An Authoritarian Usage of “Republic”
Musk finds an alpha male-dominated "republic" to be "interesting."
As regular readers know, I have thoughts on the phrase “a republic, not a democracy” (indeed, it is the subject of my pending Consitution Day talk at Berry College in a couple of weeks). I often find the deployment of the phrase to be the result of misunderstanding about what the terms mean. Often it is some attempt to explain various elements of American government in a way that makes it all sound like the Framers really knew that, say, western expansion would not distort the significance of the two seats per state in the Senate. It’s all just the Grand Design of American Exceptionalism, dontcha know.
Other usages are attempts to justify things like the fact that the president might be elected by a minority of the population so they can appoint the Supreme Court by having the Justices confirmed by a chamber that was elected by a minority of the population. It’s not problematic! Nope! It’s because we are a republic. Or something.
Beyond all those attempts to ignore some clear design flaws in our constitutional order (or to ignore even how the Framers thought the EC, for example, would work) there are more insidious usages of the term “republic” that are cropping up.
To wit, an example from the Master of X.
On the one hand, this is absurd on a number of levels. On the other, Musk has a huge following. See, for example, GZero: Elon Musk and the Political Power of Young Men. Musk and his ilk are part of a reactionary far-right movement that appeals to disaffected males who long for a mythic past where their brute strength was all that mattered. And, of course, it just so happens that being strong makes one the freest of thinkers!
Cool how that works (and, of course, when I think of he-men, Musk immediately comes to mind!).
But I digress.
I wanted to note, the deployment of both “republic” and “democracy” in the oh-so-“interesting observation” highlighted by Musk.
Note that in both cases, the term refers to an exclusionary system of rule by a minority who gets to govern because of specific ascriptive characteristics. This is a government for males with a certain level of testosterone and physical prowess. And, it just so happens that such people are likely free-thinking and neurodivergent.
No pencil neck geeks or people with lady-parts need apply.
Side note: I must confess, I do not think “testosterone-soaked muscle-man” and “neurodivergent” as a Venn diagram that is just a solid circle. Certainly, this does not comport with the standard stereotypes. But I guess one’s mileage may vary. Although it may be that the author of this “theory” is finding a way to include the neurodivergent with the he-men, joined by their ability to see the “truth” (but wouldn’t that mean that the group who should really rule would be the neurodivergent bodybuilders, for they shall have high-T and Know What is True?).
But, I digress. (And yes, trying to make too much sense of the above is fool’s errand–or maybe my T is low. Hard to say for sure).
What I think is noteworthy, and concerning, is that Musk is suggesting here that minority government is a good idea (or, at least, “interesting”). Moreover, the notion he is floating equates a “republic” with minority rule by a specific class of person. And while it pays some lip service to “democracy” it is only democracy for that select set of persons.
Interestingly, this kind of reminds me of a character in Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus, who always came across to me as a bit of a muscle-head (I never considered if he was neurodivergent or not). Thrasymachus argued that justice was simply “nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.”
Spoiler: that was the wrong answer.
Indeed, Plato’s notion of a republic was one where the philosophers ruled and did so in the public interest, not their own self-interest. And, I hasten to note, was not democratic at all.
At any rate, the usage shared by Musk of a “republic” is just an example of someone using a word that sounds appealing instead of just saying what it really means: a dictatorship that privileges a specific minority of the population over others.
A republic can absolutely be an authoritarian form of government. Indeed, it can be downright totalitarian.
On balance, some flavor of authoritarianism is usually what is meant when a lot of people deploy the term “republic”, even if they don’t want to fully admit it themselves.
To be sure, there are a lot of legitimate usages of the term. After all, the US is a republic. We have no monarch nor an aristocracy. But, luckily we also are a democracy (albeit a flawed one).
Another rather disturbing aspect of the sketch of government shared by Musk is that it eschews the idea of consensus, which is kind of central to real democracy, and suggests that some specific people know what is “true” and therefore should have to right to govern. Because, like a pack of animals, we should be ruled by the Alpha.
Isn’t the traditional definition of “republic” government by elected leaders in the absence of an hereditary monarch or politically empowered hereditary nobility?
The old soviet union would be a republic by this definition, as would the Third Reich. The United Kingdom would not, although it is mostly a democracy now.
(With no hereditary monarch or nobility the remaining path to selecting leaders is election by either the public or a political party).
As we should have grown to expect by now, Musk and these weird conservative incurious morons don’t bother to understand how “low T” works. If you have “low” testosterone but your androgen receptor sensitivity [especially in your muscles] is high enough, you’re more than fine. And even if you “have” low testosterone and average-to-low androgen receptor sensitivity, all you need to do is to realize that you will need to bring more motivation at the end of sets and you may need to take an extra 3 seconds between sets to ensure you’re ready to knock out the next one. Genetics and consistency attending the gym are “what it takes” to build muscle.
And it’s wildly rich for the guy who lit 40 billion on fire just to buy Twitter to assert that he has any knowledge of objective pure reasoning. Musk definitely wasn’t brain-broken by the online right wingers.. nope, the only speech that’s free is Republicanism, amirite guys? Please clap!
I can remember a time in my past when I was an engineer on a team at a Silicon Valley firm that was doing a joint project with Microsoft. This was in the late 90’s. The project had a number of issues and was struggling. I remember a moment I shared with my companies’ tech lead, and he kind of complained to me about all the cat herding. I smiled and said, “Everything would be so much better if everyone just did what you said, wouldn’t it?” I meant it as a little ironic joke.
He took it seriously. “Yes!!!” was the reply. I said no more.
I am not seriously spectrum, but I understand the mindset. When you do a math problem, there is a right answer. If you can frame whatever problem in life you might be up against as a math problem, do the math, get an answer, and follow it, it is often valuable. This is particularly true in financial decisions.
However, this often runs afoul of other people and their consarned, “I don’t wanna.” I can remember being vexed about this. I never sought to impose my vision, though. And of course, I also have an “I don’t wanna”, so it’s fair.
But that’s how it works for a guy like Musk, who has almost no self awareness or people skills. People who want something other than “the right answer” are silly and should be ignored.
Yeah, that’s authoritarian as hell. It’s at the core of Russian authoritarianism, I’m pretty sure.
@charontwo:
In the end, words get defined by usage rather than by some objective meaning. What Emperor Xlon Zero of that name wants, is oligarchy, rule by the few. What he says he wants goes back to the original meaning of aristocracy, rule by the best.
The meaning of democracy, as is well known, is rule by the people. The term Republic, as definition goes, is of Latin origin and means the people’s affairs, or the people’s concerns.
Neither a republic nor a democracy guarantees or need be concerned with liberty, freedom, or equality. That’s a much latter development. In Greek and Roman democracies, the voter rolls were limited to certain male residents of the city or state, largely on the basis of property ownership. Both excluded all women regardless of how much property they might have owned.
This is not too dissimilar from America’s early form of republic. Suffrage expanded as new states were added, which granted the vote to more people. even so, by the time of the Civil War*, pretty much only white men could vote in most states.
BTW, the thing Xlon quotes is not even sexist pseudoscience, but mere sexist and homophobic opinion without any support.
*Ever more, I’m starting to think of it as the First American Civil War.
These herds of boys wanting to be alphas are pathetic. If you really are a natural leader, you don’t have to tell anyone. If a threat appears, and heads turn to you, you’re a natural leader. There is not a single thing you can do to either make that happen, or keep it from happening.
Of course military training or equivalent can make you a functioning leader within a defined structure. But these lost boys don’t want to do that, because that’s hard. They want alpha bling – fast cars, loose women, a crypto account – and think that will mark them and thus make them, leaders. Nope. Also, backward baseball caps, one of those huffy ‘bro’ voices, or a braying laugh, do nothing for your leadership capabilities. To me they mark you as a tryhard. A loser.
And if you need government help, an entirely new system, institutions, to make you into an alpha, dude, you’re a pussy.
I’m sorry, but if this is what Elon Musk considers an “Alpha” physique, I decline any and all propositions he might make, except the one where he goes to Mars alone, and never comes back. đ
https://x.com/theliamnissan/status/1830803554337996902
@Gavin:
I find it comforting that the people who champion white supremacy or tech-bro supremacy undermine their case by their very existence.
BTW, among primates, alpha males make a lot of noise and throw their feces around.
In that sense, Xlon 0.0 et. al. qualify.
@Jay L Gischer: The other part of this is Musk is probably pretty good at math (if you ignore the thickness of the concrete on one of his launchpads). And whatever people’s thoughts are about what ideas he borrowed/stole, the fact is that he got them implemented. He’s successful at something, but in his mind that makes him think that he’s great at everything. Just like Ben Carson, Donald Trump, ad infinitum. But it’s pretty damn obvious that none of these guys should be anywhere near government or philosophy.
My second thought was simply to provide the first definition of republic as provided by the online Oxford Languages that the Google linked me to: “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.” This is fairly accurate to how I’ve always thought of it – fairly democratic, but with a layer of representatives between the people and the development of laws/rules.
I may be wrong about this but I was under the impression that the understanding of a “Republic” at the time government was being formed as basically a government of a group of some type of parliament with no king or maybe just no king.
Having said that, in any case all the founders were clear that the election of representatives and president were to be resolved by some kind of majoritarian process at the federal level because we know that most states use direct democracy in some cases in the case of voter initiatives.
We are not a democracy, we are a Federal Democratic Constitutional Republic if you want to get down to brass tacks. You could reduce it down to a Text four letter Acronym …. an FDCR
Federal because it’s exclusive to the federal level, Democratic because we use majoritarian elections to pick leaders, Constitutional because individual rights are outlined in a constitution, and Republic because there is a group of people not one (unless we reelect Trump).
Poster child for the dangers of self-medication.
@Rick DeMent:
The founders wrote a clause into the Constitution forbidding the granting of “titles of nobility.” So no hereditary aristocracy by intent and design.
It makes as much sense to argue that the winner of a paint ball contest is the most fit to rule.
@charontwo: Article VI, Sec 4 also “guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”–meaning no kings and no aristocracy.
Shorter Elon: might makes right.
The attempt to give this a scientific basis is incredibly funny.
A republic of high status males would be a good thing – for high status males. Which is, of course, why Musk favors it. It is, inconveniently, what the Founders, all high status males, thought they were setting up. Unfortunately for them, once you recklessly throw around words like, “All men are created equal” (written by a slave owner) and, “No taxation without representation” (part of of the merchant class’s bitch against crown restrictions) and, “consent of the governed” (most of whom couldn’t vote) and, “We the people” (as preamble to a Constitution written in secrecy by high status males) the Little People are tempted to insist.
Interestingly, Autism Capital is apparently a crypto-boosting account…
The post he found interesting describes this as âthe Reich effect.â Searching for that online, one of the first links is a HuffPo huffle saying âThe account that shared the original post described its baseless theory as “the Reich effect,” apparently referring to staunch Musk critic and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich â who was born with a genetic disorder that affects bone growth and is thus only 4 feet, 11 inches tall.â
Other articles suggest something about Germany.
I think we could do worse than a Robert Reich Reich.
Bodybuilders on the spectrum are the new white landowners!
Do trans men have high or low T? Itâs higher than they would have if they didnât take testosterone, but I donât know whether that is higher or lower than the average man.
Musk may be accidentally signaling an interest in Trans Man Totalitarianism. Interesting.
Iâll file this away with the Robert Reich Reich as new forms of government that I had not considered.
As in Third Reich?
Was that a deliberate joke that Elmo just missed, I wonder?
Or unintentional, which would just make it even funnier.
@Steven L. Taylor:
In the standard American usage, perhaps.
Historically, many republics (I strongly suspect most, but am too lazy to do the sums) have had hereditary aristocracies of one sort or another. Defining “aristocracy” rather narrowly as inherited titles or status positions with legal privileges.
Maybe it’s William Reich?
Lol.
Cue up Hawkwind: Orgone Accumulator!
I recommend volume up to max. đ
@Michael Reynolds:
I think I’ve mentioned this before: In addition to various ordinary servicemen, staff bods, and special ops folks, who are not quite in the same category, I’ve encountered a few actual military combat leadership types of the WW2 vintage.
Generally speaking, they don’t swagger, don’t strut, don’t boast.
They don’t need to; they just have a certain affect about them.
Calm confidence based on genuine competence and self-mastery, is perhaps the best way I can define it.
Totally unlike “Tate-bro” mode of “alpha” masculinity.
By that definition of leadership, someone covered in testosterone patches would be … the winner? President? Weird?
So, if a High-T male bro-dude Alpha is the “leader”, then why do 2.6 billion on this planet believe in Christianity? From what I hear that dude was single, and would not get in a fight to save his life.
Why is the right SO weird?
@Liberal Capitalist:
Patches?
Hell no. Xlon will surely set up a company that will do testicular augmentation, and call it Textes. Donated or lab grown testes can be attached to any point in the body’s biggest organ: the skin. Can’t you picture Xlon with a dozen testicles sewn to his arms?
I’d ask one of the AI image generators to do something like that, but I wouldn’t want to give them permanent chip damage.
In something like 2008 or so, a friend dug out the blog of some guy spouting all this authoritarian nonsense and posted it in a worried tone. I thought it was nonsense at the time. What American would endorse this? It’s blatantly anti-democratic, would would give that the time of day?
I guess they showed me.
@Gustopher:
Interesting. When I searched for the entire phrase âalso known as the Reich effectâ, I got this as my top hit
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-enabling-act
Havenât read the whole thing yet, but Key Fact 2 (complicit judges) is definitely in place.
About this post and the Weave post, I think I’ve said before in matters Orange Weirdo and his weird enablers, that it’s hard to do reductio ad absurdum when they open up with absurdum on steroids.
@JohnSF: Fair point.
@Liberal Capitalist:
An excellent point.
This is fun to see while going through my current reading material, which is Losurdo’s “Democracy vs. Bonapartism” and is taking me on a fun tour around various luminaries of the revolutionary age and how they were all asshats who really hated universal suffrage and searched high and low for excuses to disenfranchise people.
I don’t know if it’s better or worse that the sentiment isn’t new.
I saw somewhere that the original image came from 4Chan, so genius level work from the get go
@Jax: be careful what you say or he will challenge you to a cage match at your house and then not show up