The term Banana Republic was rarely used until the 1960s; perhaps it was the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which focused the attention of the English-speaking world on Latin America's political and economic troubles.
Thanks to popular culture in 1971 with movies like Bananas https://youtu.be/8a3mk9sp0oE Or have you watched Duck Soup, a comedic sensibility to the era’s revolutionary politics? https://youtu.be/DEabC9WzHck
This followed with films like Commando 1985 https://youtu.be/eJ6Drgpb3Ak
License to Kill 1989 https://youtu.be/tQR8Z8rXbL8
The Expendables 2010 https://youtu.be/q9n96my-QzI
Bananas was not a film that encourages us to take the political problems of banana republics seriously. Imaginary banana republics apparently exist to give American audiences laughs—or to furnish backdrops for fantasy violence and ludicrous body counts, but the issue is very REAL and deadly Serious.
In our own time, reality television star turned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump then POTUS also uses the image of the banana republic in the service of fantasy.
One fateful day in October Trump told one crowd that “this election will determine whether we remain a free country in the truest sense of the word or we become a corrupt banana republic, controlled by large donors and foreign governments.” Like so many lies and insults like “crooked,” “nasty,” “temperamentally unfit to be president” does it appear to anyone that he may be unaware he is describing himself better than many of his opponents?
In a few short years, this great Republic has seen that Americans standing with our allies have been tarnished. Up until then, we had never voluntarily left a battlefield to another major power, the USA had never broken its pledge and had never deserted an ally and in three years We The People did all three.
Our national honor may be in doubt and we can expect definite difficulties ahead.
When one political party is totally controlled by an individual, it can be dangerous. If two are hijacked in four-years, it should terrify the USA and the entire free world.
