Well, no, you can clearly be more banana republic than that:
* Using the justice system to corruptly punish the opposition and prevent them from competing in elections,
* Using the security/military/law enforcement establishment to simply kill the opposition,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish, to coerce media into friendly, or at least out of critical, coverage,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish to reward people providing personal material benefit to the leader, or to punish those not doing so,
* Using the pardon power to assure that crimes committed in the course of doing any of the preceding items are unprosecutable
Pardoning family members, by itself (provided that the standards applied are different than those that would be applied to non-family members), is certainly corrupt as a form of nepotism, but hardly the outer limit of banana republic behavior.
> IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.
That is until you see what's currently happening, the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies, of which Biden and his family are considered to be primary antagonists (remember they labelled them the "Biden crime family" and chanted "lock them up"). That is the most banana republic as it gets, so how is preemptively defending against that behavior out of bounds?
The prosecution of Hunter for being a user of controlled substances while in possession or acquiring a weapon was pretty clear cut IMO and been used against many more than Hunter as an easy way to put away drug users for a long time. He likely was pardoned in part because Hunter had the resources to actually get that law overturned, signaled intent to do so, and the establishment can't compromise their precious drug laws being found unconstitutional.
dragonwriter|4 months ago
* Using the justice system to corruptly punish the opposition and prevent them from competing in elections,
* Using the security/military/law enforcement establishment to simply kill the opposition,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish, to coerce media into friendly, or at least out of critical, coverage,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish to reward people providing personal material benefit to the leader, or to punish those not doing so,
* Using the pardon power to assure that crimes committed in the course of doing any of the preceding items are unprosecutable
Pardoning family members, by itself (provided that the standards applied are different than those that would be applied to non-family members), is certainly corrupt as a form of nepotism, but hardly the outer limit of banana republic behavior.
ModernMech|4 months ago
That is until you see what's currently happening, the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies, of which Biden and his family are considered to be primary antagonists (remember they labelled them the "Biden crime family" and chanted "lock them up"). That is the most banana republic as it gets, so how is preemptively defending against that behavior out of bounds?
davidguetta|4 months ago
They tried to put true in jail for 4 years, and kept saying he is a Nazi so people would try to shoot him. I don't think it's so different
unknown|4 months ago
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malcolmgreaves|4 months ago
mothballed|4 months ago
vkou|4 months ago
Nice to see the people who fucked it up isolated from the consequences of his second term. (/s)