Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
While visiting New York City recently, I saw a man in a wheelchair attempting to cross the street near Penn Station. Between the bag he was holding, a missing foot and a quick signal light, he was challenged. I observed dozens of people flowing around him, presumably not seeing a human in need of assistance. In a neighborly way, I asked if he’d like a push? When he agreed, I handed him my roller luggage and said “If you push this, I’ll push you.” Within seconds, we were across the intersection and I was ready to move on with my day. But the gentleman needed more.
As he got settled on the sidewalk in a spot of sun, he noted that we were outside a diner and he asked me to get him some hot tea. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a wad of cash and offered to buy me a drink, too. I declined because I just wanted to get on with my day and go to my hotel room. But I agreed to get him two cups of hot tea with lots of sugar. He gave me a $10 bill and I fulfilled his request. And I must admit to some impatience when he wanted me to pour the many sugar packets into his tea for him. Then I noticed his hands were misshapen. All through our interaction, he was speaking (more mumbling, really) and jumping from subject to subject so fast that I stopped trying to keep up. He needed human interaction.
After a few moments, I needed to get on with my day, and I left him chattering on the sidewalk to passersby. I wonder who was the next to stop and help him? And spend a few moments with him, human to human? As humans, we impact one another in trivial and profound ways. It was but a few minutes of my life. A small thing to me.
The encounter left me unsettled, as he needed more than I was willing to offer and I carried guilt, anger, fear and judgment with me for much of the day. I kept returning to: What more could I have done, without disrupting my day? What more should I have done, regardless of the day I had planned?
My conscience is pricked by the number of people who are homeless and traumatized. Our culture has three primary responses to those in need.
- Judgment that they made choices and are personally responsible for their plight.
- Indifference or helplessness in the face of the needs of others; it is easier and better to ignore “them.”
- Compassion and empathy for those in need and harsh judgment on others who do nothing.
I propose we need new thinking; a healthy version of each response listed above.
- Teach critical thinking skills in school and adult education, to help people make better choices and be aware of opportunities to improve their lives.
- Make it profitable for our best and brightest ideas to serve humanity, and create systems in which the vulnerable among us can thrive, instead of exploiting them.
- Set up listening centers, where lonely people can find and talk with each other; foster human interaction. Perhaps a new version of the human library?
The next morning, as I left my hotel to get coffee (at 5:45 a.m.!), a big, young man was haranguing an elderly man for a dollar, while his elderly wife stood by silently; her cell phone pressed to her ear. I didn’t sense any immediate danger and breezed by. Their encounter ended when I was about 20 paces away, and the young man headed in my direction. We never spoke, but I wondered why he chose that couple to panhandle to? And why did he harass them after they said no? This encounter was interesting, but left my conscience unbothered. Maybe after the previous day, I had shifted from compassion to indifference as a survival mechanism to avoid feeling helpless? I’m still pondering this. I also know that had I sensed danger, I would have stopped to help.
Before I left New York, a man opened fire in a subway car in Brooklyn. While my family called to make sure I was safe, no one in Manhattan mentioned it. I noticed more police in the subway stations. I was more aware of people around me, especially on the subway. But no one seemed to think anything of it. Just another day in NYC.
My heart was warmed by the images of people helping each other in Brooklyn. My hope is that we find ways to help each other outside of sudden, tragic incidents. We are at our best when we are healthy in our interdependence.
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.