Frazier graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Law. He is currently serving as a judicial clerk in Montana. His views are his own.
The wisdom of the crowd is at the foundation of any belief that democracy can produce a good society. Elections, public forums, comment periods and the like all offer each person the chance to share their assessment of a candidate, issue, or regulation – the aggregation of those assessments determines the outcome. If we did not assume the superiority of the collective, then such a system would serve little societal value. After all, it makes little sense to shape a society around the recklessness of the rabble.
Yet, our collective wisdom is waning – at least with respect to the sort of wisdom that’s required to elect quality candidates, evaluate policy, and meaningfully participate. A whole slew of factors has made us individually more unaware than attentive, ignorant than informed, and foolish than deliberate with respect to our democratic duties. For example, social media surrounds us with sensationalistic accounts of all the “news” you didn’t need to know.
Similarly, the political “news” we read, even from supposedly serious outlets such as the New York Times, is more akin to entertainment than analysis of the issues impacting communities around the U.S. On Monday, January 30, the “U.S. Politics” section of the Times featured a profile on Congressman Matt Gaetz, an article on the man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, and an update on the key Senate races to watch in 2024. Absent from any of those articles: the substance of governing.
And, our elected officials accelerate, rather than combat these factors – they spend hours a day making calls to major donors, posting TikToks and tweets for their most fervent and partisan supporters, and issuing press releases intended only to inflame.
Being attentive to the political news of the last weeks would mean you’re well versed in George Santos’s lies and have a running list of where confidential documents have been uncovered. The aggregation of this knowledge would produce little wisdom…
We need to redefine what it means to be “informed” with respect to civic education if this crowd is going to steer our democracy through tumultuous times. How best to combat and counteract the aforementioned factors is beyond the scope of a short opinion piece. Obviously, huge shifts in our business models, information diets, and cultural norms are required to provide “the crowd” with information relevant to its obligation to guide society. However, even if those shifts were to occur tomorrow, until the crowd is willing and able to understand and act on that information better “news” will have little to no impact.
One in five (19 percent) American adults lack functional literacy based on a 2017 study—the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies. These adults lack the ability to “make matches between the text and information” as well as to paraphrase or make low-level inferences from that information. Additionally, they struggle to compare and contrast or reason based on provided information. Too many younger Americans similarly lack the requisite degree of literacy to contribute their full wisdom to the rest of the crowd – more than one in four (27 percent) eighth grade students are below a basic reading level, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
All members of the crowd have valuable and necessary insights that add to our collective wisdom. However, unless and until we take the information diet and literacy of the crowd seriously, we will continue to shortchange our ability to make difficult and complex decisions. Advocates for a more representative, just, and equal democracy ought to recognize the need to become champions of literacy. Every American should feel empowered to and capable of thoroughly investigating candidates and causes – that goal will go unrealized until literacy becomes a real priority.
Empty stomachs don’t make it any easier to learn to read. No defender of democratic inclusion should oppose free school lunches.
Tired teachers will struggle to keep students on pace. No proponent of the public’s role should stifle initiatives to train, retain, and support educators.
Short school days will shortchange the wisdom of the collective crowd. No campaigner for civic participation should limit time spent in the classroom.
The wisdom of the crowd is no secret. We reach better decisions when surrounded by other people committed to and capable of serious investigation of difficult questions. Let’s invest in a wiser democracy by investing in the literacy of every American.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.