Frazier is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and the Harvard Kennedy School.
We, the people, are the drivers of our democracy. But we’re no longer behind the wheel. Parties seized control and are steering us in a dangerous direction.
It’s time for us all to have the “talk” with anyone and everyone who cares about the future of our democracy. As a country, we’ve reached that special age where the consequences of our actions are solely our responsibility. We’re no longer that new democracy on the block that can blame its blunders on a lack of maturity.
Rather than birds and bees, we need to talk about R’s and D’s and what parties are doing to our democracy. We need to specifically talk about our mutual obligation to one another – as co-sovereigns over this great country – to register as “no party preference” or whatever the equivalent is in our respective jurisdictions.
Perhaps we, the people, were tired when we gave the keys to our democracy to parties. We had just fought for decades to free ourselves from out-of-touch and distant rulers who had little interest in our well-being and instead prioritized their own accumulation of power. So when parties offered us a chance to rest our eyes – to delegate decisions such as who would run our democracy and where they’d take us – we willingly switched to the passenger seat. “We’ll switch back at the next rest stop,” we thought.
Hundreds of miles later, parties are still in control and we, the people, are effectively sovereigns in name only. In states like Oregon, one party controls every stage of the electoral process. In that blue state, voters unaffiliated with the Democratic Party have no meaningful role in the selection of statewide officials. Thanks to a closed primary system, only registered Democrats can participate in the initial (and, in most cases, determinative) stage of the election – the candidate Democrats select in the primary almost always wins the general election.
Parties also rarely share the same goals as we, the people. Their main goal is to retain power, not to make sure they’re solving problems or communicating with constituents. Consider that incoming lawmakers are instructed to spend at least half of their day fundraising. If parties really were in our corner and truly wanted to address pressing issues – corruption, climate change and unequal access to economic opportunity, etc. – would they order officials to dial for dollars while they could be coordinating and collaborating to actually get work done?
Our democracy was designed to prevent state-based loyalties from undermining national progress. Our Founding Fathers feared that representatives would struggle to reach compromises that may benefit one state over another, which is why they designed the House and Senate in ways that would counteract the ability of a single state and its representatives to control our government.
The original design of our democracy did not include checks and balances with respect to extreme partisanship or party-based loyalties. It follows that parties are akin to an invasive species – something non-native to an environment that can wreak havoc when left unchecked.
We, the people, can no longer claim to be ignorant of the negative effect of parties on our democracy. We’re smart enough to identify candidates who should run for office; we’re aware of the problems in our community that need to be prioritized; and we’re capable of being back in the driver seat of our democracy.
It’s time for a new version of the "talk." We need to wake up to the fact that our democracy has been taken over by parties. The first step to taking back control is asserting our independence – registering as “no party preference.” As the ranks of NPPs grow, parties will have less and less authority to exercise our sovereign power.
Go have the talk. Find a friend. Tell them that we, the people, have a sovereign responsibility to care enough about our democracy to make independent decisions. Then, contact your secretary of state or election office and take that critical first step of reclaiming our position as the drivers of our democracy by freeing yourself from undying party loyalty.
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.