Nate is a Communications Consultant for RepresentUS, a nonpartisan organization focused on minimizing corruption in the U.S. political system.
I have an embarrassing confession to make: I’m a political junkie, but I didn’t vote in the last two federal elections.
As a center-right voter, wholly disillusioned with the direction of my former party, I refuse to “hold my nose” and vote for candidates who don’t reflect my values. Friends, family, and the internet try to browbeat me into voting for one of the major party’s candidates by telling me that not doing so is the equivalent of voting for “the other side.”
But America is the land of opportunity and unlimited options. In a country where we have literally hundreds of deodorant choices, we are also told that elections have only two options.
In a free market, supply meets consumer demand; in our democratic republic, elected officials should reflect the voters’ demands. But thanks to the two-party duopoly, most Americans feel that their elected officials simply don’t reflect their values. A recent Gallup poll found that a record 49 percent of voters identify as politically independent.
I could sit here and complain about my sense of political homelessness until I’m blue in the face. Instead, I’m choosing to fight for my voice and my values. That’s why I’m working to promote Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), a simple but important change to our voting system that gives us more choice and more voice.
RCV is an extremely simple process. Instead of agonizing over which candidate to choose, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no one receives a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least votes is removed, and voters who selected them as their first choice have their votes reallocated to their second choice. The process continues until one candidate has a majority. This way, we no longer need to worry about voting strategically or otherwise “wasting” our votes.
Most importantly, RCV empowers us to reject the “lesser of two evils” because we can now demand better than the “evil of two lessers.”
With RCV, candidates are incentivized to build positive, issues-focused campaigns. They are motivated to reach communities and voters they might otherwise have ignored. And under RCV, good candidates aren’t at risk of “spoiling” elections, and bad candidates can’t win just by demonizing their opponents.
A majority of Americans, including half of Republicans, support RCV. It’s the politicians who don’t.
Recently, a lawmaker told me they supported RCV in theory, but were concerned they could “get flanked by a moderate and lose.” What they were really saying was, “I’m worried that RCV would allow a candidate who better represents the interests and values of my district to beat me.”
And that’s the trouble with implementing RCV. Republican and Democrat politicians alike oppose RCV because they’re afraid that it will give voters more choice and more power, and that’s a troubling thought for most politicians.
In these polarizing times, it’s easy to think that any political issue inherently benefits one side or the other. But that isn’t the case here. RCV has broad support from voters across the political spectrum, and it may be the only thing that can heal our deepening political divide.
If you want our elected leaders to better reflect our priorities and become more responsive to the will of their constituents, then RCV is for you. We can do so much better than a system where most of us passively check the box for one of only two parties. We can build a better system that encourages our active engagement in the political process — and that starts with RCV.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.