Debilyn Molineaux serves as the catalyst for the American Future project to help everyday Americans discover and believe in a future that will be "worth it" to work together for the sake of our nation.
Do you know what you want for your future? Often people spend most of their attention on what they don’t want, leaving little room for thinking about their own future. Alternatively, many folks spend time imagining their past, with longing for that “better” or “easier” time. All this thinking and imagining about what we don’t want or about our past impacts our current mental health; not in a good way.
As we (the everyday people) have arrived at this moment of multi-crises, everyone is feeling the impact. The information we feed our brain is as critical to good health as the food we feed our body. The information fed into our brains daily includes:
- Trauma and cruelty witnessed via news reports and social media
- Obsession about a certain former president
- Fractured relationships over dystopian options presented by conflict profiteers
- Social media feeds fueled by outrage
All of this information listed above is received in our lizard/survival brain -- that part of ourselves that is charged with ongoing survival. When in survival mode, rational thinking is not possible. We see everything in black and white, right and wrong. These impulses are good for physical survival; and lead to symptoms of chronic illness and ongoing stress when we stay in survival mode too long. The only way to engage in critical thinking is to be vigilant about what information we allow ourselves to be exposed to - and discern when we are being influenced to think we are in survival mode, but are not.
Here are a few things you can do for better mental health:
- Read news instead of watching videos.
- Let the legal system handle the former president. Stay open-minded.
- Reach out to friends and family and tell them you miss them. Make plans together. Agree to NOT talk about politics for a while.
- Spend little to no time on social media -- at the very least, curate your content feed to things that help you feel connected to others.
Over the next couple of months, I’ll be interviewing people in coffee shops across the United States. In preparation, I’ve interviewed about a dozen friends to explore the best way to start a conversation about our future. Here are a few things I’ve learned already -- and it’s good news.
Common themes emerged in these interviews.
First is the deep longing for connection with those nearby. It took different forms; close-knit neighbors raising kids with family nearby, an intentional community or a retirement setting.
Second was a connection to nature and access to more space. This took the form of living in a small town, in the suburbs or on a family farm.
The third emergent theme was the ability to control one’s life. Several of my friends are retired and in the forefront of their minds was consideration of their ability to make decisions for themselves into the future. Younger friends expressed concerns about economics as being helpful or unhelpful in making life-changing decisions.
What will emerge from my upcoming national tour? Stay tuned.
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.