Are we in a Banana Republic? Full context in thread.

Monaco Man

Thought Banana Republics meant we only have one product to export (i.e. bananas). While usually these countries are corrupt, I don't think our corruption labels us as a banana republic.

No, it's more a reference to a country in which there is a massively wealthy oligarchy which has more or less totally completed the process of state capture, e.g. corruption.  Usually it happens in monocrop export based economies, famously Central American ones which were more or less wholly owned by American fruit companies, hence "banana" republics.

I was excited about the Trump office, but I think unbiasly it has revealed to be just as, if not more, corrupt than the "deep state" that the right has spoken about for years. The corruption is certainly more in your face than the "deep state".  

That's because the "deep state" as presented is a myth.  Yeah, bureaucracy exists.  Yes, it's often inefficient and really bad at rooting out fraud and waste (though it's not like private enterprise is any good at it, either).  That doesn't make it corrupt.  Once you understand that Mr Trump and his allies think that corruption is "anyone who disagrees with me" the picture becomes clear.  And as we're seeing in front of our eyes, Mr Trump and his allies do not care about making government more efficient or effective - they simply want to purge their political enemies.  The entire reason fraud and waste has been difficult to address is because previous Administrations cared about things like the rule of law, the competency of the federal workforce, etc.

To paraphrase something I've heard somewhere: if you live in some sort of conservative fantasy world, as pretty much all Trump voters do, then of course reality has a liberal bias.  Republicans live in a world where endless migrant caravans are mere days away from overrunning the border, where Haitians are stealing and eating the pets of innocent families in middle America, where schools are installing litterboxes for their students to defecate in because they identify as cats.  No shit when you turn off Fox and walk outside and hear about how Mr Trump is allowing private individuals access to Social Security and the Treasury payments system you think "that's just liberal lies."

Of course Mr Trump is more corrupt than, well, basically any other President in history.  The man is literally selling access to himself by running the country from Mar A Lago!