Astral Codex Ten

Republican

4 min read

Republican

Article

Republican is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between March 18, 2021 and June 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “mainstream Republican establishment”; “The Democratic vs. Republican divide doesn’t just track your policy positions”; “one of the major controversies in the 1988 presidential campaign was the Republican vice presidential candidate”. It most often appears alongside America, China, New York Times.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: March 18, 2021
  • Last seen: June 07, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: The New Sultan
March 18, 2021 · Original source
Second, if there was a single moment went things obviously took a turn for the worse in Turkey, it was the Ergenekon trials - Erdogan's attempt to forge evidence of an anti-Turkey conspiracy involving all of his enemies. This makes me a little more concerned about things like QAnon than I had been previously - if Trump had arrested various prominent Democrats for their role in a Deep State pedophile ring, that would be pretty similar to the tactic Erdogan used to seize ultimate power. On the other hand, the thing where Democrats talk about how Trump supporters entering the Capitol was an “attempted coup” and we need lots of “domestic terror laws” and a grand attempt to uncover the complicity of the mainstream Republican establishment and bring them to justice - that also feels a little too Erdoganesqe for comfort. Having ideas about the Deep State and attempted coups floating around, sounding vaguely credible, was a major factor in Erdogan's success. The more skeptical we can be of that sort of thing, the better.
The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars
May 10, 2021 · Original source
As always, political affiliation is only the tip of a cultural iceberg. The Democratic vs. Republican divide doesn't just track your policy positions. It also tracks whether you like NASCAR, football, SUVs, meth, and country music, vs. Broadway musicals, artisanal cupcakes, Priuses, marijuana, and local journalism. Sometimes this is because political tribes build on pre-existing cultural variation; other times it's because tribe members imitate each other.
Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America
June 07, 2023 · Original source
In politics, the role of relationships is clear. one of the major controversies in the 1988 presidential campaign was the Republican vice presidential candidate Quayle, who was not considered by public opinion to be a prominent figure or to have gotten ahead by his own struggle, but by his family, which earned two million dollars a year. He did not do well in school, there was some talk of the draft, and so on. The power of family is still important in America.
For example, he spends a long time talking about the specific bylaws of the Democratic and Republican parties, and who the party chair is, and how they pick county level officers, and so on. Most Americans don’t care about this, but it’s easy to figure out why someone from China - where the Party is the power behind the throne - would expect Power to hide somewhere in the Democratic or Republican organizational structure. When he finds out that it doesn’t, he complains that these are barely parties at all:
He praises us for our nonpartisanship. State and local races are dominated by state and local concerns. There is “no ideological difference” between the Democratic and Republican parties (he often makes this statement, sometimes with more qualifications than other times). People vote based on the race in front of them rather than generic partisan cliquishness.