that if we can explain a human being thoroughly enough, we have somehow absolved them.

He was neglected. She was betrayed. His father drank. Her mother disappeared into herself.

He learned to go silent because speaking was dangerous. She learned to pursue because nobody ever came back voluntarily.

All of this matters.

But an explanation is not an acquittal. It only tells us how the fire started.

It does not give us permission to keep throwing furniture into it.

The fourth-century monk known as Abba Moses understood this distinction rather dramatically.

Before he became a monk, he was reportedly a thief, a violent man, and the leader of a band of robbers.

He was known as Moses the Black, Moses the Ethiopian, Moses the Strong, and—without much ecclesiastical public-relations varnish—Moses the Robber.

Christianity has always had a peculiar fondness for putting the embarrassing facts directly into the saint’s name.

My fellow Americans, on this Monday evening, November 2, 2026…

Tonight, I speak to you from the Oval Office on a matter of tremendous importance.

Possibly the greatest matter. Bigger than war. Bigger than the economy. Bigger, even, than the ratings for The Apprentice, which were extraordinary.

For nearly eighty years, the United States government has concealed the truth about extraterrestrial life.

Many presidents knew pieces of it. Truman knew quite a bit. Eisenhower knew more. Kennedy asked too many questions. Nixon recorded everything, which, as we know, was not always his best instinct.

But none of them told you.

Tonight, I will.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

And, frankly, some of the aliens are living here illegally.

Your husband has written you a beautiful apology.

It is specific without becoming defensive. It acknowledges impact without quibbling over intention. It contains none of his usual little trapdoors through which responsibility quietly escapes.

He understands that his dismissiveness left you feeling alone.

He recognizes that your anger was not the original problem but a response to having your experience minimized.

He does not ask you to forgive him immediately.

He even describes what he intends to do differently.

It is, by any reasonable standard, an excellent apology.

You are moved.

Then you discover that he produced it in thirty seconds by typing:

Write an apology to my wife. Make it emotionally intelligent but not too long.

The apology remains accurate.

It simply no longer feels like evidence of what you thought had happened inside him.

Creativity has enjoyed excellent public relations.

We associate it with novels, inventions, jazz, and people who have persuaded themselves that a converted barn is an office.

Creativity is assumed to be generous, liberating, and faintly noble.

But originality is morally neutral.

The same mind that can devise a beautiful surprise can also devise a punishment no one sees coming.

A recent study examines malevolent creativity: the use of original thinking to harm, deceive, manipulate, or retaliate.

Researchers found that narcissistic traits and a history of malevolently creative behavior were associated with producing revenge ideas that combined harm with originality.

Some people do not merely hold a grudge.

They give it a research-and-development department.

We edit everything now.

We edit the email to the boss.

We edit the text after an argument.

We delete the sentence that sounds needy, put it back, stare at it for another three minutes, and eventually replace the entire thing with:

Sounds good.

We edit photographs of lunch.

Apparently, we are considerably less fastidious about love letters.

Recently, Enzo Falvo, creator of LovePaper, wrote to me after reading something I'd written about gratitude letters.

LovePaper is a remarkably simple idea.

You write a letter to someone you love, choose how you want it presented, and get a private link you can send to that person.

But Enzo's note contained a number I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

According to data he shared with me, 19,485 of 21,489 letters had never been reopened for editing.

That's about 91%.

Partners wrote the letter.

Finished it.

And apparently decided:

That's what I meant.

There are many reasons people have sex.

Desire is one.

Affection is another.

Curiosity, reassurance, celebration, reconciliation, boredom, loneliness, generosity, and the discovery that both children are somehow asleep at the same time have also been known to play a part.

Long-term couples do not always arrive in bed with matching levels of spontaneous desire. Sometimes one partner begins without much interest but becomes interested once closeness begins. Sometimes a person willingly says yes because pleasing a beloved partner feels good.

That is not necessarily a sexual problem.

But there is another kind of yes.

It is the yes offered to prevent sulking.

The yes given because saying no will require a two-hour diplomatic summit.

The yes of someone who has learned that managing a partner’s disappointment is easier than inhabiting their own reluctance.

The body participates.

The self quietly leaves.

A new relationship test is circulating on TikTok.

Women place their boyfriends in front of a camera and ask them to pronounce words such as epitome, hyperbole, challah, fuchsia, and hors d’oeuvres.

The men stumble. The women stare. Millions of strangers grade the relationship.

It is being called the “Illiterate Boyfriend Test,” although literacy has remarkably little to do with it.

A man can read perfectly well and still mispronounce a word he first encountered on the page.

This is one of English’s little cruelties: sometimes mispronunciation is evidence that someone reads.

But TikTok is not known for allowing an interesting ambiguity to survive.

In one widely viewed example, a boyfriend correctly pronounced only five of 17 words.

The couple laughed. The audience was less charitable.

Some viewers suggested that his performance was grounds for breaking up. Another wondered why his vote should count as much as hers.

The test appears to measure vocabulary.

What it actually measures is belonging.

The American nursery has acquired an armory.

There are now children named Gunner, Colt, Remington, Ruger, Wesson, Cannon, Winchester, Barrett, Blade and Gauge.

At the experimental edge are Trigger, Shooter, Dagger and Caliber—names that sound less like babies than men who should not be allowed to leave the county.

The trend is real, although not enormous.

Between 2002 and 2012, the number of American boys named Colt rose from 194 to 955. Remington climbed from 185 to 666. Ruger—the name of a firearms manufacturer—went from 23 babies to 118.

By 2024, Remington was given to 1,169 boys and 593 girls. Gunner went to 587 boys, and Cannon to 331.

This is not an invasion. Liam and Olivia need not fortify their positions. But I think this is large enough to be culturally interesting.

But why would anyone look at a newborn—seven pounds, furious, incapable of supporting his own head—and decide that what the situation requires is more firepower?

There is a particular kind of hell reserved for people who are right.

Not legally right. Not merely factually right. Morally right.

They were betrayed. Neglected. Left carrying more than their share.

They apologized first, stayed longer, tried harder, remembered the birthday, scheduled the therapist, and kept the family functioning while someone else wandered through life protected by charm, incompetence, addiction, self-pity, or selective amnesia.

Their account of what happened is substantially accurate.

That is what makes the place so difficult to escape.

Ordinary guilt contains a door. You can confess, make restitution, ask forgiveness, and change your behavior.

But what is the exit from innocence?

What do you do when the terrible thing was done to you?

This is the hell of the just.

Los Angeles has spent years pretending that street takeovers are merely an irritating form of automotive enthusiasm.

They are not.

A few young men doing doughnuts in an empty parking lot may be reckless recreation.

Hundreds of people commandeering an intersection, trapping public transportation, brandishing guns, ransacking businesses, setting vehicles on fire, and broadcasting the spectacle for social-media status is something else entirely.

It is organized civic intimidation.

That is why the LAPD’s Operation Street Sweeper matters.

Early yesterday morning, officers from the LAPD, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and California Highway Patrol surrounded a massive street takeover at Figueroa Street and Alondra Boulevard in Harbor Gateway.

Police said the crowd—assembled from four earlier takeovers—numbered more than 700 people.

The operation produced nearly 70 arrests, approximately 200 vehicle impoundments, 570 spectator citations, and the recovery of seven firearms.

Police had anticipated the gathering through intelligence collection and drone surveillance. They arrived with buses for detainees and a fleet of tow trucks for the cars.

This was not an improvised police response.

It was a planned containment operation. This is what professional policing looks like.

Good. It’s about time.

William J. Doherty, founder of Discernment Counseling, has a memorable term for one of psychotherapy’s least examined complications: the relationshipectomy.

The procedure requires no anesthesia. It usually begins with empathy.

A distressed client describes a spouse who is cold, controlling, narcissistic, avoidant, emotionally unavailable, or insufficiently supportive.

The therapist listens carefully. The spouse is not present.

Their behavior cannot be observed. Their account cannot be heard.

The interactional sequence—the part each partner plays in evoking and reinforcing the other—is invisible.

But an alliance forms.

Pain becomes proof.

A tentative interpretation hardens into a clinical conclusion.

The therapist stops hearing the client’s account of the marriage and begins hearing the marriage itself.

Soon the client is encouraged to establish boundaries, protect their peace, honor their truth, and consider whether they have outgrown the relationship.

None of this language is inherently wrong. In abusive or coercive relationships, individual therapy may help someone recognize danger and leave safely.

But in ordinary distressed marriages, therapeutic language can become an exquisitely respectable instrument for removing complexity.

The client has been psychologically separated from the marriage before the marriage has been competently examined.

For nearly twenty years, modern dating operated according to the emotional logic of a hostage negotiation:

Reveal as little as possible.

Never appear too eager.

Wait before replying.

Maintain leverage.

And remember that whoever cares less controls the room.

Apparently, people are tired.

Caring is making a comeback.

The new word is chalance—a slightly ridiculous invention meaning the opposite of nonchalance. To be chalant is to show interest without immediately apologizing for it.

To reply to the message. Plan the date. Remember the restaurant. Look pleased when the person you like walks into the room.

What was once considered ordinary courtship has returned as a cultural novelty.

We have reached the point where visible effort requires branding.