Lousy people create lousy countries. We don’t even have a democracy anymore. We have a Latin American style oligarchy with a Latin American style corrupt press that speaks with a single voice. We even have Latin American style corrupt courts all the way up the highest court in the land.
The Legislative branch is as corrupt as any Latin American Congress as 90% are directly on the take and bribing politicians is for all intents and purposes legal thanks to another corrupt Supreme Court act.The Legislative branch has spent most of its time lately dissolving the state (shutting down the government), resembling a typical do-nothing minimal Latin American state in the process. And it attempted an electoral coup with a Latin American style fake impeachment attempt on a sitting president.
The Executive Branch is truly scary like a Latin American dictatorship that just dissolved Congress like they always do, having decided that Congress is no longer needed to declare war, I mean any war anywhere.
George Bush’s caudillo-style signing statements were one of the worst abuses of power the nation has ever seen. The government spent most of its time using the state to target and smear opponents, Latin American-style.
We have state governments who used corruption to redraw electoral maps in the spirit of utter contempt for democracy. The same states spend most of their time trying to prevent people from voting. Sort of like Latin America where armed troops stand outside the polling places and watch you vote. Who ya gonna vote for?
Now one of the political parties is apparently openly fascist in the style of a typical Latin American rightwing party. The other political p0arty of the so-called left is absolutely useless to lift a finger against the oligarchs, or worse, they are the oligarchs, once again in the style of Latin American Christian Democrats (Duarte) and social democrats (APRA, AD, PRI) who are anything but.
And now we have an open fascist running from President while a complaint press cheers. His opponent is an Accion Democratica-style fake left cipher. As usual, there’s no one to vote for. There’s violence in the streets and at the rallies. Politicians are making open violent threats against the opposition. Demonstrations turn into free for all’s between gangs of the hard Left and Right.
And I’m sitting here thinking, “Ok so when do the death squads start? The political assassinations? The cardboard shack slums tumbling down the hills for miles on end?”
I’m thinking I must be in the wrong hemisphere. Banana republic, here we come.