Let’s say you’ve had a best friend since you were kids in elementary school together. You had sleepovers at each other’s homes, helped one another with homework, swapped Legos and trading cards, shared your innermost secrets . . . even went to the same college.

As adults, you remained friends. You double-dated, were in each other’s weddings, your spouses became friends, your children grew up together. You carpooled, gave each other career advice, helped out during family emergencies, vacationed together, and talked about retirement communities for the future.

Then one day something happened. Maybe a couple of your children had a falling-out, or you disagreed about a political issue, or a mutual acquaintance told one of you a lie about the other. It doesn’t matter what caused it; the breakup was devastating.

From that time on, you didn’t speak; you quit the country club you loved because your ex-friend was a member; you even switched doctors so you wouldn’t accidentally bump into each other there.

But that wasn’t enough. Your ex-friend was so hurt and so upset, they began publicly ridiculing and insulting you, posting terrible lies on social media, claiming that you had never really been a true friend at all. They became so embittered, their spouse — and most of their other friends — left them.

After a while, they made new friends. And at a party one evening, they had a couple of drinks too many, got behind the wheel, and on the way home caused an accident that killed someone in another vehicle. They were arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter. They needed help . . . but they had burned all their bridges and had no one to turn to.

Then they remembered their trusted old friend: you. They knew — or thought they knew — that you couldn’t let them languish in jail. So they called you and said that they needed you to put up the bail money for them, and — when their case came to trial — to lie: to testify that you had been with them at the party and knew that they had not been drinking after all. To risk everything for them.

Now, here’s the hypothetical question: What do you do? Do you help your unfaithful ex-friend . . . or tell them to take a flying leap into the nearest active volcano?

This is not a “Dear Abby” column. As you may have surmised, the question is analogous to the situation in which Donald Trump now finds himself, after having spent years bad-mouthing and double-crossing every one of America’s allies, the United Nations, NATO, the EU, and all those “shithole countries” (his words) around the world.

And all because he went batshit crazy one day, invaded Iran against all advice and all logic, and created a world crisis so widespread and so dangerous that he hasn’t the vaguest idea of how to fix it. Then he suddenly remembered those old allies — and Article 5 of the NATO treaty dealing with collective defense — and tried to convince them that they should send their military forces, and spend their money, to get him out of the mess he’d made.

And when they reminded him that Article 5 does indeed refer to defense, and not to offensive actions in which they had no part and had never even been consulted, he once again lashed out at them, saying he didn’t need them after all.

But he does need them. And, like our fictitious bad friend, he finds himself alone and lonely . . . but on the world stage, and with a lot more deaths and other misdeeds to answer for.

The only thing Trump has going for him that our hypothetical ex-friend didn’t is the fact that all of those allies have a major stake in the outcome of his latest fiasco. And they have consciences, meaning that they want the best possible result for everyone.

Right now, they’re not responding as Trump would have liked. But in the long run, they may have no choice.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/18/26