Thigh-High Politics is an op-ed column by Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca that breaks down the news, provides resources for the resistance, and just generally refuses to accept toxic nonsense.

I was en route to the Sydney Airport in Australia when my cab driver asked me if I was ashamed of President Donald Trump.

I immediately answered yes, before thinking about how ludicrous that question would be in any other context. It would have been provocative, perhaps, to ask an American tourist if she was ashamed of former Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush (though the latter’s global favorability ratings were far lower). Bush deceived the country as a means of invading Iraq, but even as public understanding about his actions became well-understood and global disgust morphed into widespread protest, there was still a patina of reverence associated with the Commander in Chief. At least in polite interaction, respect for the office was generally assumed — outside of the countries they were actively bombing, anyway.

Under Trump, any such sense of deference has been obliterated. My cab driver in Sydney wasn’t trying to be rude, he was worried. The subtext rang of pity rather than condemnation, and the same was true of many other Australians and other foreigners I met while traveling through the country over the course of two weeks in October.

On a dive boat off the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, I sat surrounded by an Australian man, two brothers from Denmark, and a couple from Germany, while the other New Yorker and I attempted to explain how Trump happened. As we discussed horrors like the travel ban, birth control rollback, and the ongoing aggravation of North Korea, they alternately stared in wide-eyed horror or shook their heads in sympathetic disbelief. We weren’t offended — we were desperate to separate ourselves from the mess that is America. It was as if we had done something profoundly humiliating and they were at a total loss as to how to make us feel better. Or, as one of my Twitter followers put it a few days later, “We used to look up to you. Now we’re embarrassed for you.”

A similar sentiment is shared by the global population. A Pew Research poll of 37 countries conducted in January revealed that only 22% of respondents have “confidence in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs,” down from 64% under Obama. FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of the Pew numbers also shows that the average favorability rating has dropped significantly, from 65 to 50%. I’d imagine both of those numbers would be lower if conducted today.

World leaders have echoed discontent with Trump. During the campaign, the President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, called Trump a “crackpot candidate.” The Prime Minister of Australia notoriously mocked him in leaked audio, poking at his relationship with Russia, and ideas about “fake news.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been cautious to explicitly insult the States, but emphasized Canada’s belief that “diversity is a strength” in response to Trump’s travel ban. French President Emmanuel Macron decried Trump’s “mistake” in leaving the Paris Climate Accord. And, perhaps most profoundly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted her country can no longer rely on America in allied foreign diplomacy. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” she said during a campaign event in May. “We Europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands — of course in friendship with the U.S.…but we have to know that we have to fight for our own future.”