One might have come across it in their social media feed or seen it in the news, the fatal encounter of a 23-year-old, after entering a tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Shortly afterwards, controversy arose when footage of his final moments was shared, and things escalated when Donald Trump reposted footage of the attack on Truth Social, followed by animal-attack compilations and an AI-generated video of himself wrestling a tiger (The Guardian, 2026; ITV News, 2026). The posts sparked debate about the empathy and responsibility expected of a world leader.
For a long time, I associated Trumps’ behaviour primarily with profit-driven business leaders and economic elites. However, I have started to recognise similar patterns of ego and power-seeking across society, including on the political left. Perhaps the problem lies not in one ideology, but in how people respond to power itself.
The CEO of an Amsterdam-based organisation emailed me half an hour before the application deadline to let me know when I could come in. They wrote a codebook on how to handle people, but the approach didn’t seem to connect at all. At one of the Netherlands’ sustainable banks, the manager told me, in his own words: “An intern is a pain for the first two months; after that, it can become good.”