Our Banana Republic

Years ago, when I was a student of Political Science, I focused on political development, mainly in Latin America. For a time, the literature on the subject was dominated by authors seeking to explain the collapse of democracies in Latin America, and the emergence of authoritarian regimes. One of the classics of the genre was an edited volume, assembled by Alfred Stepan, called Authoritarian Brazil. I've begun to reread it, as an attempt to understand our present politics. If that seems crazy, it shouldn't. Our politics now increasingly resembles the models social scientists once linked with the developing world: vast inequalities in wealth; persistently dysfunctional political processes characterized by the concentration of power in the hands of an economic elite; and a shift toward a politics of "authenticity," where politicians, incapable of crafting genuine solutions to deeply rooted societal ills, opt for a hyper-nationalist rhetoric, aimed at painting their opponents as enemies of the state.

The complete disregard the well-off have for other Americans, and the representation of this attitude in the politics of the Republican Party, resembles the political mood in Brazil prior to 1964, when the military seized power. The accumulation of wealth, rather than the collective needs of the wider society, has become the dominant political concern of Republican politicians. Some might argue this has been true since at least the 1980s, and Reagan's repositioning of the Party and its message. In Brazil, the "anti-populist sectors of the military and the technocracy," decided that "the accumulation process required that the instruments of pressure and defense available to the popular classes be dismantled.1" This meant overturning the electoral process and dismantling labor unions and other vehicles for the expression of middle class and working class aspirations. Those who continued to agitate for political change, demanding a voice for the politically marginalized, where branded enemies of the state, criminals, radicals who prioritized their commitment to left-wing doctrine over the well-being of Brazil.

What I see unfolding every place Republicans acquire power resembles this era. Labor unions are stripped of bargaining rights and the demands of working people interested in preserving their quality of life are portrayed as illegitimate. Working class voters are stripped of voting rights, and obstacles are erected to prevent their participation in elections. And all of this done to preserve the accumulation of wealth by a tiny elite.

Unlike Brazil, this is unfolding within the existing framework of politics. There has been no coup, no one has banned elections. Yet the motivations and the sentiments are remarkably identical. A powerful elite, no longer concerned with the suffering and impoverishment of the wider population, disconnected from the sentiments and common attachments that once joined society together, has attempted to seize political control, in order to guarantee the preservation of their wealth and lifestyle, as they see the machinery that created their wealth collapsing around them.

1. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, "Associated Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications," from Alfred Stepan, Ed., Authoritarian Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 145-146.