Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Conflict resolution, mediation and peacebuilding are established communities of work steeped in and supported by research. Bridging divides, or “bridging” as it is being called today, is a younger cousin that developed from the dialogue and deliberation community. In the D&D world, it is largely practiced as multi-stakeholder engagement in local communities – although it is practiced at national and global levels, too.
Bridging conversations are beginning to have a bigger impact on the effort to decrease toxic polarization. But back In 2002, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation formed and began to gather practitioners into a community to share best practices. NCDD is still thriving, and contributed to the beginnings of Bridge Alliance (an alliance of organizations devoted to improving healthy self-governance from local to federal levels) as well as contributing to the ethos behind the bridging community for cross-partisan conversations.
Bridging practitioners are planning a movement: to mainstream the demand for high-quality conversations and relationships via improved skill sets like open-mindedness, deep listening and better understanding of our differences to act on our commonalities. This in turn will support other movements to improve our ability to self-govern as citizens.
The hypothesis of the bridging divides community is that healthy relationships between everyday diverse people will build our resilience as a nation. In short, there is a strong belief that bridging conversations, where people discuss sensitive issues, some political, will help decrease toxic polarization and build demand for more reasonable people in elected and appointed offices. This has yet to be proven, and may rely on (re)establishing our faith and our collective choice to strengthen the democratic republic in which we live.
Within the bridging divides community, the underlying assumption in the hypothesis is that the United States’ democratic republic is stable, and better skills will help us navigate through conflict in a healthier way.
I’m more confident today than I was pre-midterm election that this assumption is correct. When democracy is threatened (and ours was rated “democracy in decline” in 2021 by a Swedish think tank, scoring 82/100 by Freedom House in 2022), it leads us to an interesting intersection of the bridging divides field and the authoritarian scholarship field.
While there has been nascent research around the effectiveness of bridging divides, there is a larger and growing body of research around authoritarian scholarship and efforts to promote democratic values around the world. In short, many people in the Bridge Alliance coalition are working on pro-democracy efforts to defend and protect our republic through electoral reforms and bipartisan policies. And other coalition members, like bridgers, are working to make self-governance more effective, supporting pro-democracy efforts through lowered resistance to reform.
Pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian efforts start with a different hypothesis: that democracy is fragile and must be strengthened through systemic change, socioeconomic policies and electoral reforms.
What does the research say? Anti-authoritarian/pro-democracy research shows that bridging divides is less effective or not effective for strengthening democracy itself; bridging divides may be effective for self-governance in a stable democracy – research is underway.
My colleague, Julia Roig, noted in an email recently:
I’ve learned that the focus on individual psychology is actually controversial in the field of authoritarian scholarship. Some would point to socio-economic-political factors as the most prominent underpinning of support for authoritarianism and they also point to the phenomena of inducing defections from the pillars that support an authoritarian system. This happens when so much economic and social pressure is exerted that it’s not in people’s self interest to support the authoritarian regime any more. So the idea is that people’s support for anti-democratic behavior is much more malleable than generally assumed. Another example, in post-Nazi Germany or post-Pinochet Chile previous supporters of a repressive regime will say afterwards that they were never real supporters and seem to shift to pro-democracy once the political winds changed.
This is the emphasis behind pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian work – to reform the system itself so that democracy provides better living standards and opportunities than authoritarian regimes.
Next column: How does the bridging divides work support pro-democracy efforts?
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.