Dr. Ryan David Leack teaches writing and rhetoric in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California.
Traditional values are declining, according to a recent Wall Street Journal-NORC poll, indicating that few core beliefs unite us as a country. Congress mirrors these divisions. Partisan rifts seem rhetorically modulated, with emotion-charged language running high no matter the issue.
Tune into any political discussion today after a speech and the opposing party labels it empty rhetoric. The aim of such speeches is to persuade the audience of a certain view using rhetorical devices. Yet, if political discourse is steeped in rhetoric, how can we distinguish genuine sincerity from persuasive tactics? It seems we can’t. This type of rhetoric prevents genuine exchange. The question to explore is whether all rhetoric precludes compromise and fossilizes value judgments.
To understand the power and potential of rhetoric, we must return to its origin in ancient Greece. Aristotle knew that most people are persuaded by emotion rather than reason. That is certainly the predominant rhetoric in politics today in which former President Trump excels.
Before Plato and Aristotle arrived on the scene, during the height of radical democracy in 5th-century Athens, a ragtag band of men known as Sophists—literally “wise men”—dominated the political arena. Understanding effective or persuasive communication, they traveled through some 1,000 city-states, teaching young men how to argue effectively in public debates and preparing them for political life. In effect, they argue both sides of an argument to test ideas and arrive at the best course of action.
They also noticed that customs changed across city-states in ways that exceeded today’s red and blue districts. Although the Sophists shared no united doctrine—similar to the gulf between Democrats and Republicans—they employed complementary practices that, if used today, may aid stalemates across bipartisan biases, free speech debates, de-platforming, and so-called “cancel culture.” These situations have in common a core of rigid assumptions on all sides, not amenable to inquiry, exchange, and productive pressure.
Plato viewed the Sophists’ rhetoric as an impediment to the “truth.” Rhetoric, he believed, was only valuable if indexed to his question-and-answer, dialectical method toward truth. Ironically, Plato practiced the rhetoric he professed to abhor to lambaste the Sophists, efficiently lumping them together and denigrating them, thereby warping a venerable title into a contemptible one. Eventually, Plato’s repetitive harangues stuck, and they became known as cheats or wholesalers of words. Trump’s style of effortlessly denigrating his opponents, creating clever nicknames to demean them—“Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” “Ron DeSanctimonious”—mimics Plato’s rhetoric.
And like Plato, Trump is certain of his truth. His dialogues exhibit, as rhetoricians know, an astounding skill in evading genuine pressure on assumptions and beliefs. Morality and truth, well-intended they may be, can impede and preclude this pressure, enabling one to fall back upon certitudes.
Could these Sophist-rhetoricians teach us something? Is a more constructive form of rhetoric possible?
The Sophists challenged conventional wisdom. The first Sophist, Protagoras, introduced the "man-measure” doctrine, where humans create and shape criteria for goodness. He argued that some views are "better" but not necessarily "truer" than others. Plato criticized his works as "mere relativism," and Athens' governing body was so threatened by his ideas that they burned his works.
In today's socio-political landscape, seeking truth may be too much to ask or perhaps too much of a distraction to initiate constructive dialogue. On recent abortion rights turmoil, for instance, how can we decide when life “begins” when there is no shared definition of “life” to start with? Truth here, like Protagoras said, is a matter of perception and definition.
Plato believed that Sophists made the weak argument stronger. The Sophists, however, provide a better method for our politics: a practice for exerting maximum pressure on convictions, placing arguments side-by-side, and seeing how they “measure up” to other measures, helping us determine what's best. Although it may not lead to absolute truth, aligning with probable reasoning ( eikos) like the Sophists did in the Dissoi Logoi could counter our partisan thinking by ascertaining what is “good enough” for action today.
Today’s politicians could learn from this method of arguing all sides of an issue. Imagine Speaker Kevin McCarthy advocating to raise the debt ceiling without conditions while President Biden seeks spending cuts. This approach, today called a "Steel Man" argument, led to the Sophists' infamy, but it also led to the defensive and prosecutorial modes of law, where even the “obviously” guilty deserve a defense.
We face in Trump and other rhetors who brand quickly and proffer easy answers to complex problems a modern-day Plato, thereby petrifying deep-rooted assumptions. We need a more sophisticated approach that pressures our convictions through listening to opposing sides. The famous 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger redefined rhetoric as "the art of listening." This may open our ears to the value of community involvement, hard work, and tolerance, which have declined, according to a WSJ poll. To do this, we must be less Platonic and more Sophistic.
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.