Bananas

By David Brooks

From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

What country do we mean when we refer to an economic leadership that increasingly concentrates national wealth, buys politicians and laws, proclaims the interests of a plutocracy as “national,” promotes wars, corruption and torture, justifies divine intervention in national politics, and even increases its demand for exorcisms?

Some call it a banana republic; others, a country that, swept by wave of corruption in the political and economic spheres, is in the midst of a “lost decade”; others say it is a country trapped in a cycle of violence that threatens its national security every day. But it is nothing less than the most powerful and richest country in world history. In other words, the United States could be the first banana superpower.

The great national debates illustrate that point. The most intense struggle between the political leadership in recent days is over whether to keep the tax cuts given away by President George W. Bush to the country’s richest families, those with incomes greater than $ 250,000 per year. While this is being debated, Congress is about to deny an extension of unemployment benefits to millions who are on the brink of poverty.

Congress must approve an extension of the normal period of 26 weeks for unemployment insurance but for now it has not, and some 2 million long-term unemployed – those who have not found employment in more than six months – are about to lose their only income support before the end of the year, which would be their Christmas present from politicians more focused on lowering taxes for millionaires. In this recession, reports the Economic Policy Institute, there are five unemployed workers for every job (2.9 million jobs available, compared with almost 15 million unemployed).

All this takes place in a country where the concentration of wealth has reached unprecedented levels since 1928, when one percent of the country’s richest families concentrated 24 percent of the national income.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote recently that this distribution of wealth and its consequences define America as “a banana republic.” The inequality in this country now exceeds that of some Latin American nations called banana republics, he says. Worse, he adds, some of these countries have become more egalitarian, while in the United States the opposite has occurred.

Kristof cites the example of Argentina, where in the 1940s the richest one percent controlled 20 percent of the income, double the U.S. rate in those years. Now, “we have exchanged places:” in Argentina, one percent holds 15 percent of the income, while the U.S. has surpassed the levels of inequality in Argentina in the 1940s.

“Do we really want to be a plutocracy where one percent has more net worth than the bottom 90 percent?” asks Kristof. We already are that country, he says; one percent owns 34 percent of the country’s private equity, the bottom 90 percent controls only 29 percent; the richest 10 percent controls more than 70 percent of the total net worth of Americans.

And who will be awarded the nation’s highest civilian award in the midst of this bonanza for the rich? The White House announced that among the 15 persons to be decorated with the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama will be Warren Buffett, the nation’s second-richest man.

And there are other elements that allow this country to qualify as the first banana superpower. For example, a former president so confident that the leadership will not act against one of their own, who has no problem admitting that he personally authorized the torture of prisoners. In fact, he said so with pride. Bush said in an interview with NBC News that he personally authorized waterboarding, a practice defined as torture for centuries. The United States even branded those who used the technique in World War II as torturers.

Bush justified himself by saying that government lawyers had said it was not torture under the law. Neither he nor any other senior official has been brought to task for torture or abuse all these years of scandal, from Abu Ghraib to the illegal detention centers of the CIA, or Guantanamo, which have caused horror throughout the world. And the Obama administration has ruled out prosecuting its predecessors. In the former southern banana republics, that was called impunity.

Michael Moore, the filmmaker, said recently that Bush’s new memoirs should be placed in the “crime” section of bookstores.

And it was not only Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, among others classified as banana countries in their times of dictatorship, which offered asylum to war criminals from other countries. In a report newly released under pressure from the media, the Justice Department details how the U.S. allowed the entry into its territory of several Nazis selected for intelligence purposes and other collaborations.

That information is not new, but the details and the level of complicity among the various agencies were not disclosed when these “enemies” were granted asylum. The New York Times reported. The report states that “the United States, which prided itself on being a haven for the persecuted, turned – in a small way – into a haven for the persecutors as well.”

Meanwhile, the most expensive midterm elections ever have taken place, confirming that “democracy” and the policies favored by those with money (such as tax cuts for the wealthy, the suspension of parts of social reforms, etc.) can be purchased.

Among the candidates elected are politicians such as Senator John Shimkus, who pledged to stop all legislation and action against climate change, declaring that God will not allow this phenomenon. “God said the Earth would not be destroyed by a flood,” he said.

Elsewhere, there is a campaign to gather one million Americans to pray constantly for Senator Jim DeMint and his fight in Congress for issues critical to “faith, family and freedom.”

And finally, it appears that there are demons loose everywhere, as there is an increase in the demand for exorcisms. Some bishops in the U.S. Catholic Church met recently to prepare more priests in order to meet the demand.

These are just some elements that might be weighed by social scientists who wish to study whether the world’s first banana superpower has arisen.

David Brooks is U.S. correspondent for La Jornada. He is based in New York.