As 2022 draws to a close, The Fulcrum has invited leaders of democracy reform organizations to share their hopes and plans for the coming year. This is the fourth in the series.
Davies is a podcast consultant, host and solutions journalist at daviescontent.com. He co-hosts the podcasts “How Do We Fix It?” and “Let’s Find Common Ground."
We are right in the middle of America’s season of biennial public rituals. First there was the election, then Thanksgiving and, still to come, Christmas and the new year. All of them bring people together and remind us that despite our differences there is much that we share in common with one another.
The result of the midterm election was a surprise to almost everyone. And isn’t it good when the smart people — pundits, pollsters, and political professionals armed with all their data and research — get it wrong? While science and technology continue to make stunning advances, human behavior remains a tricky thing to track.
Leading up to the vote last month, Republicans expected to score a blowout victory. Democrats issued dire warnings that democracy was hanging by a thread. Many of us were anxious and fearful, but both of these forecasts turned out wrong.
Leading up to the election, right-wing populists promoted the absurd theory that the 2020 election had been stolen. But that year Republicans made gains in Congress and state races. If that election was a sham how could this be? The populist claim was as crazy as seeing the former president dressed up as a superhero with laser beams shooting out of his eyes. Hardcore Donald Trump supporters eat it up, but last month common-sense, independent-minded voters made it clear they'd had enough. While many conservative, mainstream Republicans did well, many of the most controversial and extreme Trump backers went down to defeat.
The second great public American ritual was Thanksgiving, a holiday when more people travel to be with their loved ones than at any other time of year. Many friends and families were together in the same room for the first time in three years, since before the pandemic.
As with the election, this Thanksgiving had more than its share of doubters. Leading up to the long holiday weekend we were deluged by media warnings that the turkey might be hard to swallow if you had the bad luck to be seated next to a family member with different political views than your own. We were fed the theory that with such deep political divides Thanksgiving could be a time of great tension. No doubt it was for some, but where is the evidence that this year was much more fraught than usual?
The day after Thanksgiving was Black Friday, Our local mall opened at 6 a.m. Stores were packed. Driving along I-95 in southeast Connecticut that morning, I spotted an astounding queue of cars waiting to go to Clinton Crossing Outlets. It must have taken some shoppers well over an hour just to get to the lot.
According to the business press, many people want to visit brick-and-mortar stores because they’d had enough of Amazon and other forms of online buying that boomed during the pandemic. We might have difficulty admitting it, but for many people physical in-person shopping is fun. There is still something thrilling when you think you’re coming home with a bargain, especially at a time of high inflation and a shaky economy.
Here’s to a happy holiday season for all: A time when we celebrate light, hope, and even the occasional miracle.
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.