While details remain scant, there are claims from multiple sources that a peace deal has finally been reached in the war between Iran and the United States, after nearly four months of fighting.

Is it better to be friends with the biggest bully in the schoolyard, regardless of how he behaves? So far, Australia has always answered yes. But what if the bully's trappings of democracy, order, science and reason fall away?

Last week, Australian senator Pauline Hanson stood up in President Trump's gold-encrusted palace in Florida and said it was wonderful to be in America with a 're-energised, strong and patriotic leader who has the best interests of his people at heart', before attacking her own country's immigration, climate and native title policies.

In the same week that Donald Trump and his pet Republicans went to war against their own poor huddled masses with the passing of his Orwellian Big Beautiful Bill, Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong ventured to Washington to meet the man Trump once called Little Marco.

Last week's violent attacks on journalists in Los Angeles shocked the world, but this is part of an ongoing trend in which politicians and their militarised minions in all sorts of countries seek to kill or otherwise silence those who report on their repressive behaviour.

In the USA, senior Democratic senator Cory Booker from New Jersey has been on his feet and speaking continuously for more than 24 hours, in opposition to the regime of Donald Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE.

US President Donald Trump's disgusting, stage-managed TV ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn't quite go to plan last week. Both leaders have a background as popular entertainers, but only one has any concept of what it takes to be a statesman.

The best case scenario for the next Donald Trump administration is that he will treat the presidency as a get out of jail free card, and spend the next four years playing golf and firing people, in between dispensing tax cuts to the ultra-rich. The worst case scenario is that he will turn the world's biggest economy into the newest and best-armed autocracy.

Othering is about separating human groups into the familiar and the different, family and foreigner, migrants and locals, us and them. It's a way of excluding, marginalising and denigrating people. Politically, othering is an ancient strategy which has been particularly useful for populist leaders seeking to distract or unite their followers.

As Australia slavishly follows the worst American precedents, along with its presidents, it's worth keeping an eye on the worrying state of democracy in that country.