The non-debate: On status games and the vacuous new populism

We don’t talk about the United Fruit Company as much as we used to. I miss that.

In the Eighties and Nineties, a conservative arguing with a progressive about practically anything had at his disposal a very handy heuristic: “Oh, yeah? Well what about the United Fruit Company in Guatemala?” If a left-leaning interlocutor went fruity within the first five minutes of a conversation that was not about Guatemala, bananas, or anything very closely related, then you knew he was a kook. Or, to put it more charitably, that he was not likely to prove persuadable by reason and facts.

“What about the United Fruit Company in Guatemala?” was my generation’s version of the old joke from the Soviet Union.