General George W. Casey spoke at an event on October 19, 2022 to a group of veterans and national security advisors. Casey, a retired four-star general who served as the 36th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, spoke of his 41 years of military service and the absolute need to be apolitical while leading the military. Following his retirement, he noted his process in unlearning his apolitical stance, and he asked himself how he could best continue to serve the nation.
Ultimately, he decided on nonpartisan activities through political acts of service like encouraging veterans to participate and follow their conscience. He volunteered to be a poll worker. He speaks about politics with few clues to his voting record. That’s not his point. General Casey’s point is to continue serving our nation in ways that are aligned with our personal values of liberty and justice for all; continuing to uphold the Constitution as all military personnel pledge upon joining the armed services.
The event was hosted by Veterans for Political Innovation, a group that advocates for electoral reform, primarily what’s known as Final Four/Five and Ranked Choice Voting. Each state offers a different set of rules for primary voting. One challenge veterans face in voting is being blocked from voting in primaries in closed or partially closed primary states.
- Closed primaries: Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington DC.
- Partially closed primaries (party can allow independent voters): Connecticut, Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah
- Partially open primaries (voter can choose up to election day to change affiliation or join a party): Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Tennessee, Wyoming
- Open to unaffiliated voters (i.e. declared partisans cannot vote on opposing party ballot): Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, West Virginia
- Open primaries (voters may select a partisan ballot on election day without registering for that party): Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin
- Top-Two primaries (all partisan candidates are on one ballot, the top two advance regardless of party affiliation): California, Washington
- Other primary processes:
- Louisiana runs all candidates on the general election ballot without a primary election. If no candidate received more than 50%, a runoff election is held six weeks after the general election.
- Nebraska uses a nonpartisan election system common to local offices for all elections. All candidates appear on the same primary ballot without party designation and all voters select from the same ballot.
- Alaska recently adopted a top-four primary system.
To recap, voters have open primary ballot access in 26 states, but are blocked by partisan legislators in 24 states and Washington DC.
Partisans see the choice differently, asking people to join their party to participate in the party candidate selection process. The taxpayer picks up the tab for all primary elections; not the parties.
Closed primary elections disenfranchise more than 20 million Americans, including the close to 50% of veterans who do not identify with either major political party. Open primaries, on the other hand, offer state-selected solutions for top-two, final four or final five voting choices, regardless of party affiliation. Currently in Nevada, ballot measure 3 would shift all state legislative, state executive and federal elections to final five voting. This will open up voting access in the 2024 election cycle to all voters, not just partisans.
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.