Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Last weekend I received an email from a supporter of our parent organization, the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. He pointed me to a subreddit talking about a lack of response from a depolarizing/bridging organization that had promised to connect him with a local group. The commenter was responding to a prompt, “Why are you a member of Braver Angels?”
Braver Angels says on its website: It is "a national initiative to depolarize our politics and remake our political culture from the ground up in a spirit of trust, citizenship, and good-will." They mean it. Their business model includes membership fees to pay for a very small, national staff. The rest is up to volunteers.
They are not alone in the work to bridge divides. There are literally hundreds of organizations with similar aims to help everyday Americans of all political stripes reach out and find common ground with their neighbors. You can find over 500 of them here. Some of my favorites are Living Room Conversations, American Values Coalition, BridgeUSA, Civic Genius and Essential Partners.
As I read through the complaint, I experienced a blinding flash of the obvious. There is a void of local leaders who are willing to risk their social capital by building an alternative to partisan organizing. In other words, there is a lot of interest in checking out alternatives that are about bridging and connecting, but a lot of reticence to be the one organizing it. There are widespread expectations that “somebody else” will be the organizer. This is true, no matter which organization you choose.
What a Gordian knot (or catch-22).
Just as there is a market for the bridging movement, there is also dissatisfaction amongst those seeking solutions because we don’t have enough people in local communities to lead. The bridging movement needs local leaders. Our nation needs YOU to lead.
All of the organizations listed above have small staffs, and an expanding knowledge of tool kits, guides and support (training and online hosted events) to help volunteer organizers succeed. We need to rethink what involvement looks and feels like. We are in an information war with threats of political violence. To win, we need an army of volunteers to be the local leaders who bridge our many divides. Division is too profitable and concentrates power for us to mount a campaign with paid staff.
Our collective future as a nation is dependent upon you and other volunteer organizers. It is these unpaid and unsung heroes who will lead us out of this mess. It’s not fair. But it’s what we have. As a nation, we are reliant upon the goodwill of people who are willing to take risks, engage across differences and model for us the nation we could become.
The easiest way to start something new in a local community is to make a pact with two friends to help you. Then every time you see each other, you have a purpose that is connected to healing the nation. Even if your group never gets bigger than the three of you, that’s three people who are working together to build a better future and avoiding the toxic partisan culture.
If you are ambitious, invite others to join in your activities. You likely know a lot of people in other groups and settings. Make it fun (game night!). Have serious conversations. Focus on common ground and liking each other. Have group agreements that transcend divisive rhetoric. Allow people to be triggered, apologize and come back together. Practice being in a community that you’d like to have in the broader world. In today’s time of uncertainty, we need each other. We are interdependent. We have to create our future for ourselves.
Will you step up and be the organizer for breaking through the toxic polarization? Who are your two friends? Because if not you, who? And if not now, when?
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.