BY ANDREW STILES OCT 9 2026 ------------------- It’s Friday, October 9, 2026. The state of our union is… relentlessly nuanced. Mahmoud Khalil has no time for “silly questions” about Hamas. “Like, why would you ask me if I condemn Hamas?” the former Columbia activist huffed on CNN. The terrorist sympathizer has a point. Why bother asking when we already know the answer? Khalil has already explained that terrorists who kill Jews are merely “desperate … to be heard.” As a tenuously bearded fellow traveler from Michigan once put it: “Hurt people hurt people.” Again, valid points. If we could summon the empathy to sit down with the terrorists and hear them out, we might learn something—like how much they enjoy killing Jews. As one Hamas captor told his Israeli hostage: “We’re going to do October 7 again. As long as there is one Jew in the land of Israel, we will massacre you again and again and again.” We hear you. The idiot’s guide to conflict resolution: The aw-shucks radicalism notwithstanding, we can all learn from Khalil’s approach to thorny questions—when honesty is not an option. For example: “Like, why would you ask me that?” the noble, defiant husband said to his finger-pointing wife. “This, to me, is a silly question. You’re not interested in my views about what happened to the delicious ice cream you’d been looking forward to all week. It’s being used as a litmus test for husbands. ‘Just say yes or no. It’s black and white.’” The husband pretended to listen as he readied his next rhetorical onslaught, then continued. “I’m not refusing to condemn the person—or persons—who may have done this,” he explained calmly, slowing his cadence to ensure his wife would understand. “I reject the whole premise of the question. I want to get to the root causes of these issues. Like, I want to live in a world where everyone has ice cream, OK? It’s that simple. People want to be heard. And they are resorting to direct culinary action to express themselves, which is unfortunate.” The matter settled and victory secured, the husband marched off to make up the sleeper sofa. Minutes later, he returned. “Where do we keep the sheets?” https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RXCx!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F168b0c3e-3058-4069-a86e-ac369693513d_736x440.jpeg The antisemite’s guide to mourning murdered Jews: Zohran Mamdani posted a 200-word statement marking the October 7 anniversary. It was even more offensive than what Abdul El-Sayed had to say, which was nothing. The NYC mayor wrote three sentences acknowledging the attack itself, followed by a lengthy condemnation of the “suffering” Israel has inflicted on the world since 1948. “Our tax dollars fund these war crimes,” he empathized. That evening, Mamdani scowled his way through a “coexistence event” organized by Israelis for Peace. It wasn’t all that peaceful on account of the leftist mob that rolled up—desperate to be heard—chanting “Long live Hamas” and “Death to the IDF.” They denounced Mamdani, of all people, as “traitor” and a “sellout” to the terrorist cause. The hurt people seemed especially hurt by the mayor’s support for Brad Lander, a Jewish Democrat running for Congress. At least, one can reasonably infer as much from the impassioned appeals of “Lander, kill yourself” and “Fuck you, Lander, you Nazi fuck.” Looks like the jury’s still out on “Tackling Hate,” the Mamdani administration’s plan to combat antisemitism in New York and “ensure that Jewish life flourishes for generations to come.” Hizzoner kept the party going at a controversial Palestinian restaurant, which offered temporary respite from the mob. Then, some lurking goons called him a Zionist “boot licker” on his way out the door. Bless his heart, the poor thing. Who knew that pandering to lunatics might eventually backfire? Robespierre comes to mind, but only because I just finished a podcast series on the Reign of Terror. Never change, preening leftists. Never change. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8r00!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb019ffd4-1f8b-43fb-b445-53e850785238_736x351.jpeg Sleeping with the enemy: All politics is domestic. If the true Hamasniks are serious about replacing Mamdani with someone who isn’t such a fair-weather Jew-hater and “genocide” enabler, they won’t have to look far. This week the Free Beacon reported that Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, has created “art” for an anti-Israel olive oil company that sells premium bottles emblazoned with the image of a Palestinian “resistance fighter” who reportedly shot down a British plane and was later sentenced to death. From the foyer to the garden gate, Gracie Mansion liberate! Duwaji is tanned, rested, and ready after returning from Portugal, where she landed an “artist-in-residence” gig at a spiritual wellness retreat for antisemitic elites. At the very least, she thinks the activists calling her husband a sellout deserve a fair hearing. A real Barack and Michelle vibe. The primary challenge is coming from inside the house. The woke is dead, long live the woke: It’s still crazy out there and getting crazier the likelier it appears that Republicans will soon cede control of Congress to a bunch of unsettling weirdos who are on video explaining how the “violent hierarchies” of “white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, [and] economic exploitation … have colonized our own minds.” NBA announcers are getting fired for social media posts they made when they were 15. White ladies are losing their opera society jobs for wearing cornrows at Burning Man. An accidental drag queen blackface incident forced a Pittsburgh gay bar to cancel future events due to death threats. The new president of the American Psychological Association is a “liberation-oriented” academic who specializes in “racial trauma” and the “gender expression” of “nonbinary Black womxn [sic].” It could be worse: When I read that Justin Timberlake had apologized for beatboxing in the early 2000s, I assumed it was a cultural appropriation thing. But it was just a silly joke. For now, anyway. Gavin Newsom, disqualified: There are many reasons why he should never be president. One of them is that he knowingly married Kimberly Guilfoyle. The Wall Street Journal reports—or, rather, reconfirms—that Greasy Gavin’s first wife, who also dated Don Jr. until his dad banished her to Greece, is what some might call a messy grifter. At the same time, it’s hard to feel sorry for her latest mark. Eric Deters, a Kentucky lawyer (suspended since 2013) with ties to the Snappy Tomato Pizza empire, reportedly gave Guilfoyle $300,000 to secure “favors” from the Trump White House. Guilfoyle delivered nothing in return but did reach out to see if Deters would pay off her $100,000 Amex bill before her Senate confirmation hearing. In addition to getting the IRS to stop asking questions about his taxes, Deters really hoped that Guilfoyle could persuade Kid Rock to listen to the country song he wrote about a “Kentucky outlaw” who “fights the man” and “stands defiant” despite getting “hit from kicks from every side.” The AI-generated music video, which has amassed almost 250 views on YouTube, features a cowboy losing a boxing max to a punching bag. Respect the hustle. Depression-era farmer or farmer’s market lesbian? Social media commenter @toll_ride observed that every photo of Rob Sand, the Iowa Democrat running for governor (who married into a vast animal-byproduct empire), makes him look “like a 1920s farmer or a middle aged lesbian from Oregon.” See for yourself: ///