The Banana Republic Mind
How did tens of millions of adults completely forget 8th grade civics?
In the autumn of my junior year in high school, I went on a group hunting trip to a friend’s ranch in the middle of West Texas. Most of the other boys on the trip were seniors, and for some reason that I no longer remember, I had somehow managed to become a rival of three of them. On that first Friday night, after they’d gotten drunk, I recognized that they were probably going to do something horrible to me, so I barricaded myself in one of the vast Victorian ranch house’s bedrooms with a loaded shotgun.
Sure enough, sometime after midnight, I was awakened by a deafening blast in the room, and then another. Quickly I realized that they were firing shotguns—through the gap at the bottom of the door—loaded with shells from which they had removed the lead shot.
Unfortunately for me, they had not removed the plastic wads, which barely missed me and struck the wall behind me at high velocity. Nor did I have any ear protection from the percussion, which must have been over 200 decibels in the enclosed space.
And so I yelled through the closed door: “You’d better stop stop shooting or I’ll shoot back with the real deal!” They continued to fire, and so I yelled at them to get their heads down and then fired into the top of the door above their heads, blasting it to smithereens. Fortunately for me, they thought this was hysterically funny and worthy of their respect, so they left me alone for the rest of the night. Strangely enough, the next morning my antagonists were perfectly friendly and acted as though nothing strange had happened. A couple of other guys on the trip congratulated me for firing back instead of cowering in the room.
Such was our teenage social life in 1988—a social life impressed by rivalry, competition, and vying for dominance, chiefly conditioned by the opposing emotions of animus and admiration. At the same time, all of us knew that our crazy behavior formed the starkest possible contrast with the social structure of our affluent Dallas suburb. We knew that adults would never even think about behaving so badly. Intuitively, we all knew that once we graduated from high school, we would enter a new phase of life that was strictly governed by law and order.
In no small part, our understanding was shaped by a first rate education in civics. We were taught that the United States was governed by the rule of law, and not individual men. As we understood it, this contrasted with Banana republics that were ruled by strong men.
Even though I’m not a fervent fan of Donald Trump, I still find it hard to comprehend that any adult citizen of the United States would approve of the revolting sham trial to which he was just subjected.
How could any adult citizen of this country be so childish to think that personal animus can justify such blatant politicization of the judiciary? Do they really not understand that once personal animus becomes the standard of condemning people, they could be next in line?
During that same semester of high school that I went on the disorderly hunting trip, my English class was assigned to read Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler. The story is set between 1938-1940, after Stalin’s Great Purge of dissidents (real, perceived, and fabricated) and the Moscow Show Trials. The action takes place in an unnamed prison in which the protagonist—an old guard Bolshevik named Nikolai Salmanovich Rubashov—has been arrested as part of Stalin’s campaign to eliminate all potential rivals. Rubashov undergoes a series of interrogations, which initially have a strange air of affability, but then turn progressively more severe and doctrinal.
At no point is it clear what law Rubashov has allegedly broken, or why those who have arrested him perceive him to be a threat. For some mysterious and frightening reason, it seems that he simply cannot be tolerated.
When I first read Darkness at Noon as a junior in high school, I found it fascinating and terrifying, and it left an indelible impression on me. At the same time, I assumed (in the year 1988) that such a scenario could never happen in the United States.
Now I’m not so sure.
Crixcyon is absolutely right. We now have hit bottom, but the people don't realize it yet. They don't even know enough history to understand that the watershed event was the Northern War of Aggression against the Southern War for Secession. Those southern states were already on the brink of eliminating slavery, that wasn't the cause of the war, it was economics and jealousy of the north. The southern states had only joined the union with the provision that they could leave if being in the union was no longer beneficial. Lincoln had other thoughts and listened to Karl Marx who wrote to him. Those letters are in the Smithsonian, an institution which was founded by Robert Owen Jr., a Democrat Congressman who was a Socialist like his father. We ended up with a centralized federal government, much easier to infiltrate than all the different state legislatures.
I'm sorry, Mr. Leake that you and Dr. McCullough, two men who I greatly appreciate, don't see Trump as the only man who wants to save this country from the communist takeover. He's not perfect, but then neither was Moses, King David or St. Paul. Unfortunately, most of the wonderful dissident doctors who I've shelled out funds to are leftists and they still don't understand that they're fighting the left, i.e., communists in every single facet of our society and politics and we are literally now a banana republic run by tyrannical despots.
We have been sliding into the abyss for decades. The only question is when do we hit bottom and what will the bounce look like...provided there is one.