The famous American author (and ironically, embezzler guilty of falsifying business records) O. Henry famously coined the phrase “Banana Republic” while living on the lam in Honduras. The phrase pointed to countries such as Honduras and Guatemala who were under the control of the United Fruit Company, the produce giant who supplied the world with bananas from those two countries.

 

The term Banana Republic is used to describe poor countries that are mismanaged and controlled by forces outside of their own unstable governments. As the term has grown there are several criteria that qualify a country as a “banana republic.” Here is a short list –

• A disregard for the law and constitution of the country.

• An unstable government that is under the influence of outside forces.

• Rampant corruption throughout the government.

• An underfunded, poor, government that relies on printing money to pay bills.

• An economy based on exporting one product and requiring that product to thrive in order to keep the economy afloat.

In light of several decades of mismanagement, widespread government corruption, and the current “lawfare” being used to subvert the 2024 Presidential election, we feel it is time to slip the chains of hyperbole and declare the United States of America an actual banana republic. And it pains us to no end to say it, but here we are.

Let’s look at the circumstances one by one.

A disregard for the law and constitution of the country – Congress is essentially dead. The weasels elected to that body refuse to take a stand on anything except spending more money. They will not articulate beliefs, stand up to the presidency, or pass meaningful legislation. This has turned us into a country ruled by the Executive Branch and its administrative bureaucracy. Executive Orders and administrative fiats are the new laws of the land.

And now the Executive Branch in the form of the Biden Administration is attempting to ensure a quasi-dictatorship by coordinating specious criminal cases against its rival for the Presidency. A former high-level DOJ prosecutor — Matt Colangelo — has shown a complete disregard for the 6th Amendment to achieve the conviction of Donald Trump, attempting to ensure there is only one candidate to choose from in November. Hugo Chavez would be proud. If you heard the story of Donald Trump’s conviction, but changed some names and were reading it in a New York Times’ South American feature on Nicaragua, you would laugh and comment, “typical banana republic hijinks”. It’s not so funny when it is happening here.

 

An unstable government that is under the influence of outside forces – Pick your poison here. The military industrial complex has had us in an almost continual state of war for the past 60 years. We have nothing to show for these wars but dead Americans and deep debt. China has influence over multiple, if not most, members of Congress, from Eric Swalwell’s Fang-Fang to Diane Feinstein’s driver/Chinese spy. President Biden’s family received millions from Chinese companies and businessmen, some of whom have been indicted for crimes. Donald Trump has been accused of being a puppet of Putin. Still waiting for the evidence of that, but if you believe it, it proves the point. Maybe we can ask 51 of our best intelligence officers, they all seem to agree that foreign actors have undue influence over our country.

Rampant corruption throughout the government – We could go on for days here. We will just mention a few. Senator Bob Menendez (not yet convicted), Rep. Laura Richardson, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Rep. Rick Renzi, Rep. Michael Grimm, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Rep. Chaka Fattah, Rep. Corrine Brown, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. All convicted of corruption charges. The President of the United States, Joseph Biden, has been accused of corruption for influencing foreign governments on behalf of his son and brother. Former President Trump has faced accusations of arranging for multi-billion dollar deals on behalf of his son-in-law.

An underfunded, poor, government that relies on printing money to pay bills – Our irresponsible and corrupt government has spent us into oblivion. The United States is so far in debt that we have no hope of ever getting in the black. Military spending, welfare spending and stimmies, foreign aid, and some asinine programs have gotten us into this hole. Projects like allocating $7.5 trillion to get 7 or 8 electric car charging stations built just show the folly of our spending. (check out Pete Buttigieg’s recent interview on Face the Nation…frightening)

The government cannot even cover its own payments and has been forced into quantitative easing. This is a dressed-up phrase for printing money. Banana republics are famous for this type of move. It devalues currency and leads to widespread inflation in places like Honduras, Venezuela, and now, the United States.

An economy based on exporting one product and requiring that product to thrive in order to keep the economy afloat – This is not truly applicable to the United States. We don’t export like we used to, but there are several different industries that still export. But let’s take a look at one of the more troubling exports of the United States: Military weapons and aid. We seem to export quite a bit of that. It might be the export that the US is most famous for over the past 25 years.

Being known as an exporter of conflict and war is not exactly holding the historical high ground. We have seen countries like Niger and the Philippines give the United States the cold shoulder out of fear of the conflicts that always seem to bubble up around our foreign policy actions. The rest of the world is catching on to this act and that is not a good thing.

Barack Obama once characterized his foreign policy as: “Don’t do stupid shit.” A better one might’ve been: “Stay out of it.”

“Banana republic” used to be a punchline for jokes about countries too incompetent and corrupt to function properly. The joke falls flat when it’s about you.

Thanks for reading The Ops Desk. Stay Safe!