Bananas!

Before continuing, let me note that irony is dead:

"A banana republic is a third-world country in which few people do much of anything productive, and most people depend on government welfare, while the government is basically a machinery for extracting economic wealth from the few who actually produce it, while the state slides deeper and faster into debt that nobody believes it can pay back, and the president does basically whatever he wants regardless of what the law or the constitution say, and generally abuses his powers for political advantage in a corrupt fashion."

For anyone following along, this is Flying Monkeyspeak for what they think is going on in the U.S. today.

As one who has actually served in a banana republic - which, by the way, is characterized by most people doing all the production (and for next to nothing, especially "government welfare", of which there are two varieties, jack and shit) while a few people - largely in the caudillo's family, the military, the Church, and Los Dorados, the "golden ones", the families of the elite - extract the wealth from those many and keep it for themselves - I can pretty securely say that this "banana republic" that the National Review speaks of does not mean what they think it means.

And this is one of the "sane" outlets for the GOP.

Sweet Baby Jesus on a Stick. This is what passes for "thoughtful" conservatism these days.

Are we fucked, or what?