France probably has been our longest and most faithful ally. Poor Louis XVI went bankrupt funding our revolution, eventually losing his head over that rash move. And despite the excesses of the French Revolution, President Thomas Jefferson remained a confirmed Francophile. Unlike our sometimes strained ‘special relationship’ with the U.K., we never had a substantive falling out with the French … until now.

During my studies, I had several jobs including one as a ticket taker at a movie theater. One perk of this position was free movies. I must have seen the Woody Allen classic titled Bananas some 100 times. The Allen character gets caught up in a Carribean Island revolution where the government is overthrown and a strong man takes over, presumably to serve the people better. Unfortunately, the new leader turns out to be a nutcase. For example, he ordered everyone to wear their underwear on the outside, among other nonsensical orders. In the movie, the Allen character is put in his place to avoid further embarrassment. Would our current nutcase in power be so easily replaced.

That’s what it is like watching the wrecking crew that is the Trump administration. The inmates are now in charge of the asylum. We are witnessing a classic kakistocracy where the most inept now have virtually total control. There is one possible bright spot in all this. We might learn whether it is possible for anyone, no matter how inept, to run a modern government efficiently or whether competence is a required attribute. Time will tell, both whether competence is necessary and whether the public can learn anything from empirical evidence when that truth becomes incontrovertible.

I must say, the early returns are not favorable regarding the MAGA experiment. On the domestic front, there are troubling signs already. The stock maket appears to be extremely volatile in recent days. Moreover, the Fed in Atlanta has revised their projections for growth in the 1st quarter of the current year sharply downward. They had predicted a plus 2.3% growth of GDP early on, an estimate which was in line with a similar increase evidenced in the final full quarter of Biden’s tenure. Then, they recently projected a 1.8% GDP decline in the current quarter and (even more recently) suggested an even steeper decline. This would be like the economy falling off a cliff.

Just this morning, the numbers for private sector job growth in February were released. At 77,000 new jobs, the growth was way below expectations (and much below typical performance in recent years). When the savage public sector cuts are added (including the inevitable ripple effects of those cuts) and the trade war consequences unfold, employment rates likely will tank dramatically. Remember the global depression in the early 1930s? While that catastrophe might have been sparked by the bursting of overheated equity markets in the late 1920s, the real damage came from high tariffs and conservative economic policies.

THE BIGGER DANGER!

In time, we likely will survive an economic recession, even depression, though the costs will be extremely painful. What might prove more disastrous is the collapse of the Western alliance that has maintained relative stability in the world for the last eight-plus decades. With global issues such as climate change and AI looming, we cannot fathom the consequences of a collapse of the old order where comity and cooperation among advanced nations generally prevailed and which resulted in the most prolonged period of global security and economic well-being in history.

“I think we have to assume, after the events of the last 10 days, that we cannot in any way count on America as an ally.”

General Richard Shirreff Past Dep. Commander of NATO

As demonstrated by the above quote, those halcyon days may be over. I’ve always been a globalist at heart. I recall joining the World Federalist Society as a very young man. It just struck me that hyper-nationalism was counterproductive and primitive. Despite all the challenges, I had concluded that we needed to think more broadly about things than we did … that we had to embrace the world beyond our own tribe and our own narrow self-interests. The world would not be well served by a zero-sum perspective where we benefited at some unavoidable cost to others. Cooperation, not competition, we’re the keys to progress.

Even a century ago, we lived in a world of hyper-nationalism with all the discord that such juvenile tribalism produced. In the run up to WWI, we had a divided world where the central powers (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire) squared off against the so-called allied powers (led by France, England, and eventually the U.S.). After an uneasy cease fire, that conflict started up again in WWII. now, the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, and a few others) fought the allies (led by Britain, France, and the U.S.) once again.

This horrific world conflict endured for slightly over three decades and might well have cost some 100 million lives worldwide. The outcome was a smashing of much of the old order of ambitious nation states mostly run by monarchist, oligarchs, and dictators. The colonial empires soon disappeared, and a slow movement toward democracy and human rights eventually emerged. The breakup of the Soviet Union seemed to signal a new age for human freedom and potential. The creation of the European Union, on the other hand, seemed to suggest a future model for cooperative governance.

That prospect of a brighter future now has dimmed. A new wave of autocrats and fascist strongmen has emerged. These new autocrats include Victor Orban (Hungary, 2010); Kim Jong-Un (N. Korea, 2011); Vladimir Putin (Russia, 2010); Xi Jinping (China, 2014); Narenda Modi (India, 2014); Recep Tayyop Erdogan (Turkey, 2014); and Donald Trump (U.S., 2025); among others. Some of those named predate the year specified. For example, Putin has been around since the late 1990s, Jong-Un is the latest in a family dynasty, and Trump had an earlier run in the spotlight starting in 2016. But Putin did not fully end Russia’s constitution until 2010, Jong-Un continues his death-like control over his desperate country, while Trump remained semi-controlled by U.S. constitutional norms until his recent reelection. Now, these autocrats have more or less complete control and share a common goal of sweeping aside democratic norms. They are creating a new axis of evil.

What we have seen in the past several weeks has been the shocking realization that the United States has switched sides. Once the protector of democracies, even if we supported right-wing autocrats too often during the cold war, Trump has made it clear that we now are on the other side of history. He is making the United States the beacon of hope for oligarchic authority and autocratic rule. Vladimir Putin is his idol, whether because he admires that despot’s power or because Putin has blackmailed or extorted Trump’s slavish obedience. Perhaps we will know someday.

In the meantime, our abandonment of Ukraine has been seen by the world as a fundamental turning point. There can be little doubt that the brutal treatment of Zelensky by Trump and Vance last Friday was a calculated ambush designed to cover America’s abandonment of prior guarantees. In 1994, the U.S. (and Britain) made ironclad guarantees to protect Ukrain’s territorial integrity if that nation abandoned their nuclear armaments. Those promises are going up in smoke. Similarly, the 1974 Impoundment and Control Act afforded Congress the power to spend money, delegating the White House responsility for carrying out Congressional intent. Trump has swept aside the separation of powers to create an imperial Presidency. He alone will dictate American policy.

And so we are seeing a new order emerge in which my country is on the wrong side. Worse, Trump doubled down on his actions during the State of the Union speech last night, a diatribe that was positively received by a large majority of viewers, who were mostly MAGA supporters it must be noted. Still, is it not like the rapturous responses enjoyed by Hitler during the early years of his reign, at least before his insanity brought utter ruin down upon the German people?

My only hope now is that I’ll be gone before the inevitable tragedy unfolds. Alas, I had hoped my final years would have been just a bit less painful. 😕