Lee Kuan Yew cries on live television while announcing Singapore’s independence
As an American, when I think of the adoption of my nation’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, I just can’t help but be filled with pride and patriotism. I am grateful to all those brave men who fought, bled, and died to establish the United States of America. When you look at many countries around the world, you often find stories pretty similar to those of the United States. A mighty empire ruled the land, there were protests and an eventual uprising, then after a hard-fought struggle, the new nation gained its independence.
That’s why this story is so unique. This is the story of a country that didn’t want independence. This country was straight-up kicked out of the nation it already belonged to. This country’s founding father broke down and cried on live television while announcing to his people that they were now in charge of their own fate.
This is the story of how Singapore was forced to become an independent country against its will.
Our story begins in the Middle Ages, with the establishment of the first settlements on a swampy island just off the southernmost tip of the Malay peninsula. This island’s strategic location in the Strait of Malacca between the Indian Ocean and South China Sea made it an important trading post. By the 19th century, it had caught the attention of the British, who took over the place in order to better control commerce in the region. Apart from being under Japanese occupation during World War II, the island remained a British colony until the 1960’s. During this time, the British transformed this island into a thriving multicultural city.
After British rule came to an end, the collection of former colonies and protectorates in the region decided to join together as a new federation that was named “Malaysia”. This decision was partially motivated by economic needs, since the area was in an economic depression at the time. It was thought fostering a common economic policy while taking advantage of their location to become a major trade hub would be the best way to bring prosperity to their people.
Another key factor was the fear of Communism; this was the Cold War, after all, and many newly-independent nations around the world were quickly falling to Marxist regimes. Indeed, there was a Communist guerilla rebellion going on in their own jungles at the time. This fear of a Communist takeover motivated the leadership in the region to want to share resources and form a common defense. So, in 1963, Malaysia formally came into existence and elections were scheduled.
To Malaysia’s new Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, this was absolutely unacceptable. Here he was trying to lay the foundations of a new Malay nation, and the last thing he needed was a populous, economically important city on a strategically-crucial island that completely opposed his entire agenda. Singapore had the power and pull to be an absolute thorn in his side, and he knew that the more he pushed Malaysian nationalism, the more they would push back and demand autonomy for their non-Malay-majority population.
At first, both political parties tried a truce: the PAP would operate in Singapore, and the UMNO would operate everywhere else. This truce lasted all of one month before the UNMO was setting up offices and recruiting political candidates in Singapore. Lee responded by having the PAP start fielding candidates in Malaysian elections beyond his city. Each side accused the other of violating the truce and rigging the elections, leading to a series of race riots. So much for that.
By May 1965, these two political rivals were engaging in a war of words. Tunku claimed Lee’s goal was to keep the Malay people under the thumb of an ethnic Chinese upper-class, and Lee openly attacked Tunku’s racism while calling for the new Malaysian government to prioritize economic development. Tunku was fed up, and decided to take radical action to permanently eliminate this rival from Malaysian politics.
From Tunku’s point of view, Singapore had gone from being an economic boon to a political liability. So, he had his staff secretly reach out to Lee’s staff to propose an agreement for the secession of Singapore from Malaysia. By August, an agreement was drawn up, and it was time to announce this decision to the public.
And so, on August 9, 1965, Lee made the televised announcement that after less than two years as part of Malaysia, his island would become an independent country. As he spoke, he broke down in tears, an image that would be forever etched into Singapore’s history books. He would later say that the reason he cried was that, in accepting independence, he admitted that he had failed in his vision of a Malaysia for all its citizens. From now on, Singapore would be a city-state that was left on its own.
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that independence worked out all right for Singapore in the end.
Still, this has to be one of the most unusual stories about how a nation became independent that I have ever come across. It just goes to show that for everything that seems to be a “rule” about the typical path of history, there will always be exceptions.
A Palm Sunday celebration in the Philippines. Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.
Last year, I had gotten together with some of my friends on a Sunday afternoon for games and food. At some point during our lazy afternoon gathering, I casually mentioned that I had just come from the Palm Sunday service at my church. That’s when one of my friends asked, “What’s Palm Sunday?”
One thing I have learned in life is that if one person has a question, there are probably many more people with the same question.
The fact is, Palm Sunday doesn’t get the same level of attention as other Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter. Even St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day get more love in the broader American culture than this holiday gets. So, it makes sense that many people probably haven’t heard of Palm Sunday.
If you’ve ever been curious about this annual Christian tradition, or if you simply have never heard of it before, I thought it might be good to explain why every year, one week before Easter, churches around the world decorate themselves in palm leaves.
So, what does Palm Sunday celebrate?
Palm Sunday celebrates the day that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for Passover, one of the most important Jewish holidays, just a few days before His arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Indeed, it was how He entered Jerusalem that directly led to His death on the cross.
This event is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Luke’s account says:
As He came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, He sent two disciples ahead. “Go into that village over there,” He told them. “As you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks, ‘Why are you untying that colt?’ just say, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So they went and found the colt, just as Jesus had said. And sure enough, as they were untying it, the owners asked them, “Why are you untying that colt?” And the disciples simply replied, “The Lord needs it.” So they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it for Him to ride on. As He rode along, the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of Him. When He reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of His followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen. “Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!” But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!” He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” (Luke 19:28-40 NLT)
Think about what happened in that moment. Jesus was openly cheered as “the Lord”, celebrated as “King”. People were laying their own clothes out for him in the ancient equivalent of the red-carpet treatment. John’s account adds this important detail: A large crowd of Passover visitors took palm branches and went down the road to meet him. (John 12:12-13 NLT)Palm branches were an ancient symbol of victory, associated with military conquest.
By now, the reputation of this hick rabbi from the frontier town of Nazareth who performed amazing miracles and seemed wiser than any other man had reached Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious life, where the Temple was located. He was activating the hopes of many Jews that He just might fulfill their ancient prophecies of the mashiach (the origin of the English word “Messiah”, and literally meaning “the anointed one”). There were many different competing ideas floating around at the time regarding what, exactly, this Messiah was supposed to be or do, but many hoped this person would lead them in a great rebellion against the Roman Empire that ruled the Holy Land at the time and restore a great, prosperous, independent kingdom of Israel. Hence, the palm leaves and the royal treatment: this was a direct challenge to the Roman authorities. Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem for His last Passover is often called “the triumphal entry” as it was a parody of the ancient Roman triumphs granted to Rome’s greatest generals.
Yet, all this exuberant cheering for Jesus as an earthly savior from Roman rule was misplaced. Jesus was no rebel leader. He was no general. Jesus Himself showed the truth of His mission to them all in HOW he arrived in Jerusalem. He was riding on a donkey – a symbol of peace. Yet they were so caught up in their mob mentality that this obvious fact went right over everyone’s heads. Hence, why Jesus would arrive through Jerusalem’s gates with tears in His eyes:
But as He came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, He began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.” (Luke 19:41-44 NLT)
Nevertheless, this triumphal entry set in motion a series of events that could not be stopped. The Roman authorities now saw this man from Nazareth as a potential rebel threat who had to be dealt with. The religious leaders of Jerusalem saw Him as a dangerous man who could upset the delicate balance of power between themselves and the Romans, whereby their religious authority was begrudgingly tolerated by Rome despite the Romans not really understanding and often looking down on the Jewish way of life.
And so it was that on the night after the Passover seder, Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, arrested, put on trial, and condemned to death. He was executed the very next day.
This is why, today, Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week, the lead-up to Easter. On Palm Sunday, Christians commemorate Jesus’s triumphal entry in Jerusalem. On Good Friday, we remember His death on the cross; on Holy Saturday, we recall His time in the tomb. Of course, on Easter Sunday, we celebrate His resurrection.
How do Christians celebrate Palm Sunday?
A Palm Sunday service in Kirkuk, Iraq. Photo by Mar Sharb.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that one of the key elements of Palm Sunday is attending church and listening to a sermon on Jesus’s triumphal entry. Typically, the church will be decorated in palm leaves, and sometimes the worshippers will be handed palm leaves to wave in imitation of the crowds shouting and cheering for Jesus.
In some communities, the whole procession will be reenacted for the public to watch. In some traditions, palm leaves will be folded and knotted into the shape of a cross and then given a blessing. Often, the palm leaves will be saved in storage until the next year, when they will be burned on Ash Wednesday and the ashes used to mark the foreheads of the faithful.
In Poland, where palm trees obviously don’t grow, there is a longstanding tradition of making artificial palm trees for decoration during Palm Sunday. They will even hold competitions to see who can build the tallest artificial palm tree, some reaching more than 30 meters high! Meanwhile, the town of Elche in Spain is famous for keeping the sun off of its palm leaves for months so that they appear white when Palm Sunday comes around. In Wales, where the holiday is called Sul y Blodau, it was once common for people to decorate graveyards with flowers on this day.
Perhaps the strangest Palm Sunday custom is practiced in Finland, where children dressed as witches go from house to house offering twigs in return for candy. Are we sure Finland didn’t mix Palm Sunday up with Halloween?
I really hope this brief summary helps anyone who is curious about this less-well-known Christian holiday. It may not get the same level of attention of Christmas or Easter, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s less important. It’s a remembrance of one of the most pivotal moments in the life of Jesus, and hopefully, I’ve helped you to see that.
Painting of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
English, Spanish, Navajo, Korean, Arabic, Hungarian, and Swahili are all languages that gradually came into being naturally over a period of centuries among people who lived in a particular region and shared a particular culture. Almost all normal languages that we encounter in day-to-day life are natural languages like these.
However, this is not the only way that languages can come into existence. All languages are the creations of human beings, so what’s stopping some person from just inventing a new language from scratch? Nothing.
Recently, I have become fascinated by the surprisingly rich world of “conlangs”, or constructed languages. These are languages that have been developed by either a single person or a small group for a specific purpose. These are languages like Esperanto or Klingon, and you might be surprised to learn that there is a whole community of conlang enthusiasts that has formed around this rather unique interest.
As you might imagine, inventing a new language from scratch requires one to have a pretty solid understanding of linguistics and quite a lot of patience. First, you would have to determine what sounds the new language will use, as the human mouth is capable of making a wide variety of noises, but no language uses them all. Next, you have to develop a vocabulary of words using those sounds your language contains, and put those words you’ve invented together using a set of grammatical rules you’ve set. Let’s not forget the question of how you want this language to be written!
A sample of text from the Quenya language developed by J.R.R. Tolkien
So, why might someone want to go through all this trouble? Well, there are three main reasons people make conlangs:
To facilitate communication
Perhaps the most famous conlang in the world is Esperanto, a language invented in 1887 by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof to serve as a “world language” that would make it easier for people from all across the globe to communicate with each other, and thus, hopefully, increase the likelihood of world peace. Or, at least, that was Zamenhof’s intent.
The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time when plenty of idealistic dreams of a better future were bouncing around Europe and North America, so there were plenty of like-minded people who found Zamenhof’s project compelling. By 1905, Esperanto enthusiasts around the world were able to organize an official World Esperanto Congress to further promote the global adoption of this conlang. In the early 20th century, however, the movement would face serious setbacks, as the language was banned in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Ultimately, though, Zamenhof’s project failed because the world decided to embrace English as the “world language” instead. Yet there are still plenty of Esperanto speakers worldwide, with estimates of their numbers ranging from 100,000to 2 million. Indeed, there are even a few native Esperanto speakers, whose parents were Esperanto enthusiasts deliberately raising their children to speak the language! These days, it’s really not hard to find Esperanto-language books, music, or other media.
Esperanto is an example of an international auxiliary language – a language designed with the intent to be a “neutral” language for the whole world to speak. An IAL isn’t necessarily meant to replace existing languages, but simply to be used as a second language between people from across the globe who don’t speak the same native language. The big idea is that using an existing language for this purpose (such as English) supposedly gives speakers of this language an unfair advantage and helps to impose their culture upon the rest of the world, at the expense of other cultures.
To this end, many in the conlang enthusiast community actually are quite critical of Esperanto. Zamenhof’s creation was heavily influenced by Latin and based on the patterns of European languages. In recent decades, there have been many attempts to devise a “truly global” IAL that incorporates elements from languages and language families from across the globe.
Still others have recognized that such a project is probably fruitless. Human languages are just so diverse that making an “all-inclusive” IAL just results in a language that’s much harder to learn due to including many elements that a learner will be unfamiliar with. Instead, people in this camp will focus on developing an auxiliary language for a specific region in order to foster unity and cultural cohesion within that region. One example of such a conlang is palawa kani, a language constructed by and for aboriginal Tasmanians to help preserve their culture, since all the native languages on the Australian island of Tasmania have gone extinct. The creators of this conlang studied what records we do have of these native pre-colonial Tasmanian languages and based the new language on their findings.
To add depth to a work of fiction
If Esperanto is the most famous conlang that was intended for practical use in the real world, Klingon has to be the most famous conlang created as an artistic flourish to enhance a work of fiction.
Among the most famous of the alien races featured in Star Trek, the Klingons speak a language devised by Dr. Marc Okrand in the 1980’s to specifically sound as “alien” as possible without hurting the mouths or throats of the actors speaking it. You can still buy Okrand’s official Klingon-English dictionary if you want to learn the language yourself. Over the years, Star Trek fans have expanded on Okrand’s work, even going so far as to write an entire opera in Klingon.
But if we’re going to talk about the use of conlangs in art, then we have to talk about the only conlang creator who is a household name: J. R. R. Tolkein. The author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy filled Middle-Earth with languages like Quenya, Valarin, and Dwarfish, helping it feel like a lived-in world with a deep history.
Many artistic works use conlangs to give their worlds a sense of depth and realism that wouldn’t necessarily be possible with random, made-up sounds jumbled together. Conlangs have been used for projects as massive as the James Cameron Avatar films and as small as the webcomic Dog Days created by a landscaping professional from Arizona in his spare time. There are even plenty of helpful online guides like this one for any new creators who want to try their hand at making a conlang of their own to enhance their creations.
To explore a hypothesis
Toki pona is a conlang created by Sonja Lang in 2001 to see what it would take to have a usable, speak-able language with as few words as possible. This language has only 137 words and can allegedly be mastered with about 30 hours of practice. To make this language so simple, its 137 words cover broad categories, and a speaker has to combine these words creatively to come up with a way to express something more specific.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Ithkuil, a language devised by John Quijada to be pretty much the exact opposite, a language designed to be as extremely precise as possible, capable of expressing every possible human thought without confusion. Quijada’s work has resulted in what has been called “the world’s most complicated language”. The video in that last link explains how the single Ithkuil word ôkšurn means “the entirety of a non-hypothetical, physically accessible group of various pathetic dweebs working towards some common goal, who cause themselves to experience something.”
These sorts of “engineered languages” are conlangs that are specifically designed to test the limits of language and explore what can be possible in the art of human communication. Some of these conlangs can be quite artistic, like Solresol, a language that is based on musical notes, or can be quite unpleasant, like the infamous Newspeak from George Orwell’s novel 1984 (which doubles as an artistic conlang giving depth to a fictional work).
Then there are truly odd languages like Gurgle – an entry in a recent conlang contest – that exclusively uses sounds that the human mouth and vocal chords are technically capable of making… but… why would you? It sounds in the video like the language’s creator was in pain trying to speak it!
As you’ve probably guessed, this blog post has barely scratched the surface of this vibrant community of language enthusiasts and their linguistic creations. Language is certainly a fun subject to explore, and it only makes sense that people would sometimes explore it by seeing what they can make of it for themselves. As long as there are creative people who love language, there will be conlangs.
So, you want to become President of the United States of America. Maybe you’re fed up with the way things are going and want to put the United States back on the right track. Maybe you have a grand vision for a better future for all Americans and want to bring this vision to life. Or maybe you just like power, and are attracted to the most powerful job in the world. No matter your reasons for wanting to become the P.O.T.U.S., be warned: this is not a job you can just apply for with a résumé and job interview. Your road to the White House will be a long one, taking nearly two years, as well as an expensive one, costing you billions of dollars. But before you brace yourself and your bank accounts for this challenge, there’s a more fundamental question you have to ask yourself first.
Can you even run for president?
There are two parts to this question: (1) are you eligible to run for president, and (2) do you have a chance to succeed if you run?
Let’s start by tackling the first part. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution lists three criteria that all candidates for president must meet. First, you must be a natural-born American citizen; second, you must be at least 35 years old; and third, you must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.
Already, there are tens of millions of people who meet these criteria. What’s more, history has shown that these rules are somewhat flexible. John McCain and Ted Cruz each ran for president despite having been born in Panama and Canada, respectively; they were considered “natural-born” thanks to their American parents. Dwight D. Eisenhower ran and won in 1952, despite having spent most of the previous decade in Europe; it was determined at the time that as long as you’ve spent any 14 years of your life in the U.S., it counts. The youngest major presidential candidate (William Jennings Bryant in 1896) was 36 years old at the time, so nobody has seriously tested the age restriction yet. Perhaps a 34-year-old might be allowed to run if he or she will turn 35 during the campaign.
As I write this, there’s an ongoing case making its way through the U.S. court system regarding another possible eligibility concern for a presidential candidate. Two states – Colorado and Maine – have removed the former president, Donald Trump, from their states’ ballots, claiming that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against [the United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Their argument is based on the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. The former president’s critics allege that he incited and aided the incident in an attempt to stay in power, a claim that he denies. We’ll have to see how the courts rule in this case.
While on the topic of former presidents, there is one more way someone can become ineligible to be president: having already served as president for two terms. Thanks to the 22nd Amendment, all U.S. presidents since Eisenhower have been limited to serving no more than two four-year terms as president, except in the case of a vice-president who succeeds to the presidency because the sitting president has died, resigned, or been removed from office. If that happens, and there is less than two years left in the previous president’s term, then the new president may run for up to two full terms.
Let’s assume you meet all the Constitution’s eligibility requirements to run for president. While plenty of people certainly CAN run for president (and often do)…
Pictured: an actual presidential candidate
…it doesn’t make sense to run for president if you have no chance at winning. Like I said, running for president is a massive investment in time, resources, and money, so you need to make sure your run is feasible. This is why many people considering a run form an exploratory committee first, to see if he or she would have a decent chance to succeed if he or she runs.
Another common tactic is to write a book introducing oneself and one’s political ideas to the public. This is a popular tactic for several reasons. It helps the public to learn about who you are and what you’re all about. Book sales can give you an idea as to how popular you might be with the public. Not only that, but the royalties you earn from those book sales can help you earn enough money to kick-start your campaign.
Let’s now assume your exploratory committee has shown some promising signs, your book is selling well, and you decide you’re ready to announce that you are running. How you do this is up to you. For decades, one of the most common ways candidates announced that they were running for president was to appear as a guest on a late-night talk show and make the announcement there. However, former president Trump announced he was running for president in 2015 at a press conference in his own Trump Tower. President Joe Biden made his announcement in a YouTube video in 2019. Whatever means you pick to make your announcement, what matters is that you get as much attention from the news media as possible. You want to maximize the number of Americans who know your name and know that you are running.
Going on the campaign trail
Once you’ve made your announcement, it’s time to start campaigning. You’ll need to hire web designers to make a campaign website for you, so voters can see your policy proposals and, if they so choose, donate to your campaign so you have the money to run. You’ll also want to invest in a line of merchandise for your supporters to buy so they can showcase who they’re voting for and keep putting your name out there. You’ll hire an ad agency to blast your campaign across TV, radio, billboards, and social media. You’ll also want a small team of social media experts to manage your official campaign social media accounts, as anything you put on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, Parler, or YouTube will be seen by a news media chomping at the bit for a clickbait headline about you.
That’s not to mention all the travelling you will be doing! You’ll be making your way across the nation to meet voters and convince them that they should vote for you. You’ll get lots of practice at public speaking as you will be making a ton of speeches. If you’re popular enough, you may be invited to participate in live, televised debates to sell yourself and convince voters to choose you over your competition. Better hope you’re good at verbally sparring with people!
If all of this sounds expensive, it is. That’s something to be wary of, since as soon as you spend $5,000, you have to register your campaign with the Federal Election Commission and start complying with federal campaign finance laws. You have to maintain a public record of every donor, and there are legal limits to how much they can donate. By the way, merchandise sales are treated as “donations” by the FEC, and thus subject to these same rules. Fortunately, since you are running for president, you will get a share of a taxpayer-funded pot collected by the IRS at tax time specifically for presidential candidates to use for campaign-related expenses. Every taxpayer can choose to contribute $3 to this pot when paying their income taxes. It may not sound like much, but it adds up to millions of dollars.
Even with this extra money, though, the FEC’s restrictions on your fundraising will be a thorn in your side, as the costs of your campaign will keep adding up with each passing day. For this reason, you will want to pick some of your closest supporters and have them organize SuperPACs for you. A SuperPAC is a type of Political Action Committee (hence the name) that has no limit to how much money it can raise or spend on your behalf. The only rules are that the SuperPAC has to disclose its donor list to the FEC, it can’t give its money directly to your campaign, and it can’t “coordinate” with you. This is only to your benefit, as your SuperPAC can take millions of dollars from big businesses or lobbyist groups, spend that money on ads that virtually slander your opponents, and you can keep your hands completely clean from all of it.
While you’re busy with all of this work, your campaign staff needs to make sure that your name actually makes it onto the ballots in each state, since all of this will be for nothing if voters can’t actually vote for you. This means you will have to decide if you want to run as an independent candidate (as Robert Kennedy Jr. is attempting) or become the official presidential candidate for a political party. As I write this, the only U.S. president to ever be elected as an independent candidate was George Washington, and his circumstances were a bit, shall we say, unique. So, to give yourself the best shot possible, you’ll want to become the candidate for either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
The presidential primaries
How we ended up with the presidential primary system is a complex topic I’ve discussed on this blog before, but if you’re going to become president, you’ll need to navigate this months-long, grueling challenge.
See, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party hold a national convention during the summer of every presidential election year, and the thousands of delegates who attend this convention are the ones who officially pick their party’s presidential candidate. Except we all know that this isn’t really how it works, since by the time that the two national conventions are held, we usually already know who the presidential candidate from each party is going to be, and the convention is just an opportunity to hold a massive campaign rally for the winner.
The rules on when and how Democratic or Republican voters from each state get to cast their votes on who they want as their party’s presidential candidate are determined through a mixture of state laws and political party rules, and they will thus vary by both state and party. In general, though, the first step is to register with your preferred party in as many states as possible, preferably all 50. This may involve getting voters in that state to sign a petition for you, paying a fee, or both.
Next, you will need to campaign in each state before the parties hold their primaries and caucuses.
Wait, what are those?
A primary is a sort of pre-election election where voters who belong to a political party can cast secret ballots for their preferred candidate, just like in a normal election. Though the rules for these will vary by state and party, there are generally two main types: “closed” primaries that only allow members of the party to cast ballots for that party’s candidate, and “open” primaries where any registered voter can choose to participate in a party’s primary.
A caucus is where party members in a given community gather at an agreed meeting place and hold a debate, often lasting for hours, to persuade each other to support one candidate or another. Votes in a caucus are made publicly, either by a show of hands or physically walking across the room to a candidate’s designated corner. The most famous caucuses are those held in Iowa, as they are held before any other primary or caucus across the United States, usually in January. This means whoever “wins Iowa” will be perceived by the news media as having an early lead, so you had better spend some time braving the snow and ice, pounding pavement to get Iowan voters excited about your campaign.
The second state to vote is always New Hampshire, who holds a primary election and wrote it into state law that their primary is held before any other state (Iowa gets away with voting before New Hampshire by holding caucuses). As you can imagine, the other 48 states are kind of jealous of Iowa and New Hampshire, and the Democrats in particular have made it clear that they see this privileged status these two predominantly-white states hold as being racist. Consequently, for the 2024 election, the Democrats tried to rearrange the order in which the Democratic primaries were held, so that South Carolina (and all of its black Democratic voters) would vote first. But while Iowa complied by holding a “mail-in caucus” for Iowa Democrats that will run through March, New Hampshire would not change its laws to suit the Democrats.
This highlights the constant tug-of-war between the states and the two big parties over control of the presidential primary process, and you should take full advantage of this. See, you can’t be everywhere, and travel costs are going to keep adding up as the campaign draws on. So, you should focus on those states who will net you the most delegates. One of the ways the big two political parties punish non-compliant states is by reducing how many delegates they can get at the national convention. That means you have less incentive to go after voters in those states and can focus on voters in states that have more delegates at the convention.
Now, as time goes on, your competition will start to dwindle. After the first few states vote, those among your opponents who have only been scraping by with 3% of the vote will start “suspending” their campaigns. Notice that they won’t officially be dropping out, since that would mean ceasing all their campaign operations and no longer being able to collect any donations. But for all practical intents and purposes, they’ll have dropped out. This is an opportunity for you, since any delegates that have already been pledged to vote for them could potentially become delegates pledged to vote for you. Maybe a promise to give this opponent an important Cabinet position might convince him or her to make that happen?
This leads me to the other group of delegates you just might need to court: unpledged delegates, otherwise known as “superdelegates”. These are government and party officials who get to participate in the national convention by virtue of their office, and aren’t beholden to vote for anyone. Both parties have such delegates, but there are many, many more of them in the Democratic Party. Usually, they don’t actually matter very much, but when there is an intense competition between two popular figures to become a party’s candidate, they can turn the tide, as happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton’s support from the superdelegates shut out Bernie Sanders. After this happened, the Democrats changed their rules so superdelegates can only vote if there is no clear winner by the time the national convention meets.
Of course, the norm is for there to be a clear victor fairly early on. Who can forget when a single weekend during the 2020 presidential primaries, most of the Democratic candidates quickly dropped out and rallied behind Joe Biden, who would go on to win the nomination shortly thereafter? It is, after all, in the best interest of both parties to not destroy themselves with too much infighting. The true goal of the national convention is to present an image of unity in front of the cameras. After all, each party ultimately wants all their members to vote for the final candidate in November.
If that’s you, then you should probably pick one of the opponents you just vanquished as your running mate for vice-president. Preferably, you’ll pick someone who somehow compensates for your perceived deficiencies. For example, if you aren’t that great at foreign policy, maybe pick a former Secretary of State, or if you’re from the North, pick a Southerner. If you’re a Republican, maybe you’re a big hit with fiscal conservatives, but need an evangelical VP to win over family-values voters. If you’re a Democrat, maybe you pick someone who has a different racial or gender identity, or perhaps a different sexual orientation.
Now, it’s finally time for the main event.
The general election and the Electoral College
This is it. You’ve made it through the primaries, and you’re on your way to the general election. No time to rest on your laurels; you have campaign stops to make, voters to meet, babies to kiss, and televised debates against the other party’s candidate to participate in. More donations. More merch. More ads. More social media posts.
If you’re running against a sitting president, you’re at an automatic disadvantage, since your opponent will be able to use Air Force One and The Beast when making campaign stops, which just looks far more impressive. Sure, the Secretary of Homeland Security will assign you a Secret Service escort, but it’s not quite the same thing. Unless you already have your own private plane.
Having said that, there is something to be said for a candidate who voters can “relate to”. If your opponent is part of the political elite (or can be framed as part of the elite), you want to look as much like an everyday person as possible. No T-shirts – you still want to look professional – but button-down shirts with the top button unbuttoned and rolled-up sleeves go really well with denim jeans. Be sure to get pictures of yourself having a beer with someone from the working class.
Just remember that it’s not the ordinary voters who actually pick the winner, but the Electoral College. Every state gets a number of electors equal to that state’s total representation in Congress, and Washington, D.C. gets an additional three electors. When voters cast their ballots in your name, what they’re really doing is casting ballots for a slate of electors your party has picked who are pledged to vote for you in the final presidential election.
You would think, then, that the optimal strategy might be to go after the states with the most electors. However, most states fairly consistently end up siding with one party or the other; if you’re a Democrat, you are all but guaranteed to get California’s 54 electors, and if you’re a Republican, you can count on winning Texas’s 40 electors. Your focus needs to be on the so-called “swing states”, states where the voters are split 50-50 between the two parties. It’s the electoral votes from these states that will “swing” the election in your favor.
Then again, you might choose to surprise people. In 2016, Donald Trump won, in part, by successfully campaigning in states that were previously thought to be securely in Democratic hands, winning former Democrats over and turning these states into swing states. Maybe you might deploy a similar strategy, directly going after your opponent’s core voter base.
No matter where you focus your campaign, though, be ready for the infamous “October Surprise”. It never fails – just weeks before the election, some scandalous news breaks that could potentially derail the campaign of one of the presidential candidates. If the scandal is bad news for your opponent, exploit it ruthlessly; if it’s bad news for you, however, it’s imperative that you work to minimize it and convince voters it’s no big deal.
At last, November will arrive, American voters will cast their ballots, and the news media will make high-res graphics showing the U.S. map colored in with red and blue. If you win at least 270 electors, then congratulations, you are the next president of the United States!
Of course, the electors still have to formally meet and cast their ballots, and those ballots then have to be certified by Congress. While you wait for this process to be wrapped up, you will be busy setting up your transition team. Your campaign staff will now start working to get you ready to take office. Your top priority will be picking the people you will appoint to fill the Cabinet and a myriad of other administrative roles in the Executive Branch. Time to cash in all those favors you owe; though you will also want to ensure that several key posts go to well-respected and highly-qualified officials with a résumé that’s beyond reproach. Also, it will look better for the cameras if your Cabinet shows some racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.
At last, on January 20, it will finally be time. You will take the oath of office and be formally inaugurated as President of the United States of America. At long last, you will have the job you have struggled for so long to earn. A job that requires you to spend the next four years constantly juggling international crises, fighting with Congress, trying to manage one of the world’s largest bureaucracies, hoping that the economy responds well to your policies, keeping the news media at bay, and being ready at all times in case of a nuclear war. But, hey, at least you get to fly in Air Force One!
That’s right, Cat Flaggers! The day has finally arrived! The day we’ve been counting down since I started this series in 2019 is finally here. Today, January 1st, 2024, is the day that the copyright has expired on Steamboat Willie, the animated short film by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks that gave us the character of Mickey Mouse.
This short is now in the public domain, so it can be freely copied, shared, and adapted by anyone, not just the Walt Disney Company.
Want to watch it? Here you go:
This particular copyright expiration has been a long time coming. See, copyright law in the United States originally required creators to register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office to get legal copyright protection on their work, and this registration had to be renewed every few years. Then, the law was changed in 1976 so that any creative work “fixed in a tangible medium” would automatically get copyright protection for the life of the creator plus an additional 50 years, or in the case of works made by a corporation (such as Disney), up to a total of 75 years. This would have meant that the copyright on Steamboat Willie would have expired in 2003. Of course, the problem for Disney is that in the decades since Steamboat Willie came out, the company has made the short’s star character, Mickey Mouse, into the company’s mascot and brand ambassador. So, to avoid losing control of their most iconic intellectual property, Disney’s lobbyists convinced Congress to pass a law extending the copyright term to life plus 70 years for individual creators and 95 years for corporations.
As you can imagine, this angered quite a few people, as it meant that the public domain in the United States was effectively frozen for twenty years in order to appease big business interests. It wasn’t until 2019 that copyrights in the United States were able to expire again. Nevertheless, as the clock kept ticking toward the new deadline of 2024, plenty of people (myself included) expected Disney to pull some more lobbying shenanigans to keep Mickey Mouse completely in-house. Yet this didn’t happen.
Right now, Disney is in some serious hot water both financially and politically, so maybe the company just wasn’t in a position to send an army of lobbyists to Washington, D.C. Also, it’s possible that Congress, facing down an election year where their approval ratings are sitting at 15%, don’t want to appear to be in the pockets of big business.
Whatever the case may be, Mickey Mouse has at long last entered the public domain! Well, sort of.
See, technically the copyright has only expired on Steamboat Willie. As I said, Disney has spent decades using Mickey Mouse as their top cartoon star, and all the other Mickey Mouse cartoons that the company has pumped out over this time are still under copyright. Not only that, but Disney has trademarked the character as well, meaning nobody is allowed to use Mickey Mouse in any way that would confuse a reasonable consumer into thinking that a non-Disney product was made by Disney.
Look, I’m not a legal expert, so don’t take anything in this blog as legal advice. All I’m saying is that the Walt Disney Company still has several legal tools to “sort-of” still exercise some limited control of the Mickey Mouse character, and I have no doubts that their legal team fully intends to make use of these tools.
Nevertheless, it will be exciting to see how Mickey Mouse falling into the public domain, caveats aside, will play out. However, we can’t forget that far more things entered the public domain this year than just one short.
Other books entering the public domain include Orlando by Virginia Woolf, The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, Dark Princess by W.E.B. DuBois, West-Running Brook by Robert Frost, and the original German version of Erich Maria Remarque’s famed novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
Also, we can’t forget to mention that this is the year that the Charleston enters the public domain, the hit song by James P. Johnson recorded in 1923 that set off a dance craze across America:
Other musical highlights entering the public domain this year include the Tin Roof Blues by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman, Bambalina by the Ray Miller Orchestra, the sheet music for Ramona by Mabel Wayne and L. Wolf Gilbert, and the original German lyrics for Mack the Knife.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Minnie Mouse also appeared in Steamboat Willie, so she’s been set free into the public domain, too!
That’s just it, though; I think it’s really hard to top Mickey Mouse entering the public domain. This character has been controlled by one company for so long, it will be fascinating to see what fresh creativity from people outside that company end up doing with him. I look forward to finding out.
Cat Flag 