U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin: "Democrat is a noun."
Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, Raskin turned to the subject of grammar and civility.I believe that she referred to a 'Democrat solution.' I heard another member talk about a 'Democrat member.' I just wanted to educate our distinguished colleagues that 'Democrat' is the noun. When you use it as an adjective you say the 'Democratic member.' Or the 'Democratic solution.'
He went on to posit tit-for-tat:
As if every time we mentioned the other party, it just came out with a kind of political speech impediment, like 'Oh, the Banana Republican Party' … 'the Banana Republican member' … 'the Banana Republican plan' … 'the Banana Republican conference.'
Newt Gingrich began the practice of saying "Democrat Party." Bob Dole picked it up, using it in reference to "Democrat wars," including World War II. It is now common practice by Republicans. The strategy, Gingrich said, was to deny Democrats the ability to name themselves. It dirties up the brand. It put new emphasis on "RAT," a bad mental image. It would be equivalent to competitors of IBM consistently referring to International Business Machines as "BM." Let a subliminal reminder of "bowel movement" linger in the name.
"Banana Republicans" is timely. The GOP has a majority faction that accepts anti-democratic authoritarianism. A majority of GOP voters tell polls that they have lost faith in elections as a method for determining popular will, at least when a Democrat wins. Election denial persists. Tucker Carlson said this week in his top-rated show:
How did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his boss, rockstar crowd surfer Barack Obama? Results like that would seem to defy the laws of known physics and qualify instead as a miracle. Was the 2020 election a miracle?
The term "Banana Republic" is complicated. The term imbeds an insult to Latin Americans. Woody Allen's 1971 comedy film, Bananas, makes light of the trope of weak democracies and strong-man dictatorships.
The implication is Central American countries don't know how to govern themselves. Their citizens don't respect elections. Their leaders hang onto power by declaring martial law. Their leaders corrupt election officials. Their leaders defy court orders. The irony is that the imbedded accusation is exactly appropriate for Trump and a GOP that dares not defy him.
Democrats are the party sensitive to punching-down, so I suspect that Democrats are going to avoid using "Banana Republican." The term forgets history. American policy and actions destroyed democracies in banana-exporting countries. The coup d' état that toppled Guatemala's president, Jacobo Árbenz, democratically elected as a reformer, was engineered by the U.S. government at the urging of the United Fruit Company. United Fruit owned huge holdings in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had represented the company as a lawyer. His brother, Allen Dulles, was head of the CIA and had been on the United Fruit board. Thomas Dudley Cabot was the former CEO of United Fruit, and he was the director of International Security Affairs for the U.S. State Department.
Unstable governments in Latin America are the victims. The shame should be ours, but that is not how branding works. We damaged those countries and got away with it, so they are "damaged goods."
I am uncomfortable using the phrase "Banana Republicans," but others may not be and usage can change the meaning of both a brand and a sneer. "Banana Republicans" does not imply a GAP clothing line, Banana Republic. It implies unstable democracy. With usage and time the polarity of the insult might change from pathetic-them to guilty-us. Americans might remember a history we prefer to forget. The insult isn't against Latin America. It is against people who would subvert a democracy, right here in the USA: Banana Republicans.
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13 comments:
Rude, ignorant and demeaning slur, like the Traitor in Chief saying "s**t hole country" Some people never learn.
Dear Anonymous.
Please read the blog post. The insult is toward those who would subvert democracy. Punching up, not down.
But if you disagree, come out from the shadows and write a guest post describing your understanding of how the branding works.
Peter Sage
BM is less related to IBM than it is to the Birther Movement, the racist conspiracy theory that propelled Trump to stardom in the GOP.
Perhaps they shouldn’t be discouraged from calling people stupid names. It’s the closest they come to offering comic relief in their ongoing onslaught of anger and lies. Having nothing positive to offer, they’re trying to turn Democrat into a pejorative, just as they tried and failed with liberal and progressive.
Remember when PC, or political correctness, was supposedly destroying America and social justice warriors were evil incarnate? Now it’s "wokeness" and the “woke.” Sure, it makes them sound like idiots, but you can’t cure stupid. On the other hand, it's still refreshing to hear someone like Rep. Raskin contradict them with facts.
Yeah, nice extension of yesterday's topic: profit over people. If some of that banana money had been directed into responsible investment in those countries the term would have a positive connotation.
To Rick: Republicans have responsible investment on their hit list. That's something else they're trying to disparage, calling it "woke capitalism."
I doubt that the term “Banana Republican“ will be politically effective; it will only work with voters who resonate with guilt feelings.
Democrats have been pushing guilt for so long over things like race and foreign policy that they already have the support of every voter sympathetic to that approach; the vast majority of the country is not guilt-susceptible.
My wife recently talked to a black immigrant from Africa. She asked if he had learned about the slave trade when he was in school. He said he had, but it was just treated as a historical fact; there was not even a hint of generational guilt for selling those slaves to the slave ships.
If black people in Africa can do that, maybe we ought to try it here.
I read already read it. My comment is about the term. It is a slur. Decent people should not use slurs. It is not complicated.
A lot of Americans agree today with Bill Barr's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, which argues that Mexican drug cartels are like ISIS and the U.S. should invade Mexico to take out these cartels. This somehow is relevant to your blog post today, but I cannot say exactly how.
Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
Also, “ I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in GuatemalaI, Rigoberta Menchu”
I feel no guilt, since I was only about 8 years old when US terrorism began. However, we certainly owe any Guate citizens reparations, and, if so desired, a barrier-free immigration into our welcoming country. We hosed over their entire country, all for “Big Banana”. Uncountable numbers of murdered, raped, enslaved, and “DISAPPEARED”
Rigoberta Menchu was a fraud. So says the New York Times:
TARNISHED LAUREATE: A special report.; Nobel Winner Finds Her Story Challenged
Dec. 15, 1998
For Rigoberta Menchu, the painful road to world prominence began in this impoverished and isolated tangle of mountains, cloud forest and peasant hamlets. As winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, she has become an internationally acclaimed spokeswoman for -- and symbol of -- the rights of indigenous peoples, based largely on her best-selling account of growing up here as an uneducated and oppressed member of the Quiche people.
In the autobiography ''I, Rigoberta Menchu,'' first published in Spanish in 1983 at the height of Guatemala's brutal civil war, Ms. Menchu, now 39, tells a wrenching tale of violence, destruction, misery and exploitation as moving and disturbing as a Victor Hugo novel. So powerful was the book's impact that it immediately transformed her into a celebrated and much-sought-after human rights campaigner and paved the way for her being awarded the Nobel Prize.
Key details of that story, though, are untrue, according to a new book written by an American anthropologist, ''Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans.'' Based on nearly a decade of interviews with more than 120 people and archival research, the anthropologist, David Stoll, concludes that Ms. Menchu's book ''cannot be the eyewitness account it purports to be'' because the Nobel laureate repeatedly describes ''experiences she never had herself.''
Using contacts provided by Dr. Stoll and others found independently, a reporter for The New York Times conducted several interviews here in early December that contradict Ms. Menchu's account. Relatives, neighbors, friends and former classmates of Rigoberta Menchu, including an older brother and half sister and four Roman Catholic nuns who educated and sheltered her, indicated that many of the main episodes related by Ms. Menchu have either been fabricated or seriously exaggerated. This is the way they recall it:
…
I figured someone would bring up that bizarre article. Whatever. Want to also pretend that Schlesinger's book is fraudulent? Good luck; the CIA managed to deny they had a part in overthrowing the democratically elected President, who also was responsible for Guate's new constitution, based on OURS, according to numerous sources' conversations with me, c.1980.
According to your NYT article, Rigoberto was quite a clever muchacha, since she published her book prior to being born. Perhaps a more recent article would be a good resource.
You’ve written her off, mistakenly, imho. I suggest you read this article about this remarkable woman.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigoberta_Menchú
Or this. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rigoberta-Menchu
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