Is America Becoming a Banana Republic? | The New Yorker
“Over the past week, however, the President’s response to the escalating protests over the killing of George Floyd has deepened the debate about what is happening to America. The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi—the third most powerful politician in the the land—described the experience of her daughter, a filmmaker and journalist, when men in fatigues used chemical agents and body armor to force her fellow peaceful protesters aside so Trump could walk to St. John’s Church, on Monday night, for a fleeting photo op where he waved the Bible. On Wednesday, Pelosi bluntly asked, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “What is this, a banana republic?”
The answer is no longer facile. Later that day, James Mattis, the former Defense Secretary, issued a scathing rebuke of President Trump, his former boss. Mattis described being “angry and appalled” at the use of the U.S. military against the American people and the description of American cities by his successor at the Pentagon, Mark Esper, as “battlespace” to be dominated. ”When I joined the military, some fifty years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” he said, in a statement to The Atlantic.”