Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The woman who sat next to me on a recent flight spent our five hours together sharing details of all the breakdowns in society and how it’s all gone horribly, horribly wrong. I listened carefully. This was an opportunity “in the wild'' to practice what I encourage others to do - listen and ask questions. Even with someone who believes in conspiracies. I willingly choose to engage with people who have a different worldview. Especially when we appear demographically similar. I’ll call her Jane, to protect her privacy.
A few background notes about Jane – she is married to a man who prioritizes watching sports over spending time talking with his wife. As she noted, “the stork flew past our house” as a way to explain why she doesn’t have children. She does have 56 nieces and nephews; she is part of a large family. Her career path was in outside sales; she spent years as a road warrior. When Jane was laid off in 2020 from a major media company, she assumed it was because of her worldview, not the pandemic and travel restrictions. For most of the past 15 years, she has spent her spare time researching on the internet. Jane doesn’t have any social media accounts and takes pride in finding “primary sources.” She feels has the answers, if only people would listen.
Jane’s worldview includes believing there is a cabal of financial interests who want to decrease the population, derived from generations of eugenicist research. This “cabal” has infiltrated our institutions to enact their evil plan to kill people. Adding to her hypothesis are these beliefs:
- Public education is making us more compliant
- The healthcare system will kill us, rather than heal us
- The media is brainwashing us to believe lies are truth
- Entertainment is “shoving wokism down our throats” (specifically around gender identity and trans issues)
I focused on asking questions – deepening my understanding and hoping to learn how her beliefs were built. How did she arrive at the understanding that something is horribly, horribly wrong? In short, podcasters and YouTubers have revealed to her the truth; and strengthened her ability to discern the patterns of our destruction, carefully hidden from the mainstream and only available to dedicated internet researchers. When she mentioned a couple of names, I probed a bit and asked why she trusted them? After a short pause, she responded it was because their message resonated with her.
She laughed at this point, noting that her liberal family members assume she watches Fox News all the time when in fact she told me except for an occasional interview she watches online, she doesn’t. She considers Fox News to be part of the global cabal.
As I continued listening, I began to hear her pain. The pain of discord within her marriage, and with her family of sisters, aunts, nieces and nephews. Her family is evenly divided with differing worldviews. One worldview sees great harm inflicted upon themselves by the “industry complexes.” The other worldview sees great harm inflicted by the conspiracy theories that could lead to societal collapse. I asked more questions. Specifically:
- What do you want your relationship with your family to be like?
- How do you decide who to trust, especially on the internet?
- What do you want for your future?
As we talked Jane would often start to respond to one of my questions, then distract herself because she didn’t have a ready answer. Unfortunately, I have found this to be the case for most people when new or tough questions are asked. Unfortunately, we spend too little time thinking about what we want and how important our friends and family are to our lives. When we are lonely, too many of us reach out to the internet, where conflict profiteers are ready to help us feel better with their stories.
By the end of our flight, I was exhausted but also gratified because I felt Jane needed someone to hear her. She needed to express herself fully, without judgment. And while it was a chore, it didn’t hurt me. And if you're curious: Did I change my mind? No.
I left the flight feeling compassion toward Jane; for decades she has been lonely. In the last several months, she has found a way to increase her joy with a new business that includes her family members. My hope is that being around people who love her will break the doom-cycle of internet research that led her to believe that everything is horribly, horribly wrong, and through more constant connection and love she will develop a deep sense of belonging.
In truth, we all belong to each other.
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.