Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
As we approach the upcoming midterm elections, I am stunned when I think about how little we learn from history. Both Democrats and Republicans believe if their nominees get elected, the serious problems our country faces will be tackled with a new vigor, and real change will actually occur.
So often in our history a new Congress convenes with newly elected representatives who have lofty ideals, only to be stymied by the system. It just might be that we all overplay the importance of the outcome of presidential elections in determining the direction our country will take in the four years following the election. More often than not our national elections merely validate an establishment that never really changes.
Something new is needed — a new paradigm in advance of midterm elections that changes the way citizens think about and participate in our democracy.
One such effort is Bridge Alabama, a program inviting citizens under the age of 40 to join a series of three conversations to decrease polarization, build community, and support community-led storytelling and news in advance of the state and midterm elections.
A diverse group of participants will join conversations with other Alabamians about the issues that matter to them, build relationships and have their voices heard. The goal is for this to be more than just a three-day event but to provide ongoing support and tools to make it easier for folks to continue collaborating, connecting or supporting each other moving forward.
This project will help address three timely and essential needs in states across the Deep South between now and the 2022 election. First is the need to create spaces for engagement with younger people in the South to tell new stories and create new possibilities for community and civic engagement. Bridge Alabama is focusing on people and places often invisible to national and state policymakers — and among a demographic with increasing political power, creating new ways to come together to talk about what matters most, then translate those conversations into news stories and collective action.
The program is predicated on the belief that we will be strengthened by more pluralistic community conversations. Bridge Alabama will inclusively bring people together to collectively understand the problems and issues that are most important to address in advance of the 2022 election and decide together what happens to their communities.
As we approach the 2022 midterms our nation needs more productive ways by shifting media coverage, deliberation and polarization to combat the division and dysfunction that defined 2020. Bridge Alabama is a grand experiment aiming to foster inclusion, pluralism, community and civic engagement in new ways for new times.
The nonprofit Essential Partners will design and facilitate the conversations and local partners will help with outreach. Cortico will record the discussions and produce transcripts, which will be accessible to participants and our partners. The nonpartisan Bridge Alliance will provide access to resources and support. Journalists from The Fulcrum (which is operated by the Bridge Alliance) and Reckon will then be empowered to tell new stories that raise up the concerns and hopes of Alabamians under 40.
America doesn’t just need new people in office. We need a new commitment to a new politics of problem-solving and citizen involvement and collaboration. Bridge Alabama is a step toward an election process that values a core belief that the search for solutions should be based on reason, logic and inquiry, where a conclusion follows from a set of premises, not the other way around. Bridge Alabama will allow room for people from different parties and with different beliefs to sit around a table to collaborate on tough issues facing our nation.
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.