Political insult: Banana Republicans.

"Banana Republicans"

I heard Larry Summers, say it on CNN this morning. 

Clever insults have power. Pocahontas was Trump's snide name for Elizabeth Warren. It positioned Elizabeth Warren as a finagler and fraud, pretending to be a Native American. Pocahontas embodied an idea that motivated voters, that affirmative action hiring gives unfair advantage to people. Pocahontas associated her with that. Cruel, but smart, of Trump.

Castro giving a long speech

Larry Summers voiced an insult worthy of Trump. Summers is an economist, a former president of Harvard, and a former Treasury Secretary. He has been an outspoken critic of the Fed, saying that they misread the economy and were too slow to raise interest rates. That error unleashed the inflation, he says, and it is why the Fed now has to hit the brakes (raise interest rates) very hard. This will cause a regrettable, but necessary, recession, he says. He linked the phrase "Banana Republicans" to inflation. He says irresponsible attacks on election integrity accelerated the public's distrust of all institutions. If we don't trust our elections, we cannot trust our government, so we cannot trust our currency. 

The phrase Banana Republicans encapsulates multiple ideas and prejudices. There is no answer to it. There is no counter-argument, because it isn't an argument. It is a sneer. American self-image is one of a country with a secure, orderly government. Americans assume Latin American police are corrupt, the governments operate by nepotism, and that they easily slip into dictatorship or fascism or communism. Americans think Latin American strong-man dictatorship governments are evil, foolish, or both at once. We don't fear corrupt Latin American governments--because they are far away, south of the border, and not us. 

The idea of Banana Republic imagines a sweaty man making long, impassioned speeches to adoring--or intimidated--crowds: Castro. We imagine a fascist terror government: Pinochet. We imagine a narco state: Columbia. We imagine a terrorist military government with dissidents disappearing in the night: Brazil. We imagine a corrupt, populist socialist Venezuela. None of it is good.

Banana Republics are TV and movie caricatures. We envision military men with a chest full of medals.

Latin American dictatorships can be played for laughs. Woody Allen wrote and directed Bananas.

As Trump well understood, people in the USA have a snooty prejudice against Latin Americans and their governments. There is no groundswell of fear that immigrants from Norway, as Trump suggested as a preferred alternative, would change the American way of life for the worse. Norway isn't a "shit-hole country." Banana republics are. Trump successfully weaponized our prejudices. Banana Republicans turns the table.

The Banana Republicans insult widens the focus from Trump to all Republicans. The insult is not an argument or even a description. It is a name. It assumes the guilt. 

Like a majority of GOP House Members, my own U.S. Representative, Cliff Bentz voted not to accept Pennsylvania's electoral votes in the night following the attack on the Capitol. At the time it may have seemed to him like a middle-of-the-road, cautious vote. Now, with the revelations of the former president's post-election plans, his vote looks like part of his corrupt effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Trump is on record telling the Justice Department falsely to announce they found fraud in the election. That's all we need, he said; the White House and GOP House Members will do the rest. Now those GOP House Members look like toadies and co-conspirators. A description can be argued, but a name is an identity and it is one associated with shame. 

They are Banana Republicans. We will be hearing this phrase often.

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