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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COVID watch

I have been exposed to COVID. 

My wife tested positive. I test negative. 

My college reunion had all the elements of a super-spreader event, done among people worried about super-spreader events. 

Anonymous classmate, at an indoor reception

The people most worried about getting COVID didn't attend it. They guessed correctly that there was no possible way for us to meet, eat, drink, and talk in a way that was fully "safe." They knew there would be crowds of people, all of them exhaling every few seconds. Masks went on and off. Indoors, people wore masks--often K-95 masks--when we weren't eating. There was lots of food and drink--eight meals in two and a half days. In crowded places people speak up, which projects air. There is lots of hugging and handshaking. 

The weather was warm and dry so some of the visiting took place in breezy tents, but some of it was inside in big groups. We met in capacious cathedral-type meeting halls with 100-foot ceilings, but it was still a crowd. We agreed--scout's honor--to test ourselves every day, and I presume people did, but a negative COVID test doesn't mean someone doesn't have COVID and is not infectious. 

COVID is everywhere and anywhere. Being vaccinated and boosted is very good--but imperfect--protection against getting seriously ill, but not against getting and spreading COVID. My wife is vaccinated twice and boosted twice. She has symptoms, primarily a sore throat and tiredness, which started Sunday morning, seven days after the start of the start of our cross-country trip. She noticed the symptoms, tested, and the test showed "positive." 

Who knows where she got infected? Maybe she was infected before we left. Maybe she got it standing in line at the Medford airport. The line for the Delta flight was painfully slow and people were crowded next to each other. The airport terminal ceilings are high and there is a lot of volume in the building, but few people other than my wife and me wore masks. The airport terminal crowd was like the worst and most crowded of situations at the reunion--except that at the reunion people wore masks. There were similar unmasked scrums when we changed planes in Seattle, and again in Boston when we picked up luggage--and then coming home on Wednesday. We wore masks in the plane. Few others did.

Debra could have been infected anywhere, anytime. Debra, with symptoms and a positive test, knows her status better than I do. She knows she has it. She has a timetable. 

My situation is ambiguous. I might be infected and contagious right now.  Debra and I have been side by side, sharing the same house. I am thoroughly exposed to her. The incubation period is up to two weeks. People who are infected usually show symptoms in three to six days, but it can be longer. People are most contagious during the two days before symptoms start and then for the next three days. A positive COVID test may come after symptoms start, not before. I feel great, but I might be just as contagious as Debra.

The guidelines at the providence.org website say I don't need to quarantine to protect others. I worry that I am a walking danger to others and I keep self-monitoring to see if maybe I have a twinge of headache or shortness of breath or anything. Providence health systems say I would be a responsible citizen if I wear a mask around others and keep testing. I am doing more than that. I am keeping my distance from people for a few days. I find it hard to believe that Debra can have it and I do not.

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Biden asks Saudi Arabia's help

     “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

          Winston Churchill

Anti-communist Churchill made an alliance with the Soviet Union. Hitler was the greater threat. It was war. You do what you need to do.

President Biden will be asking a favor of Saudi Arabia.

The American citizenry isn't accustomed to sacrificing when America fights its wars. We turn war over to specialists in an all-volunteer military. We don't raise taxes to pay for wars; we add the cost to the deficit. We do drone strikes and drop bombs  on others far away and out of sight; we don't expect to get attacked here. Foreign wars are popular, at least at first. We like wars where we think we are doing the right and moral thing. We watch how it plays out and expect no particular inconvenience. 

Our involvement in the war in Ukraine is popular. People wear yellow and blue. After all, we can't just sit back and watch Russia steamroll over Ukraine, we say. This is 1938 all over again, we say. We had to do something, and we are. We are sending Ukraine arms and we are trying to disrupt the primary source of income for Russia, its sale of oil to the world, with sanctions and import bans. 

The results are predictable. We are taking oil off the market so we see a conspicuous increase in the price of gasoline at the pump. The American public appears to consider this a surprise and an error. Why should a proxy war with a major oil supplier have any effect on the American consumer? Someone in government must have screwed up! News stories describe the shock and distress over gasoline prices returned to the  inflation-adjusted level we had eight years ago. We want the low prices that came with the recent COVID recession.

We are at war. Russia produces 10% of the world supply of oil. Oil is about 54% of the final cost of a gallon of gasoline, and disruptions brought the world price to $120/barrel this week, up from $40/barrel a year ago. Gasoline prices have doubled in the past year. Gasoline prices are far higher elsewhere, but Americans expect war to hurt others, not themselves. Biden is in political trouble. Voters blame him.

Biden is responding. People who are paying attention might be troubled by what he is doing. The U.S. is already a net energy-independent country. The one country that could quickly increase oil production to increase the world supply of oil and bring down the price is Saudi Arabia. Americans are making a policy choice, one with long term consequences involving norms and behaviors of countries supposedly at peace with one another. Saudi Arabia's leaders ordered the murder and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Biden will meet with Saudi Arabian leaders to ask a favor: Please sell more oil to make up for Russia. This request ends our legitimacy and leverage in defense of norms for protecting Americans. You can reach out and kill some of us if they are inconvenient to you, but we will overlook it.

Americans are making an ugly choice. It is the kind of choice that happens in wartime. To disempower Russia we need to empower Saudi Arabia and tacitly accept their behavior. The American consumer has spoken. 

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Liz Cheney, GOP presidential candidate

Liz Cheney will lose her re-election to the Wyoming congressional seat, then emerge as a presidential candidate for the reformed GOP in 2028.

It is still the Trump Era in the GOP. The widespread remorse comes later.

We watched a national leader on prime time Thursday evening. Liz Cheney projected courage and competence. She looked like a Commander in Chief. She isn't following the crowd of Trump sycophants, apologists, or mumblers. She is pointing a direction and trying to gather a crowd. The crowd isn't there yet. 

The cycle will turn. Trump is too unhinged and undisciplined for Trump to lead the GOP much longer. When Trump-remorse becomes widespread, Liz Cheney will be the person who said it first and best. She speaks of duty and patriotism, not personal advantage. She sacrificed herself for the common good.

Cheney's Wyoming opponent

Her Wyoming GOP primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, sends me fundraising appeals. The important thing to notice is that they don't criticize Cheney for what she is best known for: Her righteous accusation of Trump's misdeeds involving the 2020 election. Instead, her opponent calls Cheney a Washington elitist. Hageman's real villain is George W. Bush.

Will you help me FIRE Liz Cheney and take back our conservative movement from the elitist establishment that is working arm-in-arm with Joe Biden? . . .

You and I don't have a moment to lose.That's because establishment elitists, like George W. Bush, headline ritzy fundraisers in other states to raise millions for Cheney. That was even after Cheney admitted in a 60 Minutes interview that her record-breaking fundraising haul was helped out by Democrats. 

If there was ever a time for conservative Americans to stand up to the elitist establishment, it's now. And it's against Liz Cheney.

Hageman makes repeated references to having Trump's endorsement, but she doesn't defend Trump or echo his 2020 claims. By her silence she tacitly admits Cheney's proposition: Trump's behavior is indefensible. She is trying to position Cheney as a follower of D.C. elitists, thereby undermining Cheney's brand as a leader with integrity. It is a tough task. We see Cheney on TV looking like a leader with integrity.

Whether Trump is elected or rejected in 2024, Cheney has an opportunity. Trump is easy to dislike and fear. Trump isn't sanding down the sharp edges of his brand. Quite the opposite. He responded to Thursday's televised hearing by posting that the insurrection was "not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country.” If Trump loses yet again, Trump will get the blame.

Trump might win. If Biden runs for re-election, Biden's age and competence will be center stage. Voters may choose vigorous autocracy over fuzzy-headed weakness, especially if inflation is the central issue. Trump will promise to fix it. Nationally, most Democrats have figured out that it is unpopular to make endemic White racism and misogyny an organizing principle of policy. It turns off Black, Hispanic, and White working class voters. Poor Whites attempting to pay for gasoline don't feel like privileged oppressors. Some Democrats are backing off that message, but the idea still sticks to the Democratic brand. A win for Trump in 2024 will not stop the rise of Trump-remorse, however. It is nearly inconceivable that a second Trump term would be a time of national comity. Trump is a disrupter. Chaos is exhausting.

Cheney would be the credible GOP spokesperson for a return to "normalcy." She would represent conservatism, not populism. Her likely rivals for the GOP nomination would be people who had cast their lot with Trump and chaos. She might win pluralities in early multi-candidate races in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2028. That would position her as the new voice with a following. If Trump has worn out his welcome--as he did after four years in his first term--her early-state pluralities would turn into a majority in later primary states. 

Will this happen? It is too soon to tell. She has a path and she is doing exactly what would serve this path. She is returning the GOP to its roots. 

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Prime Time: January 6 Hearings

Liz Cheney, on Trump's effort to remain in office:

     "Tonight, I say this to our Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone—but your dishonor will remain."

CNN Headline

Tucker Carlson, on the "forgettably minor outbreak" at the Capitol:

     'You know it tells you a lot about the priorities of a ruling class that the rest of us are getting yet another lecture about January 6th tonight from our moral inferiors, no less. An outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards, that took place more than a year and a half ago, but they've never stopped talking about it."

Fox Headline

Liz Cheney was the star last night. She is a Republican and her evidence was the testimony of other Republicans, including former Attorney General Bill Barr and Trump's daughter, Ivanka. Cheney is smart, decisive, and clear. She looks and sounds like a leader in full command of the facts. She laid out a case showing parallel plans for Trump to stay in office notwithstanding the election results. He pressured election officials to change the results in the states. He pressured state legislatures to overturn results, since the election officials wouldn't do it. He pressured Vice President Pence to toss out results, since the legislatures wouldn't do it. He tried to replace Justice Department appointees who wouldn't lie to justify overturning the election He encouraged the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to intimidate Congress into doing so since the other plans failed. January 6 wasn't a one-day event, she said. It was a long multi-part plan of law and violence, and Trump was at the center of it.

Her call for Constitutional integrity was center stage everywhere except where it matters. It wasn't anywhere at all on Fox. They had a different story. The prime time hearings are a Democratic and mainstream media plot to distract Americans from the deep trouble that Biden and Democrats brought us. We have inflation and high gasoline prices. We have an assassination plot against Justice Kavanaugh likely inspired by Chuck Schumer. Why isn't the media covering that story, they ask? We have Hunter Biden's laptop to discuss, but the rest of the media downplays that. There is a video of Nancy Pelosi's husband's DUI arrest that the Napa, California DA won't release. We have a crisis at the southern border the media doesn't cover. We have Kamala Harris who is a disaster, but the rest of the media doesn't cover that, either. We have Biden going on Jimmy Kimmel and looking old, senile and vacant, and Democrats won't admit it and talk about it. We have a bunch of whiny Democrats making a mountain out of a molehill on January 6. 

These aren't the Watergate hearings and they won't have the same result. Republican primary election voters aren't watching. Republican elected officials are not open to knowing what the president knew and when he knew it. Most of them know full well that Trump misbehaved dishonestly--dangerously--but they won't say it aloud. No use stepping in front of a stampede. 

Liz Cheney will look very good in the history books, but for now she looks like an outcast. Democrats respect her but won't vote for her because, after all, she is a committed, dedicated, genuine conservative. That earns her no credit with Republicans because she embarrasses them. She has the integrity and courage they don't dare demonstrate. The stampede is still running.

Won't there be a smoking gun that finally gets through to GOP voters? There are multiple smoking guns. Americans saw them live on TV and heard the audio tapes months ago. A majority of GOP voters don't care. GOP voters don't necessarily believe Trump, but they like him. As they see it, Trump is a scamp and con man doing petty crimes, but he is their scamp and con man and he fights Democrats. They have their fingers in their ears and they are sticking with him. 

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Reunion Season

I am at my 50th college class reunion, held one year late due to COVID.  

The college has an inscription of a quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the wall next to an entrance gate. He described a procession of graduation and reunion classes, lined up in order of age and graduation date. He said those oldest classes he saw were followed by "the far longer train of ghosts. . . reaching back into eternity." We are all part of a river of generations. Old institutions assure us that the river continues. Reunions remind us that we aren't alone.

I knew it would be difficult to stay current on the blog while traveling. Friends offered me guest posts. We get by with a little help from our friends. 

Journalist Tam Moore is one of them. He is about 15 years ahead of me in the cycle of life. He reads this blog when it is first posted in the morning. He finds typos and grammar errors and points them out to me, a huge gift to me and to readers.  He had his own reunion story for me.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Tam Moore

This is the season.

Graduations of significance for high school and college students. Reunions, or thoughts of reunions-to-come for graduates.

I’m deep into thinking about and planning for the 70th reunion of my Corvallis High School Class of 1952. Sometime, maybe 50 years ago, I started writing a periodic newsletter for the class, and assembled everyone’s contact information into a data base. Ever since, I’ve been the scribe who keeps classmates in touch each other. When it got around to the 65th reunion in 2017, I figured it would be the last. But, the longtime friends who gathered that year for a three-day affair said they wanted to do at least one more reunion.

So here we are, just getting going with the planning at the end of May and setting a target for the third week in July. That’s a short planning time, but I can tell you this is going to be a different kind of a reunion—worth the effort. All because we endured the pandemic, and many of us learned new skills which weren’t even imagined 70 years ago when we marched on stage to receive our diplomas.

This July’s reunion is going to have at least two Zoom connections, on two different days. People we haven’t seen in years will have the opportunity to talk with, and see, classmates gathered in the old home town. It should be a wonderful way to end the reunion cycle – after all if we tried for a 75th, everyone of us would be over 90-years old and chances are unfit for travel.

What’s so special about reunions? There are fun things, like the time Dick Olson—who was mostly bald when we graduated – showed up wearing a wig. Folks at the big gathering in the Corvallis Elks Club kept pointing toward Dick and saying “who is that guy, he looks familiar.” Then he peeled off the wig, exploded into the big smile we all knew from school.

After the first couple of reunions – we settled on every five years—people are interested in people, and they tend to get out of the social groups which formed in school. There’s lots of mixing. Discovery of shared experiences. Remembrances of silly things we did long ago.

We were all children growing up in the Great Depression, shaped by our parent’s roles during World War II. The Korean War started two years before we graduated, and the military or consideration of the draft were realities when we got our diplomas in 1952. A lot has happened since then.

Thanks to our pandemic-learned Zoom skills we’re going to be able to talk about it, one more time.

Melon Tourism

There is no money for me in selling melons commercially, so I don't do it anymore.  

But it is still fun to give people a "melon farm experience."

I explained back on Friday that cucumber beetle control keeps me from growing melons organically, and there is no profit margin at all selling melons for 15 to 20 cents a pound. That is the wholesale price for supermarket melons. That is the same price I got 55 years ago. 

It is fun for me to show visitors around a melon patch during harvest season in August and September. I call this "melon tourism." The ideal situation is when a parent or grandparent brings out school-age children. The highpoint is dropping watermelons on purpose. Then I use a clean knife to cut the heart into big chunks. People pull the chunks off the knife and eat them.   

Little ones can ride in a wheelbarrow.

This isn't just for children: 

Young people find the tractor noisy and gigantic, and they can safely push and pull the lever on the front end loader.

Nowadays it is unusual for people to be given the permission to drop a watermelon. People are reluctant to do it. "You mean just drop it???  Really???"

Watermelons make a very satisfying crunch sound when they hit the ground. They crack open but don't get mushy. The hearts are still surprisingly cold, even if the melon has spent the entire day in the hot sun.

One confirms the difference between a ripe watermelon and and unripe one by the sound of the thump on the side of the melon. People have a hard time hearing that difference, but I can teach it. People quickly pick up on the difference in color between a cantaloupe that is ready to "slip" because it is vine ripe, and one that is still green. It is easier to see than to describe, but put simply it it the difference between greenish beige and beige-ish green. 

I don't have a photograph of the game of tossing cantaloupes because I am almost always the person doing the tossing, but part of the melon-tourism experience is to catch a gently-tossed melon. I toss them 10 feet or more to teenagers, so they can put them into the bin bucket. It feels risky and somehow naughty to visitors to see food tossed.

An extended bit of melon tourism is to drive to the farm's south boundary on the Rogue River. I encourage visitors to skip rocks on the flat surface of the river. Kids learn that quickly. Young men sometimes can throw a rock across to the opposite bank, but it is a tough throw. It gives young fathers a chance to impress their children.

People go home with melons.  

That is pretty much it--the "melon tourism" experience. Nothing that happens on the farm is as exciting as a first-person-shooter video game or a ride at Disneyland. City kids don't have much experience with farms, so for most of them this is new. Plus, there is all the watermelon they can eat.

There isn't any big grand purpose to this beyond teaching people a little bit about farms. City people have lost touch with where food comes from.

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