Tenzin Dolma was born in Tibet, educated in India and France, and now works for a nonprofit focused on Tibetan issues in Washington, D.C.
It's International Day of Democracy on September 15. As a woman born in Tibet, I encourage people to reflect on the role of luck in where we are born and how important it is for countries around the world to hold each other accountable. When it comes to democracy, Americans remain very lucky indeed to enjoy it.
Meanwhile, I have spent much of my life in a legal limbo called "statelessness." It is when no country will grant you citizenship. I fell into it at first for antidemocratic reasons. That is because China doesn't recognize the country of my birth. The plight of the Tibetan people is quite famous around the world. China remains sensitive to outspoken criticism of its treatment of Tibetans. Even now, working in Washington, D.C., I am careful about choosing my words. That is despite living in a country where free speech is woven into the Constitution. I still have family in more sensitive regions of the world where my words will have consequences.
I fled Tibet to India to study when I was just a child. I had no papers. But India let us stay on the condition that I went to school. When I finished school, I managed to get a visa to go to university in France, traveling to France with an identity certificate issued by the Government of India. When I finished in France, I went back to India. But like many people in my position, India would only grant me a visitor’s visa with limited time in the country. Not all Tibetans’ status in India is the same. But I can never get an Indian passport. I had to leave. Against the clock, I found work at a nonprofit in America. I came here on a specialist visa for people like me but my immigration status remains shaky. I am a citizen of nowhere and I cannot travel outside the United States again.
In America, I heard about a new organization called United Stateless. It is trying to end the condition of statelessness for people in America. There are about 218,000 of us here. And there are about two million stateless people around the world.
Many of us became stateless for antidemocratic reasons. It happened to people who fled the former Soviet Union, for example. And it often afflicts people in the midst of wars and other geopolitical crises. The end result is we show up in a country—I was lucky to end up in America—without the ability to regularize our status. We live in fear of deportation even though it is often impossible to deport us because nowhere will take us. We struggle to get documents, such as identification. It makes it hard to work.
But there is some good news. America's Department for Homeland Security announced new rules in August. While they do not guarantee stateless people a path to citizenship, the rules do mean something. For the first time, DHS issued a clear definition of statelessness. Immigration officers can now consider statelessness in their decision-making. It means immigration officers will know how to treat people like me. And it offers some hope.
Still, such policy is subject to the whims of the administration in power. The next important step is for Congress to pass the Stateless Protection Act. Sponsored by U.S. Senator Ben Cardin and Congressman Jamie Raskin, the legislation could help. I am encouraged to hear that it will go through a democratic process. In some ways it would be the fitting culmination of my experience in coming to the United States to see a beacon of democracy affirming through a democratic bill that I deserve a country of my own.
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.