How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Morroco, not France, is our oldest ally. We signed our treaty with the Moroccans a full year before Lafayette and his crew got on board. But the French have historically been good friends.

Usually.

In war, anyway, if not necessarily in peace.

Sometimes.

We naturally regard our Mother Country, Great Britain, and our neighbo(u)r to the North, Canada, as our particularly tight buds. And they are. But our most consistent and faithful ally- one that has stood with us through thick and thin, even when nobody else would- is Australia. Our national characters as friendly, informal, outgoing, good-hearted, loud and obnoxious peoples have always bound us firmly together and comforted us with the thought that somewhere in the world there was at least somebody who more our less understood us.

And here is what the Australians think of Donald Trump. Or more precisely, here is what Mr. Trump's election has done to our relationship with the one country that has always stood with us, and trusted us to stand by it.

And then, there's what Mr. Trump has already done to the tenure of his own Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

We've never had a president who was quite this good at undercutting his own subordinates and alienating our friends, When you elect an ignorant and unstable amateur because you don't like his opponent, this is what happens.

BTW- just sayin'- NONE of this would have happened under a McMullin administration, as unlikely as such a thing always was. But we shouldn't be allowed to forget that the combination of decency and competence was, in fact, an option last November. Nor does its long-shot character get us off the hook for not choosing it.