Etelson is the author of “ Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide ” and co-founder of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.
In a country so polarized that even a chain restaurant’s menu turns into a culture war food fight, it’s not surprising that we lack a consensus around Covid prevention policies. Covid found not only our public health apparatus wanting, but our public discourse as well. Two and half years in, we are not even attempting to negotiate the sharing of public space by people with widely divergent opinions regarding how dangerous Covid is and how far we should go in trying to protect ourselves and others from it.
Most of us, if we have the luxury of autonomy, order off the a la carte menu whatever precautions we perceive to be the most effective or manageable and then sit in judgment on those who load up their plates with different items. Some won’t dine indoors but will fly on an airplane. Some won’t go to a party but will sit through an indoor concert. Some host an extended family holiday meal but want all students in masks. Everyone thinks they’re right and that those who have calibrated risk differently are wrong.
Not just innocently wrong, but wickedly wrong. I have carefully weighed and fact-checked all the evidence, investigated the credibility of all my sources, fine-tuned my moral compass and drawn the correct conclusion. I value health and longevity versus pleasurable experiences the correct and proper amount. They have drawn the wrong conclusion because they, unlike me, are motivated by selfishness, neuroticism, disinformation and/or in-group conformity bias. They are ignorant. They are virtue-signaling. They are fascists. They don’t care about students’ well-being. They are gullible conspiracists. They cower in fear. They are being duped by bad actors.
Who is the “they” being castigated? Anti-vaccine “fanatics”? Zero-Covid “zealots”? It could be anyone, and that’s the point. In each epithet, one can see the shape of one’s adversary.
The virus mutates; new information about survival rates, natural immunity, and vaccine and mask efficacy becomes available; and many of us recalibrate accordingly but, whenever we do so, we are right once again and those who recalibrated differently are catastrophically mistaken.
The stakes of being wrong are high and so, naturally, resentment toward those who err is intense. There is a powerful desire to convince The Wrong of the error of their ways and intense irritation that they still just don’t get it or care to get it.
Even now, I imagine readers thinking to themselves: “How dare you both-side this when the other side is so clearly insane. I refuse to dignify the dangerous, ill-informed opinions of fascists and ignoramuses.” The thing is ... it doesn’t matter how right you are if the other side isn’t willing to listen. If the other side feels their needs and concerns are not being acknowledged, they will double-down on their priors and reciprocate with closed-minded ill-will.
What if we all give up the fantasy of overpowering The Wrong with our facts, logic and moral superiority? What if we accept that no one will win this war and, instead, try to negotiate a lasting peace?
What would such a negotiation look like? It begins with trying to understand where people are coming from. Empathy for people who act in ways we see as wrongheaded or harmful is not easy, but it is necessary. Imagine the depths that could be plumbed during a facilitated conversation between an elderly diabetic woman who lost her husband to Covid and a single mother who lost her job as a cashier when her kids’ school switched to remote learning.
Absent empathy, we blame each other for a state of affairs that is intrinsically bad and for which there is no panacea. No matter what restrictions we enact or rescind, there will be Covid deaths, there will be inconveniences and sorely missed experiences, there will be learning losses, there will be loneliness and suffering. Our task is to agree upon the best of the bad options, a process that begins with empathy and leads, hopefully, to creative compromises.
I don’t know what the outcome of such negotiations would be. Maybe there are mask-only and mask-optional flights, concerts and religious services. Maybe there are, as in the early days of the pandemic, special hours for more vulnerable people to shop. Maybe public schools are retrofitted with better ventilation and students given a remote learning option. Maybe free N-95 masks are distributed in all public venues. Once people start listening and brainstorming, ingenious ideas will likely emerge.
Learning how to engage in collective problem-solving could help us repair our pandemic-ravaged social fabric. It would also serve us well when it comes to other heated conflicts regarding the use of public space. For example, on the issue of women’s locker rooms, one side sees the exclusion of trans women with penises from traditionally women-only spaces as transphobic. The other side worries that trans women with penises present the same potential safety risks that having males in those spaces always has. Neither side is willing to acknowledge the other’s legitimate needs for safety, dignity and respect.
Covid isn’t done with us. In terms of death, it’s like having a 9/11 attack every week. The virus is destined to become more – or less – virulent, and the cycle of recalibration and recrimination will begin anew. Divisive politicians and media will prey on our mutual contempt and ramp it up to mobilize their base or boost their ratings. If we don’t negotiate the use of public space, our society will remain sick long after we’ve recovered from Covid.
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.