Marc Wong was a volunteer at a telephone crisis center, and he has worked in computer security. His passion for listening and helping others is now his mission. His book Thank You For Listening was cited as an “invaluable self-improvement guide” by Midwest Book Review. He believes our biggest challenge as a species is to bring out the best in ourselves.
The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, an international soccer competition, is being hosted jointly by Australia and New Zealand from July 20, 2023 to August 20, 2023. The telecom company Orange recently released a video, “a Compil des Bleues” to support the French national soccer team.
The video has been gaining attention recently. Spoiler alert! It starts off by showing highlights from the French men’s national team, showing their incredible skills. But then it is revealed that the exciting highlights were actually from the French women’s matches, with the female players altered with special effects to look like famous male players.
The video brilliantly and viscerally challenges the idea that women’s soccer matches are less entertaining than men’s soccer matches. It makes a case for equal pay between male and female athletes.
Contrast this with some other well-known commercials over the years. The first example is the 1971 “Buy the World a Coke” commercial. Its most memorable feature is probably the catchy tune that eventually became the hit song, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony).” Another well-known commercial is the 2017 Heineken “Worlds Apart: An Experiment” commercial. It is memorable for appearing to get people on two sides of an issue to sit down over a drink. And lastly, Nike’s 2021 “You Can’t Stop Us” commercial. It won the 2021 Outstanding Commercial Emmy and featured seamless side-by-side video montage of athletes in different sports, and brilliantly implied unity and continuity.
“A Compil des Bleues” is different from the other examples . because while all these commercials are inspiring, entertaining, and beautiful, the French one challenges (potentially hidden) biases. The French one is arguably the most successful at changing minds and educating viewers.
When it comes to interventions, to bridge the divide and find common ground similar considerations apply. The most important thing may not be the form of the intervention but whether we can appeal to, and then change hearts and minds, especially in areas where there is disagreement. Can we engage, inspire, and educate in an entertaining fashion?
To change minds and hearts we cannot just preach to the choir. Interventions need to have mass appeal and we must be careful to have an appealing message to those who might be new to this messaging approach.
In this case, “des Bleues” used the most popular sport in the world (soccer) to make their point.
Since so many of our disagreements are emotionally charged, we cannot rely on facts and reasoning alone either. There was no mention of gender equality or players’ salaries in the commercial but instead it was filled with exciting highlights. Furthermore, if people don’t gain meaningful insight into our most challenging issues, they are just going to argue in circles making common ground impossible.
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.