"Lock Him Up?"
America takes one more step on the road
to becoming a banana republic
By Bill Bonner
"Yes, we have no bananas,
We have no bananas today..."
~ Louis Prima
San Martin, Argentina - "Lock him up! This headline appeared in The New York Times in December, 2022. "Argentina’s Most Powerful Politician Found Guilty of Fraud." The country’s vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from public office for steering public works contracts to a family friend. Most likely, the case will eventually be heard by Argentina’s Supreme Court. Until then, Mrs. Kirchner can continue to hold office. Without a seat in Congress, Mrs. Kirchner would lose the immunity that protects her from arrest, a fact she was completely clear on. “Put me in jail,” she said."
Three months later, another headline story in the NYT: "Donald Trump Is Indicted in New York." Mr. Trump will be the first former president to face criminal charges. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case is focused on a hush-money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.
One of the hallmarks of banana republics is that the legal system is used as a billy club, to whack political opponents. That’s one reason politicians – such as Danny Ortega in Nicaragua and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina – hang on for so long, even arresting opponents on trumped-up charges, in order to avoid losing an election. Once a politician loses power, his opponents get control of the judicial system and come afterSlip Slidin’ Away
For many years, the US has been lurching towards banana republic status…and now, every step it takes, it steps on another peel. But the US has no bananas. Almost everything concerning Donald J. Trump, for example, is clownish and false, including the charges against him. Even by banana republic standards, the case against him looks like a scam.
The Democrats hate Trump; they pretend he is a threat to their grift. But he never was. Or is. Instead, the Donald plays along – acting like a fool, making enemies of all the Great and the Good – but he is no real disruptor. Yes, he rants and raves – attacking the FBI, the Pentagon, members of Congress – both Republican and Democrat – NATO, trade with China, the New York Times…and so forth. But it is all bummph.
The two keys to elite power in a late, degenerate empire are war and inflation; Donald Trump has always supported both…with big boosts to the Pentagon budget…and the biggest increases to government spending in history.
Nevertheless, while the Democrats pretend to loathe him…the Republicans like him on false pretenses. They take him as a ‘conservative,’ though there is nothing the least bit conservative about him. He favors easy money. He opposes free trade. He pressures the Fed to lower interest rates and Congress to spend more money. On ‘cultural’ issues, too, he is no conservative…as the ‘hush’ money charges show. A real conservative would have only one or at most two mistresses.
Even Trump’s reputation as a shrewd dealmaker is mostly false. His real estate speculations went into bankruptcy 6 times between 1991 and 1992. Then, when New York commercial real estate rose (thanks to the Fed’s ultra-low rates) his fortunes rose too. But now, as interest rates and vacancies go up, so does the cost of rolling over his debt. A crisis in commercial real estate is likely to be the next thing to hit the banks. It is also likely to hit Donald Trump.
Crime and No Punishment: The bottom-line is that Trump is a big mouth, with no fixed or genuine ideas about how a government should function. This makes him an easy mark for the real powers-that-be in the Deep State. Lacking any compass of his own, he goes in the direction of least resistance.
But what’s this? Are his enemies trying to finish him off with thirty-four counts – felonies – for “falsifying business records?” Or, are his friends trying to discredit his opponents? Hard to know. The case is an obvious distraction. Trump had affairs. He tried to keep them under wraps by paying ‘hush’ money. But what, exactly, is the crime? Ms. Kirchner skimmed millions of dollars’ worth of public money…which ended up in her own accounts. A snippet from the press coverage: "One of her co-accused, Jose Lopez — an ex-secretary of public works under both Kirchner governments, was caught in 2016 trying to hide five bags stuffed with $9m and a semi-automatic rifle in a convent..."
That’s a real crime. She stole money from the taxpayers. What is the case against Mr. Trump? In theory, the ‘crime’ is winning the 2016 election by fraudulently presenting himself as a decent man. That is, he ‘hid’ his past by petty paperwork transgressions in order to deceive the voters into voting for him.
Is that it? Is that all there is? Apparently. But was a single voter deceived? Was there any biped in the United States of America who didn’t know, in November 2016, that politicians lie as habitually as most people breathe…all of them try to suppress embarrassing revelations…and that Donald J. Trump was a sleazeball? His opponent, by the way, Hillary Clinton, paid a fine of more than $100,000 for deleting 30,000 emails (public property) and then lying to the FBI about it…and her husband also lied about having an affair, while in the White House, no less. (‘I did not have sex with that woman.’) Neither of them was charged with a crime.
And so, the case against Trump stacks up with the other great fairytales of our time…weapons of mass destruction…Russiagate …“2 weeks to stop the spread”…the ‘rental yacht that destroyed Nord Stream II’…and banana trees sprout up along Pennsylvania Avenue."
o
Related, sort of... about bananas anyway, lol...
Take a break and enjoy!
Harry Chapin, "30,000 Pounds of Bananas"
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