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Thomas Friedman: Vote for the Democrats
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mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:55 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

Still, you cannot change the meaning of a term just because someone missuses it and it "sounds right" to you.

Yeah, that would be totally gay.

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 2:10 am Post subject: ...

Note that this is the same tired tactic Goph decorates the board with regularly. Nice to see some of you address it. Of course, as Mith implicitly states, Gopher would be gay if you didn't call him out on these things.

TheUrbanMyth

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 2:31 am Post subject: Re: ...

Nowhere Man wrote:

Note that this is the same tired tactic Goph decorates the board with regularly.

Nice to see some of you address it.

Of course, as Mith implicitly states, Gopher would be gay if you didn't call him out on these things.

Note that Nowhere Man contributes nothing to the discussion under hand, just comes into it to attack a poster which is the same tired tactic Nowhere decorates the board with regularly. Rolling Eyes

I agree with Gopher on his definition of banana republic. It does not change its definition because some clothing store chain adopted the name. And the clothing store definition is irrevelant to the discussion because no-one (so far) has suggested that the U.S. is becoming part of this store chain....

On the other hand

Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:18 am Post subject:

Quote:

And, moreover, I defy anyone here to show me how the United States has become a banana republic -- in the mold of any banana republic that has ever existed before -- or, just as On the Other Hand suggests, "like a dictatorship." How is the U.S. like a dictatorship, On the Other Hand?

Well, first of all, I should say that I am not a proponent of the theory that the USA under Bush can be called a dictatorship in any meaningful definition of the word. All that I will say insofar as this discussion goes is that if one thinks that the USA is becoming like a dictatorship, "banana republic" would be an appropriate term to use, given that the accepted meaning has drifted somewhat away from the original "agrarian autocracy ran by the fruit companies".

I personally would see Bush more as a populist, but still democratic, demagogue(and a failed one at that), than as a dictator. Admittedly, the post-9-11 curtailment of civil liberties might give rise to comparisons with dictatorships, but I don't think that similarity renders the whole country a dictatorship.

Incidentally, I once read an interview with Norman Thomas, the American socialist leader who was generally regarded as being within the bounds of respectable discourse in the USA. Thomas said he didn't much care for the New Deal, because it reminded him of Mussolini's corporate state. But I don't think Thomas meant for the reader to think that he was saying that Roosevelt and Mussloini were indistinguishable, just that he saw echoes of one set of policies in the other, and he found those echoes somewhat disquieting.

Woland

Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:46 am Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

Still, you cannot change the meaning of an inappropriate term just because someone missuses it and it "sounds right" to you, esp. if you, too, are apparently missusing it. (I did cite a few informal sources to clarify this, above; and I am an expert on Latin America and the Caribbean as well. I am not pulling my position out of a hat, you know.)

Lordy, this is even gayer than hollywoodaction's and my doner/donner set to on another thread.

Speaking as a linguist, the quote above is complete nonsense. I know of hundreds of examples of semantic shift. You can't control it with some appeal to original meaning. Did you know that the word 'bully' originally meant 'sweetheart' in English?

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:57 am Post subject:

Quote:

Well, first of all, I should say that I am not a proponent of the theory that the USA under Bush can be called a dictatorship in any meaningful definition of the word.

Isn't the crux of the definition of a dictatorship that the governing group/individual is not accountable to 'the people'?

People have mental images of generals in funny hats with a chest-full of self-awarded medals standing on platforms with gigantic military parades streaming across the movie screen... That is a distraction from the situation at hand.

Our ideal of a democratic indirect representative federal republic is that at every election the governing party answer to the people for the actions they have taken. We have never ever reached that ideal in the world in which we live, but many people, left, right and center, feel that moneyed interests, the manipulation of congressional districts that have effectively immunized 90 some % of the House from real competition and the manipulation of the media have preserved the image of choice, but have violated the real meaning of representative democracy in a republic.

If people don't like the use of the phrase 'banana republic', fine. Give me another phrase that says what needs to be said about this current situation.

People are forgetting that the Roman Empire preserved the Roman Senate for 4 or 5 HUNDRED years after it lost all freedom to govern the country.

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:14 am Post subject:

Quote:

Did you know that the word 'bully' originally meant 'sweetheart' in English?

And that 'queen' meant 'w*ore.

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 6:24 am Post subject: ...

Hey TUM,

First of all, per Gopher's rules, you're not allowed to be posting on our election threads.

Second, for a Canadian, you're quite the Republican queen, aren't you?

But hey, if you wanna be gay, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Third, I believe Friedman states exactly what he means by the term in the sentence that immediately follows:

Quote:

It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.

Further, if one looks past the initial definition of 'banana republic', one is bound to find the following clarifications about its usage:

Quote:

The term banana republic is often used in a disparaging sense; it suggests an unstable government.

Quote:

Modern usage

In modern usage the term has come to be used to describe a generally unstable or "backward" dictatorial regime, especially one where elections are often fraudulent and corruption is rife. The foreign influence may be political or economic, but the point is that a banana republic is controlled or heavily influenced by foreign corporations, either directly or through their government.

By extension, the word is occasionally applied to governments where a strong leader hands out appointments, advantages, etc. to friends and supporters, without much consideration for the law.

http://www.answers.com/topic/banana-republic

In other words, yes, what Gopher said is complete nonsense:

Quote:

Still, you cannot change the meaning of an inappropriate term just because someone missuses it and it "sounds right" to you, esp. if you, too, are apparently missusing it.

But nice of you to offer support, bully, as he gayly attempts to create his own rules of linguistics.

Moldy Rutabaga

Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:17 am Post subject:

Quote:

And that 'queen' meant 'w*ore.

Perhaps it was used in that way for a time, but not originally; cwen is standard Anglo-Saxon English.

I'm not sure if it's newsworthy that Tom Friedman is no longer a GOP fan; was he ever? Friedman is a commentator and generally an enthusiast for globalization, but this isn't specifically a GOP doctrine. He is also pretty supportive of Bill Clinton in his books.

Ken:>

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:36 am Post subject:

Quote:

Perhaps it was used in that way for a time, but not originally; cwen is standard Anglo-Saxon English.

Yes, it is an A-S word. Don't know where I ran across that tidbit. If I remember correctly, it was also used to refer to teenage boys at one time before it settled on the king's main (or secondary) squeeze.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:01 am Post subject:

Woland wrote:

Speaking as a linguist, the quote above is complete nonsense. I know of hundreds of examples of semantic shift. You can't control it with some appeal to original meaning.

Woland: this is excellent news.

Since you have hundreds of examples at your command, please list twenty-five or so examples in the literature or in film or on television of people using "banana republic" in a context which would contradict what I have argued here -- not counting Friedman or the clothing store, of course.

Looking forward to it...

In the meantime, here's Jimmy Buffett's "Banana Republics":

Quote:

Down to the Banana Republics, down to the tropical sun
Go the expatriated Americans, hopin' to find some fun
Some of them go for the sailing, caught by the lure of the sea
Tryin' to find what is ailing, livin' in the land of the free

Some of them are running from lovers, leaving no foreward address
Some of them are running tons of ganja
Some are running from the I.R.S.

Late at night you will find them
In the cheap hotels and bars
Hustling the senioritas while they dance beneath the stars
Spending those renegade pesos on a bottle of rum and a lime
Singin' give me some words I can dance to
Or a melody that rhymes

First you learn the native customs
soon a word of spanish or two
You know that you cannot trust them
'Cause they know they can't trust you
Expatriated Americans feelin' so all alone
Telling themselves the same lies
That they told themselves back home

Down to the Banana Republics, things aren't as warm as they seem
None of the natives are buying any second-hand American dreams

Late at night you will find them
In the cheap hotels and bars
Hustling the senioritas while they dance beneath the stars
Spending those renegade pesos on a bottle of rum and a lime
Singin' give me some words I can dance to
Or a melody that rhymes

Down to the Banana Republics, down to the tropical sun
Go the expatriated Americans hopin' to find some fun

Last edited by Gopher on Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:19 am; edited 3 times in total

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:06 am Post subject:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

If people don't like the use of the phrase 'banana republic', fine. Give me another phrase that says what needs to be said about this current situation.

How about "I'm a leftist Democrat and am not satisfied with and cannot tolerate the Republican Administration"?

Because "banana republic" sounds and awful lot like the intolerant right-wingers who spoke of the pending "Billary-UN one-world-govt socialist dictatorship" in the 1990s, when they, too, might just have relaxed the hyperbole and simply said "I'm a right-wing Republican and am not satisfied with and cannot tolerate the Democratic Administration."

Ya-ta wrote:

People are forgetting that the Roman Empire preserved the Roman Senate for 4 or 5 HUNDRED years after it lost all freedom to govern the country.

Again, Ya-ta, if you have concluded that such an analogy is appropriate and you truly feel that the United States is under a dictatorship, the Senate nullified, and the elections rigged, then you need to stop wasting time on this obscure chatboard and actually do something about it.

Last edited by Gopher on Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:32 am; edited 2 times in total

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:09 am Post subject:

Nowhere Man wrote:

By extension, the word is occasionally applied to governments where a strong leader hands out appointments, advantages, etc. to friends and supporters, without much consideration for the law.

First, I already cited this on page one. Did you not read page one?

Next, please provide one, single example, any example, where W. Bush made a cabinet-level, Supreme Court, or other govt appointment "without much consideration for the law" where such consideration was constitutionally- or otherwise legally-required.

In this case, that would probably mean bypassing Senate confirmation or ignoring a Senate rejection and appointing someone anyway.

Any example at all will do, Nowhere Man.

Also, concerning your "evidence" and the webpage you cited/linked: I think it shows the weakness of your argument that you had to go to the bottom of the search results and get into tertiary definitions to get what you were looking for...

Last edited by Gopher on Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:48 am; edited 4 times in total

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:20 am Post subject:

I've rarely used the term but it seems to be used in quite a few contexts as per the Wikipedia article. Some band wrote a song about Ireland entitled Banana Republic as well:

Quote:

Banana Republic
Septic Isle
Screaming in the suffering sea
It sounds like crying
Everywhere I go
Everywhere I see
The black and blue uniforms
Police and priests

And I wonder do you wonder
While you're sleeping with your *beep*
That sharing beds with history
Is like a-licking running sores
Forty shades of green yeah
Sixty shades of red

Heroes going cheap these days
Price; a bullet in the head

repeat chorus

Take your hand and lead you
Up a garden path
Let me stand aside here
And watch you pass
Striking up a soldier's song
I know that tune
It begs too many questions
And answers to,

repeat chorus

The purple and the pinstripe
Mutely shake their heads
A silense shrieking volumes
A violence worse than the condemn
Stab you in the back yeah
Laughing in your face
Glad to see the place again
It's a pitty nothing's changed

I think it's great that I've been able to turn a political thread into one on etymology. Woland and Moldy Rutabaga are even here.

I think Woland meant hundreds of examples of semantic shift re: various common words in English (and other languages too I'm sure), not hundreds of examples of differing use for the word Banana Republic. There only seem to be about five or so for the latter.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:24 am Post subject:

mithridates wrote:

I think Woland meant hundreds of examples of semantic shift re: various common words in English (and other languages too I'm sure), not hundreds of examples of differing use for the word Banana Republic. There only seem to be about five or so for the latter.

But it would seem to me that if one were going to argue that there has indeed been a semantic shift, then there must necessarily be many easily-citable examples of said shift -- dozens at the very least.

Where are these examples?

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