― Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (February 9, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Wikipedia
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast, a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything—and what we can do to fight back
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(Goodreads.com)
See also: Doublethink
In George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four, 2 + 2 = 5 appears as a possible statement of Ingsoc (English Socialism). The Party slogan “War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength” is a dogma which the Party expects the citizens of Oceania to accept as true. Writing in his secret diary in the year 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith ponders if the Party might declare “two plus two equals five” as fact, as well as whether or not belief in such a consensus reality substantiates the lie.[19] About the falsity of “two plus two equals five”, in the Ministry of Love, the interrogator O’Brien tells the thought criminal Smith that control over physical reality is unimportant to the Party, provided the citizens of Oceania subordinate their real-world perceptions to the political will of the Party; and that, by way of doublethink: “Sometimes, Winston. [Sometimes it is four fingers.] Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once”.[19]
Orwell used the idea of 2 + 2 = 5 in an essay of January 1939 in The Adelphi; “Review of Power: A New Social Analysis by Bertrand Russell“:[20]
It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two plus two will make five when the Leader says so.
In propaganda work for the BBC during the Second World War, Orwell applied the illogic of 2 + 2 = 5 to counter the reality-denying psychology of Nazi propaganda, which he addressed in the essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War” (1943):
Nazi theory, indeed, specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as “Science”. There is only “German Science”, “Jewish Science”, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened”—well, it never happened. If he says that “two and two are five”—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs—and, after our experiences of the last few years [the Blitz, 1940–41] that is not a frivolous statement.[21]
In addressing Nazi anti-intellectualism, Orwell’s reference might have been Hermann Göring‘s hyperbolic praise of Adolf Hitler: “If the Führer wants it, two and two makes five!”[22] In the political novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, concerning the Party’s philosophy of government for Oceania, Orwell said:
In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?[23]
The 1951 British edition of the text, published by Secker & Warburg, erroneously omitted the “5”, thus rendering it simply as “2 + 2 =”. This error, likely the result of a typesetting mistake, remained in all further editions of the text until the 1987 edition, whereafter a correction was made based on Orwell’s original typescript.[24] This misprint did not exist in the American editions of the text, with British students of the text in the meanwhile misinterpreting Orwell’s original intentions.[25]
From: Gwyllm Llwydd
Mon, Jan 12 at 11:27 AM
Lilnk to GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/89253f5f7
Back in early December of 2024 after I fell and cracked a rib (a second time, first was in the summer damaging my hip) and developed a pulmonary infection that kept me pretty much bedridden for 6 months. It has not gone away, but comes back again and again. This impacted my ability to work as you can imagine. There are more details at the site.
I know times are tough, but even if you can distribute this out, it may allow us to get into an affordable place. Rent has not been reached this month, but hopefully we can get there.
I don’t like asking for assistance, folks have enough on their collective plates.
Thanks,
G/B
64 donations
Artist Bill “Gwyllm” and his wife need funds for rent, moving, and dental care
William Floyd
Donation protected
Hello,
My name is Bill Floyd/but many know me as Gwyllm Llwydd, which I have used for my art projects for over 3 decades.
This past year has been very hard for me. In 2024, I had two falls—one injured my right hip, and the other, in late November, left me with a cracked rib. Soon after hurting my chest, I got a chest infection that led to ongoing lung problems. I was bedridden on and off for six months. Because of this, I couldn’t support my wife and myself as I used to. I lost work, and when I did find jobs in the summer, I could only manage half days or less because I was always exhausted.
Since then, things have become even more difficult. Right now, I can’t pay rent. bills
or afford to move somewhere cheaper. On top of my health problems, I also need a lot of dental work, which I’ve had to delay because I can’t afford it.
I am hoping to get us moved to a less expensive place, hopefully with a small backyard where I can regroup and recreate a business that is less arduous (I have been running a painting business since the late 1990s). I am looking for gainful employment as well.
Our SS doesn’t cover rent, so work and selling my art have been our support. At this point, no one is hiring 74-year-old artists/painters.
How the Funds will be used:
The money raised from this GoFundMe will be used to help course-correct and establish a more sustainable living condition for my wife and me.
Currently, we are paying $2,600.00 a month for rent, excluding all utilities. To stay housed and to move in the next couple of months, we would need.
5200.00 2 months’ rent at the present home to organize
4000.00 moving deposit (estimate based on first month and last month’s rent.)
12000.00 Dental (Hopefully could be done in increments)
Funds raised here will help tide us over the next couple of months. This time will be used to find local support programs to assist with future rent and living costs, seek out a new home, and establish a new source of income that is more sustainable with my health and age.
Thanks Ever So Much:
Gwyllm/Bill
Minneapolis and Minnesota authorities can’t let the Trump regime suppress the truth.
by Ryan CooperJanuary 12, 2026 (Prospect.org)
By now, most readers have probably seen the horrifying video of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, to death. Of all the forensic analyses published, the best one I’ve seen thus far is this one from The New York Times. To my mind, it shows quite clearly that Good was attempting to drive away from the officers, and Ross shooting two out of three shots from a perpendicular position—totally outside of the car’s line of travel—into the driver’s-side window at point-blank range. He never even bothered to put away his cellphone, which was recording the whole time. That cellphone footage was apparently published on Friday, in which Good is seen saying “I’m not mad at you” to Ross just seconds before the shooting, and he calls her a “fucking bitch” after blowing her brains out.
It should be assumed that a cover-up conspiracy is in the works at the highest level. Just listen to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem spew some of the most heinous lies in the history of this administration—and that is saying something—calling a young mother with a glove box full of blood-splattered stuffed animals a “trained” “domestic terrorist” who maliciously attempted to run over ICE agents whose car had gotten stuck in the snow. Vice President Vance claimed, falsely, that all federal law enforcement officers have “absolute immunity” (just like in a police state). The FBI has already stepped in to take control of the investigation—refusing to cooperate with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and seizing Good’s car, the shell casings, and other critical evidence.
But that shouldn’t be the end of the story. It is critically important that state and local authorities do all in their power to conduct their own investigation, and bring Ross to trial.
If the above video analysis is correct, law and legal precedent seem to be quite clear. Law enforcement officers are not allowed to kill ordinary civilians to stop them from fleeing. According to the Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner, officers cannot use deadly force “unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”
In particular, as a DHS official told NBC News, ICE officers are trained never to approach a car from the front, as Ross did, and not to shoot at a moving vehicle. This is standard practice for all police departments these days, for obvious reasons. Killing a driver is a not a reliable way to stop a vehicle, and in fact might make it more dangerous—which is exactly what happened in this case. After Ross shot Good, she slumped onto the accelerator pedal, and the car careened down the street and crashed into another car and a utility pole. There were bystanders all over both sides of the road; it’s a miracle nobody was run over or hit by a stray bullet as Ross blasted away with no evident regard for the people directly in his line of fire on the other side of the street.
As my colleague David Dayen wrote last week, despite the “qualified immunity” doctrine that was made up out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court, federal law enforcement officers are not immune from prosecution by state and local authorities, and there have been many cases of that happening. (Two House Democrats have filed legislation to strip qualified immunity from ICE agents, but even they acknowledge that states can criminally prosecute federal officers regardless.)
There is also more than enough evidence to bring Ross in. Indeed, this homicide is probably in the top 0.1 percent of most-documented alleged crimes just in terms of publicly available evidence. There are at least four different video recordings of the incident already published, with a clear view of the critical moment in which Ross fired into the vehicle as it passed by him, and numerous eyewitnesses who could be interviewed. That’s more than enough to clear any bar of reasonable doubt. With some subpoenas, a great deal more could likely be obtained.
It would no doubt be quite difficult to carry out such an investigation with an actively hostile FBI and a U.S. attorney who has apparently barred cooperation with state and local law enforcement. Without the car, gun, and shell casings in particular, it may be difficult to go through the usual court procedures to establish a baseline of what happened. But every attempt still must be made.
To their credit, it does seem like some of the relevant authorities are on the right track. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison have announced a joint effort to collect and preserve evidence of what happened, clearly with an eye to doing their own investigation.
Elsewhere, David Seligman, who is running for attorney general in Colorado, has promised to put together an ICE Accountability Unit that would prosecute agents who violate the law. The need for accountability is becoming a campaign issue.
Just prior to the writing of this article, more immigration enforcement officers—this time from Customs and Border Protection—shot two more people in Portland, Oregon, luckily not fatally this time. If the first year of Trump’s second term has proved anything, it is that America’s system of immigration enforcement is utterly beyond saving, with a deeply entrenched culture of lawless brutality. ICE and CBP should be scrapped, and the whole immigration system rebuilt from the ground up. Those demands are only going to grow in the wake of incidents like this carried out by a lawless paramilitary force.
You’ve just read one of the stories we published this week because readers like you made it possible.
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With gratitude,
Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs. More by Ryan Cooper
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Jan. 13, 2026 (NYTimes.com)
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
President Trump is showing symptoms of an addiction to power, evident in his compulsion to escalate claims of dominion over domestic and international adversaries. The size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward.
Trump began his second term with his administration clamping down on law firms and universities. More recently he has focused his sights on an entire country, Venezuela, with Cuba, Colombia and Greenland also high on his current list — not to mention his claim to the Western Hemisphere in the 2025 National Security Strategy: “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
“This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” the report added, “is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
I asked Manfred Kets de Vries, a professor of leadership development and organizational change at Insead, an international business school, about Trump’s relationship with power.
Kets de Vries replied by email:
It is possible to become addicted to power — particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable.
Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness.
Malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism and psychopathology. Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact. Power supplies that affirmation. Visibility, dominance and constant stimulation temporarily fill the void.
What makes this tragic and dangerous, Kets de Vries continued, “is that this dynamic is not playing out in the margins of political life but at its center. He is not the dictator of a small, contained state; he is occupying the most powerful position in the world, with consequences for all of us.”
It’s not just Trump. The compulsion to simultaneously project power and demean adversaries pervades the administration.
Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, thrives on assertions of domination.
“We live in a world,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Jan. 5, “in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
Or take Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. Even before Trump took office, Vought fantasized in speeches about putting career civil servants “in trauma,” making their lives so miserable that “when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
The advisers do their best, of course, but no one outdoes Trump. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” he told crowds gathered on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.
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In fact, Trump routinely outdoes himself.
In July 2019 he claimed to “have the right to do whatever I want as president.” In March last year Trump declared not only that he has the right to do whatever he wants but also that “I run the country and the world.”
In a series of interviews, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, captured Trump’s addictive character, telling Vanity Fair that the president has “an alcoholic’s personality.”
The exercise of authority over others is, for some, an exhilarating experience.
“Power, especially absolute and unchecked power, is intoxicating,” wrote Nayef Al-Rodhan, an honorary fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the director of the geopolitics and global futures department at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, in a 2014 essay, “The Neurochemistry of Power: Implications for Political Change.”
“Its effects occur at the cellular and neurochemical level,” Al-Rodhan continued.
They are manifested behaviorally in a variety of ways, ranging from heightened cognitive functions to lack of inhibition, poor judgment, extreme narcissism, perverted behavior and gruesome cruelty.
The primary neurochemical involved in the reward of power that is known today is dopamine, the same chemical transmitter responsible for producing a sense of pleasure. Power activates the very same reward circuitry in the brain and creates an addictive “high” in much the same way as drug addiction.
Like addicts, most people in positions of power will seek to maintain the high they get from power, sometimes at all costs.
I asked Ian Robertson, an emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College in Dublin and the author of “How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief,” a series of questions in this vein. He answered by email.
How is it possible to become addicted to power?
“Power is a very strong stimulant of the dopamine reward system of the brain — which is the seat of addiction.”
Does the addiction result in a need to keep exercising power in an increasingly domineering fashion?
“Yes, a central component of addiction is increased tolerance — i.e., you need to increase the dose to keep the same effect. It can become an unquenchable appetite.”
What are the personality characteristics that are associated with addiction to power? What needs are met for those addicted to power?
“People (men more than women) with a high need for control and dominance over other people (and a corresponding fear of loss of control). The need for control is one of three basic motivational needs — the others being affiliation and achievement. Having power over other people satisfies this deep need.”
In a Feb. 12 Irish Times article, “A Neuropsychologist’s View on Donald Trump: We’re Seeing the Impact of Power on the Human Brain,” Robertson described the frenzied opening days of the second Trump administration:
Deports manacled immigrants, closes AIDS-prevention programs, starts and stops and restarts a tariffs war, vows to cleanse Gaza of its troublesome inhabitants and demands that all Israeli hostages be released by Hamas by midday on Saturday or he would “let hell break out.”
This activity, Robertson continued,
fuels an aggressive, feel-good state of mind, particularly in dominant, amoral personalities such as Trump’s. It also creates a restless, hyperactive state of mind, which, when combined with a feeling of omnipotence, fosters the delusions that you can snap your fingers and sort every problem.
At the same time, when Trump’s grandiose plans are frustrated, it poses high risks: “When that doesn’t happen — when Gaza or Greenland can’t be bought or U.S. birthright abolished — this ramps up a hyperactive rage at being thwarted and escalates a flurry of even more frenetic and unmeasured responses.”
Virtually all politicians have a strong attraction to power. What distinguishes Trump? When does the appeal of power lead to its abuse?
In response to my inquiries, Adam Galinsky, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School, emailed to say that he has developed a concept he calls “the little tyrant, someone who has power but lacks status, i.e., someone who controls resources but feels disrespected. It leads people to mistreat others in a domineering fashion.”
Addiction to power, Galinsky continued, “is partially the result of trying to fill the hole of insecurity left by feeling one is not respected by others. I believe this fits Donald Trump. He has always felt disrespected, and in many ways his entire persona resonates with his base as they feel their hold on society slipping away.”
Trump, Galinsky argued,
represents what researchers call the dark triad of three interconnected, malevolent personality traits: narcissism (grandiosity, self-centeredness), Machiavellianism (manipulation, cynicism) and psychopathy (impulsivity, lack of empathy/remorse).
Trump wants to be seen as the greatest president of all time and makes everything about himself (narcissism), he views the world as only functioning through manipulation and exertion of power (Machiavellianism), and he is impulsive and shows no empathy (psychopathy).
One of the most exhaustive analyses of the adverse consequences of an addiction to power is a 2023 article in the journal Communicative & Integrative Biology, “On Power and Its Corrupting Effects: The Effects of Power on Human Behavior and the Limits of Accountability Systems,” by Tobore Onojighofia Tobore, an independent scholar and medical researcher.
In the paper, Tobore explores the extensive scientific literature on the study of power to show that when power is wielded by abusive politicians or chief executives, the harm can have pervasive consequences.
In an email responding to a series of questions I posed, Tobore wrote:
Trump shows characteristics of a grandiose narcissist lacking in empathy. In the current divided political environment, where checks and balances have become significantly eroded and critical stakeholders, possibly out of fear of bullying, are unable to push back on his behavior, we may be in for more bad behavior from Trump.
Trump’s success in Iran and Venezuela, in Tobore’s view, “is likely to make him emboldened and more risk-prone. There is the possibility of more foreign escapades and increasing talk of a third term.”
I asked Tobore what personality characteristics are associated with addiction to power. He replied with a quotation from his article:
The grandiose narcissist is assertive and extroverted and distinguished by their sense of entitlement, overconfidence, high self-esteem, feelings of personal superiority, self-serving exploitative behavior, impulsivity, a need for admiration and dominance, and aggressive and hostile behavior when threatened or challenged.
Grandiose narcissists are more likely to seek and achieve positions of power in organizations, but they are more likely to abuse their power, pursue their interests at the expense of the organization, disregard expert advice, causing them to make poor decisions.
In his paper, Tobore also cited evidence that among those inclined to abuse power, the exercise of power has similar, if not identical, biological effects to those experienced by addicts:
Power abuse disorder has been coined as a neuropsychiatry condition connected to the addictive behavior of the power wielder. Arguments have been made on the relationship between power addiction and dopaminergic alterations.
Indeed, changes in the dopaminergic system have been implicated in drug addiction, and research on animals suggests that dominance status modulates activity in dopaminergic neural pathways linked with motivation.
Evidence suggests that areas of the brain linked with addiction, including the amygdala and dopaminergic neurons, play a major role in responding to social rank and hierarchy signals. Multiple lines of evidence from animal studies indicate that dopamine D2/D3 receptor density and availability is higher in the basal ganglia, including the nucleus accumbens, of animals with great social dominance compared to their subordinates. Animal studies suggest that following forced loss of social rank, there is a craving for the privileges of status, leading to depressive-like symptoms, which are reversed when social status is reinstated.
If that’s true, then the linkage between dominant power status and the loss of status to variations in hormone levels helps explain both Trump’s obsessive refusal to acknowledge his 2020 defeat and his continuing efforts to criminally charge those who have challenged him.
The appeal of power is itself a healthy and natural phenomenon, according to many of those I contacted. The problem arises when those who acquire power do so to fulfill their narcissistic need to subjugate others and are biologically rewarded when they do so.
Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at Berkeley, made the case in an email that “because in our evolutionary history, enjoying elevated power has benefited individuals in terms of reproductive success, the health of their children and kin, and their own individual flourishing.”
But, Keltner wrote, “given individual differences, there will be a small subset of people who compulsively seek out power in every social context and through whatever means necessary to satisfy the need for power — to influence (and often control) others.”
While voicing caution over the use of the word “addicted,” Keltner contended that
the study of addictions like alcohol or porn offers criteria for calling someone addicted to power. I’d state those criteria as:
When someone is compulsively exercising their power, often in inappropriate contexts, when they can’t stop trying to control and rise in power, when it brings about disruptions in social life.
Who is quite likely to go overboard in the pursuit of power?
Keltner said:
We know that people who are prone to addictions, like the addiction to power, are impulsive, they have trouble staying on task, they want intense sensational, gratifying experiences, and they’re prone to antisocial tendencies — fighting with others.
We know those same tendencies predict who will exercise power in a domineering and coercive fashion. So what this tells us is that certain individuals — the impulsive, the angry, the individual who has trouble focusing and staying on task — will gravitate toward exercising power in domineering, as opposed to collaborative, ways.
Addiction to power in the right hands, Keltner contended, can be beneficial:
If you have a strong need, even addiction, for exercising power and are inclined to the more collaborative approach, you will engage in more of that kind of behavior in your exercise of power — of bringing individuals together, building collaborations and alliances, encouraging and strengthening subordinates, etc., and if you are more domineering or coercive by default, that need or addiction to power will amplify those tendencies — undermining others, dehumanizing others, aggression, violence and extraction, weakening allies, hording resources.
Over the past week, it felt as though Trump was even more intensely compelled to publicly announce his determination to dominate everything in sight, and anyone who wants to block him had better watch out.
Perhaps most spectacularly, during a Jan. 7 interview with four Times reporters, Trump was asked if there were any limits on his global powers.
He replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” he added.
Trump may think his own morality and his own mind are the only constraints on his otherwise limitless power, but if we are dependent on either — not to mention Trump’s sense of empathy, compassion or sympathy for the underdog — we are in deep trouble. The nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large need to figure out how to place restraints on this ethically vacuous president, or we will all suffer continued and ever-worsening damage.
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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Tuesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post.
(Contributed by Michael Kelly, H.W.)
