Astral Codex Ten

Panama Canal

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Panama Canal

Article

Panama Canal is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 08, 2022 and June 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “the post-New Deal consensus is fraying … The United States built the Canal by essentially colonizing the part of Panama it runs through”; “we’re just giving some random country “our” canal”; “At Camp David, as with the Panama Canal, Carter reveals himself to be a masterful negotiator”. It most often appears alongside United States, 1968 convention, 1976 Democratic.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: July 08, 2022
  • 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.

Your Book Review: The Outlier
July 08, 2022 · Original source
Carter finds more success in the arena of foreign policy, where instead of dealing with mercurial politicians from his own country, he can deal with mercurial politicians from other countries. He starts by tackling the third rail of the Panama Canal. The United States built the Canal by essentially colonizing the part of Panama it runs through, and obviously, the Panamanians aren’t super cool with that. The U.S. government has been kicking the can down the road since the LBJ era by continually promising to return sovereignty over the canal to Panama eventually, and after over a decade of “eventually,” the Panamanians are getting impatient.
Flush with confidence from his Panama Canal victory (his canalchemy? his Panamachievement?), Carter decides he should continue tackling foreign policy problems other people think are impossible. And there’s one obvious candidate: the conflict between Israel and the Arab states. Every single one of his advisors tells him this is a huge mistake and he definitely shouldn’t get involved, but knowing Carter, this only makes him want to do it more. His strategy: bring Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin to Camp David for a series of intense negotiations. As usual, Carter believes that if he can just get the relevant parties in a room with him, he can convince them to see things his way.
At Camp David, as with the Panama Canal, Carter reveals himself to be a masterful negotiator, which only makes his constant inability to successfully negotiate with Congress all the more infuriating. When dealing with his own country, he’s disgusted by the horse-trading inherent in politics and continually shoots himself in the foot by refusing to get in the muck. But somehow, when dealing with other countries, he’s able to accept that there’s inevitably going to be a certain amount of dirty work involved. This biography doesn’t really try to provide a theory for this discrepancy, and I wasn’t able to come up with one either. Perhaps Carter holds his own country to a higher standard—or perhaps, as president, he sees himself as above Congress and expects a subservience he doesn’t expect from other countries’ leaders.
Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America
June 07, 2023 · Original source
On one side is the good America that Wang admires. This is the America that grew from a bunch of tiny colonies under attack by Indians and Redcoats into a technological and economic superpower. It won World War II and the Cold War, and outlasted Maoism in China. It built the Panama Canal, the interstate highways, and the Space Shuttle, but also globally respected corporations like Microsoft and Coca-Cola. Its people are effortlessly patriotic, self-assured, and committed to their Constitution and ideals. Its government runs on meritocracy and everyone respects talent regardless of its social class.