The jokes on twitter have been pointed:
One joke going around South America today is that the US coup failed because there was no US Embassy in Washington DC providing logistical support.
— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) January 7, 2021
A Kenyan newspaper emphasized the irony with this headline:
However, leave it to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to remove all humor and irony by reconstruing history and either purposefully or ignorantly forgetting to include the US's role in producing those places where “mob violence determines the exercise of power”.
Back in 2016 Patrick Blanchfield and Patrick Iber wrote a great explainer about the history and evolution of the term “banana republic”. Even if this is a subject that you know something about it, it is worth reading their whole piece. Here are the closing sentences which were prophetic then and seem to explain now:
“The difference remains that when banana republics tried to make their own politics more effective and democratic, outside intervention from the United States generally stopped them. Americans have no foreign power to blame for our current condition: the fault lies within.”
If you’re anything like me, the last few days have been agitated. With that in mind, I’d prefer to end the week with some music. The Cafeteras published their version of “Georgia on My Mind” on December 18th. Now that it looks like that state and Stacey Abrams have done more than their part to flip the presidency and the senate, it feels only appropriate to share this Chicano-desert-version of the song. Afterall, more than confined to a single state, that election’s impact on the country’s political landscape feels borderless.
