Mesirow is the founder of the Elected Leaders Collective.
Being an elected official today takes an extraordinary level of courage. And it’s taking a toll on the mental health of our elected officials. A small cadre of brave people, part of a project called the Elected Leaders Collective, is supporting leaders in doing their work in a healthier way, bringing tools of mental wellbeing to the arena. Too many heart-led elected officials are dropping out when we need them to stay in and change the system. With new tools of personal inquiry, transformation and empowerment, we can make it happen.
Let me share how I found this calling. I was bright-eyed and energetic, with a keen intellect and servant’s soul. Passion oozed from my core. A voracious reader, I consumed endless books on policy, learned every theory and studied the greats. I learned in the field, volunteered for campaigns and causes, became a state delegate, and took leadership seminars. I did all the external work that was expected of me. I applied these talents by running a statewide race at just 23 years old. I was idealistic and thought I would change the world.
Then reality struck. Someone tried to sell a Senate seat: moral decay. Social media screamed at me: public hate. Entrenched interests in my own party slowed progress: nihilism. A can’t-do attitude pervaded: apathy. Ward bosses operated like mob bosses: a toxic culture. Privately I battled my own demons, as years of childhood trauma ran the programming deep in my brain. I pointed my finger at others, blaming them for the world’s failings. I numbed the pain with workaholism, food, alcohol and drugs.
The liquid of ecstatic possibility turned to cement structures that would not change.
Though I did not know it at the time, I could not hold the toxicity inside me and that in the system. I dropped out and took with me my passion, zeal and force for change. All the books had been for nothing. The light at the end of the tunnel of democracy dimmed.
For the next eight years, I worked on healing, conquering addiction, and reforming my relationship with food, alcohol, work, and sleep. I looked inward, understanding the lessons my traumas were here to teach me. Like an archeologist, I uncovered my life’s purpose and operationalized structures, boundaries and a community to support it. This was the start of my internal work, work that I knew never ends. Having been elected as a city councilperson at 32 years young, I could apply my internal and external learning to giving back to my community.
Then reality came again. Hate poured in on social media; I listened to understand. The newspaper traded in misinformation; I spoke the truth and cultivated personal advice. People confronted me at the farmer's market; I met them with kindness. Colleagues' sought incrementalism, and I trusted in our collective wisdom and supported them. Working two jobs, I experienced stress and became overwhelmed, meeting people with curiosity, cultivating mindfulness. I experienced all this, taking radical responsibility and asking, “What can I do to alleviate the condition I claim not to want?”
The cement began to liquefy and possibilities opened.
During Covid I committed my life to "healing our politics." I founded the Elected Leaders Collective. We help heart-centered leaders of all kinds find their own, personal transformation. Working with a community of over 100 elected leaders across the country we co-create safe, sacred, confidential space for mission-driven public-sector leaders.
Everyone needs a community to support them, so we built “The Pride,” our signature peer cohort group coaching program. We provide courses, workshops, coaching and small-group work to help leaders remove our internal blocks, build resilience, and get out of our own way, as I had to learn over all those years in the wilderness.
Our politics is toxic, and it need not be. We can change our collective condition by changing our individual conditions. It takes all of us. And it works.
Myriad scientific studies confirm the efficacy of mindfulness, mindset work, and other methodologies we employ. Consider Google’s Search Inside Yourself corporate wellness project, which found that applying techniques of workplace mindfulness reduced the experience of burnout by 30 percent and increased resilience and “bounce back” by 42 percent. In this same research, acts of constructive empathy rose by 39 percent, co-worker compassion grew by 22 percent and, as a result, finding “workable solutions to difficult problems” improved by 22 percent. Imagine what we could accomplish in the public trust with 22 percent more solutions to difficult problems and feeling 39 percent more empathy from our co-workers. I want to live in that world.
As a result of doing the work, elected leaders and public servants’ lives are improving.
During the great resignation, we aren't dropping out, we are dropping in. We are experiencing a decline in stress and anxiety. Our feeling of connectedness and trust is increasing. We are becoming more effective. We are healing our politics by healing ourselves. It has happened to me. My days of stress per year are down from over 300 to under 30, my anxiety is down 70 percent in two and a half years, and our community is passing transformational legislation, deferred for nearly a generation.
This is the beginning. We welcome all heart-centered leaders. We are building something new, together. Diversity of all kinds, including thought, is celebrated, and you are welcome.
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.