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progressoid

(49,934 posts)
Thu Nov 30, 2017, 03:28 PM Nov 2017

America the Banana Republic

Thanks to Trump the tinhorn dictator and those who elected him, this country is no longer a beacon of freedom, but a laughingstock.

By Neal Gabler | November 29, 2017

You don’t think favorably of authoritarians; they are despicable. But you do think of them as monstrously large, grievously terrifying, as somehow taking the measure of the polity they control and drawing on its stature to puff themselves up, even as they destroy their nation’s moral core. Despots like Mussolini and Hitler epitomized evil on the grandest possible scale. To call them clowns would trivialize the unconscionable horrors they inflicted.

Trump is certainly an authoritarian, but he is more of a tinhorn dictator, a tiny, negligible man who, rather than inflating himself with the nation’s grandeur, has managed to deflate the nation with his own insipidness. Thanks to him, America is now a banana republic. It is no longer a country of soaring ideas and idealism, a beacon to the world, an example of freedom at home and a protector of freedom abroad, an anchor of sanity in a world often bouncing on the waves of madness.

Whatever her failings, America was once majestic. Now she is hopelessly diminished — a wealthier version of the corrupt nations in the developing world that we used to ridicule. And we owe it all to Donald Trump for making America small again.

...http://billmoyers.com/story/america-banana-republic-government/
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America the Banana Republic (Original Post) progressoid Nov 2017 OP
Authoritarian clown. Sneederbunk Nov 2017 #1
He's more like General Garcia from the In-Laws Dread Pirate Roberts Nov 2017 #2
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