Vulpine (pronounced vuhl-pahyn or vuhl-pin)
Etymology of words with examples of use illustrated by Lindsay Lohan, cars of the Cold War era, comrade Stalin, crooked Hillary Clinton et al.
Monday, August 11, 2025
Vulpine
Friday, August 8, 2025
Carnival
Carnival (pronounced kahr-nuh-vuhl)
(1) A
traveling amusement show, having sideshows, rides etc.
(2) Any
merrymaking, revelry, or festival, as a program of sports or entertainment.
(3) In
the Christian ecclesiastical calendar, the season immediately preceding Lent,
often observed with merrymaking; Shrovetide.
(4) A
festive occasion or period marked by merrymaking, processions etc and
historically much associated with Roman Catholic countries in the period just
before Lent.
(5) A
sports meeting.
(6) In
literary theory (as the noun carnivalization & verb carnivalize), to subvert
(orthodox assumptions or literary styles) through humour and chaos.
(7) In sociology,
a context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given
temporary license (an extension of the use in literary theory).
(8) Figuratively,
a gaudily chaotic situation.
(9) As a
modifier (often as “carnival atmosphere?”) a festive atmosphere.
1540–1550:
From the Middle French carnaval, from
the Italian carnevale, from the Old
Italian carnelevare (taking meat away),
from older Italian forms such as the Milanese carnelevale or Old Pisan carnelevare
(to remove meat (literally “raising flesh”)) the construct built from the Latin
caro (flesh (originally “a piece of
flesh”)) from the primitive Indo-European root sker- (to cut) + levare (lighten,
raise, remove), from the primitive Indo-European root legwh- (not heavy, having little weight). Etymologists are divided on the original
source of the term used by the Church, the alternatives being (1) carnem levare (to put away flesh), (2) carnem levāmen (meat dismissal), (3) carnuālia (meat-based country feast) and
(4) carrus nāvālis (boat wagon;
float). What all agree upon is the ecclesiastical
use would have come from one of the forms related to “meat” and the folk
etymology favors the Medieval Latin carne
vale (flesh, farewell!). Spreading
from the use in Christian feast days, by at least the 1590s it was used in the sense
of “feasting or revelry in general” while the meaning “a circus or amusement
fair” appears to be a 1920s adoption in US English. The synonyms can include festival, celebration,
festivity, fiesta, jubilee, gala, fete, fête, fest, fair, funfair, exhibit, exhibition,
revelry, merriment, rejoicing, jamboree, merrymaking, mardi gras, jollity, revel,
jollification, exposition and show.
Which is chosen will be dependent on region, context, history etc and
(other than in ecclesiastical use) rules mostly don’t exist but there seem to
be a convention that a “sporting carnival” is a less formal event (ie
non-championship or lower level competitions).
The alternative spelling carnaval is obsolete. Carnival & carnivalization are nouns, carnivalize,
carnivalizing & carnivalized are verbs, and carnivalic, carnivalistic, carnivalesque,
carnivallike, precarnival & noncarnival are adjectives; the noun plural is carnivals.
Originally,
a carnival was a feast observed by Christians before the Lenten fast began and
wasn’t a prelude to a sort of proto-veganism.
It was a part of one of religion’s many dietary rules, one which
required Christians to abstain from meat during Lent (particularly on Fridays
and during certain fast days), carnival the last occasion on which meat was permissible
before Easter. The
Christian practice of abstaining from meat evolved as part of a broader
theology of penance, self-denial, and imitation of Christ’s suffering, the rationale
combining biblical precedent, symbolic associations and early ascetic
traditions, the core of the concept Christ’s 40 days of fasting in the
wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11, Luke 4:1–13).
Theologically, the argument was that for one’s eternal soul to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven, a price to be paid was Imitatio
Christi (earthly participation in Christ’s suffering). Much the early church valued suffering (for
the congregants if not the clergy and nobility) and the notion remains an
essential theme in some Christian traditions which can be summed up in the
helpful advice: “For everything you do,
there’s a price to be paid.”
Lindsay Lohan arriving at the Electric Daisy Carnival (left) and detail of the accessory worn on her right thigh (right), Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, June 2010. The knee-high boots were not only stylish but also served to conceal the court-mandated SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor) bracelet.
The allowance
of fish during Lent had both pragmatic and theological origins, its place in
the Christian diet a brew of symbolism, biblical precedent and cultural
context. As a legal and linguistic
point, in the Greco-Roman scheme of things fish was not thought “flesh meat”
which was understood as coming from warm-blooded land animals and birds. Fish, cold-blooded and aquatic, obviously were
different and belonged to a separate category, one which Christianity inherited
and an implication of the distinction was seafood being viewed as “everyday
food” rather than an indulgent luxury.
This was a thing also of economics (and thus social class), the eating
of fish much associated with the poorer coastal dwellers whereas meat was more
often seen on urban tables. Notably,
there was also in this a technological imperative: in the pre-refrigeration age,
in hot climates, often it wasn’t possible safely to transport seafood
inland. The Biblical symbolism included
Christ feeding the multitudes with a few “loaves and fishes” (Matthew 14:13–21), several
of the apostles were fishermen who Christ called upon to be “fishers of men”
(Mark 1:16–18) and the ichthys (fish symbol) was adopted as early Christian
emblem for Christ Himself. Collectively,
this made fish an acceptably modest food for a penitential season. All that might have been thought
justification enough but, typically, Medieval scholars couldn’t resist a bit of
gloss and the Italian Dominican friar, philosopher & theologian Saint
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) decided abstinence aimed to “curb the concupiscence of the flesh”
and, because meat generated more “bodily heat” and pleasure than fish, it was
forbidden while fish was not. That
wasn’t wholly speculative and reflected the humoral theory from Antiquity, still an orthodoxy during the Middle Ages: fish
seen as lighter, cooler, and less sensual.
Traditionally, there was also a Lenten prohibition of
dairy products and eggs, each proscription with its own historical and symbolic
logic and the basis of Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) and Easter eggs (though not
the definitely un-Christian Easter bunny).
The strictness derived partly from Jewish precedents notably the vegetarian
edict in Daniel 10:2–3 and the idea of a “return to Edenic simplicity” where man would
eat only plants (Genesis 1:29) but also an aversion to links with sexuality and
fertility, eggs obviously connected with sexual reproduction and dairy with lactation. What this meant was early Christian
asceticism sought to curb bodily impulses and anything connected with fleshly
generation and (even if indirectly), thoughts of sex.
Historically,
a time of absolution when confessions were made in preparation for Lent,
Shrovetide described the three days immediately preceding Lent (Shrove Sunday,
Shrove Monday & Shrove Tuesday, preceding Ash Wednesday). The construct being shrove + -tide, the word was from the late Middle English shroftyde. Shrove was the simple past of shrive, from the
Middle English shryven, shriven & schrifen, from the Old English sċrīfan
(to decree, pass judgement, prescribe; (of a priest) to prescribe penance or
absolution), from the Proto-West Germanic skrīban,
from the late Proto-Germanic skrībaną,
a borrowing from the Latin scrībō
(write). The word may be compared with
the West Frisian skriuwe (to write), the
Low German schrieven (to write), the
Dutch schrijven (to write), the German
schreiben (to write), the Danish skrive (to write), the Swedish skriva (to write) and the Icelandic skrifa (to write). The –tide suffix was from the Middle English –tide & -tyde, from the Old English -tīd
(in compounds), from tīd (point
or portion of time, due time, period, season; feast-day, canonical hour).
Carnival Adventure and Carnival Encounter off Australia’s eastern Queensland coast.
Although dubbed “floating Petri dishes” because of the high number of food poisoning & norovirus cases, cruise ships remain popular, largely because, on the basis of cost-breakdown, they offer value-for-money packages few land-based operators can match. The infections are so numerous because (1) there are thousands of passengers & crew in a closed, crowded environment, (2) an extensive use of buffets and high-volume food service, (3) a frequent turnover of crew & passengers, (4) port visits to places with inconsistent sanitation, health & food safety standards and (5) sometimes delayed reporting and patient isolation.
However, although the popular conception of Medieval Western Christendom is of a dictatorial, priest-ridden culture, the Church was a political structure and it needed to be cognizant of practicalities and public opinion. Even dictatorships can maintain their authority only with public consent (or at least acquiescence) and in many places the Church recognized burdensome rules could be counter-productive, onerous dietary restrictions resented especially by the majority engaged for their living in hard, manual labor. Dispensations (formal exceptions) became common with bishops routinely relaxing the rules for the ill, those pregnant or nursing or workers performing physically demanding tasks. As is a common pattern when rules selectively are eased, a more permissive environment was by the late Middle Ages fairly generalized (other than for those who chose to live by to monastic standards).
The growth of dispensations
(especially in the form of “indulgences” which were a trigger for the Protestant
Reformation) was such it occurred to the bishops they’d created a commodity and
commodities can be sold. This happened
throughout Europe but, in France and Germany, the “system” became institutionalized,
the faithful even able to pay “butter money” for the privilege of eating the stuff
over Lent (a kind of inverted “fat tax”!) with the proceeds devoted to that
favourite capital works programme of bishops & cardinals: big
buildings. The sixteenth century tower
on Normandy’s Rouen Cathedral was nicknamed “Butter Tower” although the funds
collected from the “tax” covered only part of the cost; apparently even the
French didn’t eat enough butter. As
things turned out, rising prosperity and the population drifts towards
towns and cities meant consumption of meat and other animal products increased,
making restrictions harder to enforce and the Protestant reformers anyway rejected
mandatory fasting rules, damning them as man-made (“Popery!” the most offensive way
they could think to express that idea) rather than divine law. Seeing the writing nailed to the door, one of
the results of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) was that while the Church reaffirmed
fasting, eggs and dairy mostly were allowed and the ban on meat was restricted
to Fridays and certain fast days in the ecclesiastical calendar.
By the twentieth century, it was clear the Holy See was
fighting a losing battle and in February 1966, Paul VI (1897-1978; pope
1963-1978) promulgated Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini (best translated as “to be penitent”) making abstinence
from meat on Fridays optional outside Lent and retained only Ash Wednesday and
Good Friday as obligatory fast days for Catholics. It was a retreat very much in the corrosive
spirit of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962-1965) and an indication
the Church was descending to a kind of “mix & match” operation, people able
to choose the bits they liked, discarding or ignoring anything tiresome or too
onerous. In truth, plenty of
priests had been known on Fridays to sprinkle a few drops of holy water on their
steak and declare “In the name of our Lord,
you are now fish”.
That was fine for priests but for the faithful, dispensation was often the
“luck of clerical draw”. At a time in the late 1940s when there was a
shortage of good quality fish in south-east Australia, Sir Norman Gilroy
(1896–1977; Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney 1940-1971, appointed cardinal
1946) granted dispensation but the stern Dr Daniel Mannix (1864–1963; Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne 1917-1963) refused so when two politicians
from New South Wales (Ben Chifley (1885–1951; prime minister of Australia
1945-1949) and Fred Daly (1912–1995)) arrived in the parliamentary dining room
for dinner, Chifley’s order was: “steaks for me and Daly, fish for the Mannix men.”
In the
broad, a carnival was an occasion, event or season of revels, merrymaking,
feasting and entertainments (the Spanish fiestas a classic example) although
they could assume a political dimension, some carnivals staged to be symbolic
of the disruption and subversion of authority.
The idea was a “turning upside down of the established hierarchical order”
and names used included “the Feast of
Fools”, “the Abbot of Misrule”
and “the Boy Bishop”. With a nod to this tradition, in literary
theory, the concept of “carnivalization” was introduced by the Russian
philosopher & literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), the word
appearing first in the chapter From the
Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse (written in 1940) which appeared in his
book The Dialogic Imagination: chronotope
and heteroglossia (1975). What carnivalization
described was the penetration or incorporation of carnival into everyday life and
its “shaping” effect on language and literature.
The Socratic dialogues (most associated with
the writing of the Greek philosophers Xenophon (circa 430–355 BC) and Plato (circa 427-348 BC)) are
regarded as early examples of a kind of carnivalization in that what appeared to be
orthodox “logic” was “stood on its head” and shown to be illogical although Menippean satire (named after the third-century-BC
Greek Cynic Menippus) is in the extent of its irreverence closer to the modern
understanding which finds expression in personal satire, burlesque and parody. Bakhtin’s theory suggested the element of
carnival in literature is subversive in that it seeks to disrupts authority and
introduce alternatives: a deliberate affront to the canonical thoughts of Renaissance
culture.
He
expanded on the theme in his book Problems
of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929) by contrasting the novels of Leo Tolstoy
(1828-1910) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881).
Tolstoy’s fiction he classified as a type of “monologic” in which all is subject to the author's
controlling purpose and hand, whereas for Dostoevsky the text is “dialogic”
or “polyphonic”
with an array of different characters expressing a variety of independent views
(not “controlled”
the author) in order to represent the author's viewpoint. Thus deconstructed, Bakhtin defined these
views as “not
only objects of the author's word, but subjects of their own directly significant
word as well” and thus vested with their own dynamic, being a liberating
influence which, as it were, “conceptualizes” reality, lending freedom
to the individual character and subverting the type of “monologic” discourse
characteristic of many nineteenth century authors (typified by Tolstoy).
Dostoevsky’s story Bobok (1873) is cited as an exemplar of
carnival. It has characters with unusual
freedom to speak because, being dead, they’re wholly disencumbered of natural
laws, able to say what they wish and speak truth for fun. However, Bakhtin did acknowledge this still
is literature and didn’t claim a text could be an abstraction uncontrolled by
the author (although such things certainly could be emulated): Dostoevsky (his
hero) remained in control of his material because the author is the directing
agent. So, given subversion,
literary and otherwise, clearly has a history dating back doubtlessly as many
millennia as required to find an orthodoxy to subvert, why was the concept of carnivalization
deemed a necessary addition to literary theory?
It went to the form of things, carnivalization able especially to subvert because it tended to be presented in ways
less obviously threatening than might be typical of polemics or actual violence.
Friday, July 11, 2025
Dixiecrat
Dixiecrat (pronounced dik-see-krat)
(1) In US
political history, a member of a faction of southern Democrats stressing
states' rights and opposed to the civil rights programs of the Democratic
Party, especially a southern Democrat who left the party in 1948 to support
candidates of the States' Rights Democratic Party.
(2) In
historic US use, a member of the US Democratic Party from the southern states (especially
one of the former territories of the Confederacy), holding socially
conservative views, supporting racial segregation and the continued
entrenchment of a white hegemony.
1948: A portmanteau word of US origin, the construct being Dixie + (Demo)crat. Wholly unrelated to other meanings, Dixie (also as Dixieland) in this context is a reference to the southern states of the United States, especially those formerly part of the Confederacy. The origin is contested, the most supported theory being it’s derived from the Mason-Dixon Line, a historic (if not entirely accurate) delineation between the "free" North and "slave-owning" South. Another idea is it was picked up from any of several songs with this name, especially the minstrel song Dixie (1859) by (northerner) Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), popular as a Confederate war song although most etymologists hold this confuses cause and effect, the word long pre-dating any of the known compositions. There’s also a suggested link to the nineteenth-century nickname of New Orleans, from the dixie, a Confederate-era ten-dollar bill on which was printed the French dix (ten) but again, it came later. The –crat suffix was from the Ancient Greek κράτος (krátos) (power, might), as used in words of Ancient Greek origin such as democrat and aristocrat; the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kret (hard). Dixiecrat is a noun and Dixiecratic is an adjective; the noun plural is Dixiecrats. The noun Dixiecratocracy (also as dixieocracy) was a humorous coining speculating about the nature of a Dixiecrat-run government; it was built on the model of kleptocracy, plutocracy, meritocracy, gerontocracy etc.
Universally called Dixiecrats, the States' Rights Democratic Party was formed in 1948 as a dissident breakaway from the Democratic Party. Its core platform was permanently to secure the rights of states to legislate and enforce racial segregation and exclude the federal government from intervening in these matters. Politically and culturally, it was a continuation of the disputes and compromises which emerged in the aftermath of the US Civil War almost a century earlier. The Dixiecrats took control of the party machine in several southern states and contested the elections of 1948 with South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as their presidential nominee but enjoyed little support outside the deep South and by 1952 most had returned to the Democratic Party. However, in the following decades, they achieved a much greater influence as a southern faction than ever was achieved as a separatist party. The shift in the south towards support for the Republican Party dates from this time and by the 1980s, the Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South had faded and many of the Dixiecrats had joined the Republicans.
In the 1948 presidential election, the Dixiecrats didn’t enjoy the success polls had predicted (although that was the year of the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline and the polls got much wrong), carrying only four states, all south of the Mason-Dixon line and not even the antics of one “faithless elector” (one selected as an elector for the Democratic ticket who instead cast his vote for Dixiecrats) was sufficient to add Tennessee to the four (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) won. Nor did they in other states gain sufficient support to act as “spoilers” as Ross Perot (1930–2019) in 1992 & 1996 and Ralph Nadar (b 1934) in 2000 achieved, the “narrowing of margins” in specific instances being of no immediate electoral consequence in the US system. With that, the Dixiecrats (in the sense of the structure of the States' Rights Democratic Party) in a sense vanished but as an idea they remained for decades a potent force within the Democratic Party and their history is an illustration of why the often-quoted dictum by historian Professor Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970): “The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die” needs a little nuance. What the Dixiecrats did after 1948 was not die but instead undergo a kind of “resurrection without crucifixion”, emerging to “march through the institutions” of the Democratic Party, existing as its southern faction.
That role was for generations politically significant and example of why the “third party” experience in the US historically wasn’t directly comparable with political behaviour elsewhere in the English-speaking world where “party discipline” tended to be “tight” with votes on the floors of parliaments almost always following party lines. Until recent years (and this is something the “Trump phenomenon” radically has at least temporarily almost institutionalized), there was often only loose party discipline applied within the duopoly, Democrats and Republicans sometimes voting together on certain issues because the politicians were practical people who wished to be re-elected and understood what Tip O'Neill (1912–1994; (Democrat) speaker of the US Representatives 1977-1987) meant when he said “All politics is local”. Structurally, that meant “third parties” can operate in the US and achieve stuff (for good or evil) as the Dixiecrats and later the Republican’s Tea Party Movement proved; it just that they do it as factions within the duopoly and that’s not unique, the Australian National Party (a re-branding of the old Country Party) really a regional pressure group of political horse traders disguised as a political party.
In recent years, what has changed in the US is the Republicans and Democrats have become the captive organizations of a tiny number of dedicated political operatives pursuing either their own ideological agendas or (more typically), those providing the funding. The practical implication of that is the elections which now most matter are the primaries (where candidates for the election proper are selected) and because primary contests are voted on by a relative handful, outcomes are easier to influence and control that in general elections where there are millions to nudge. Party discipline has thus become tighter than can often be seen on the floor of the House of Commons in the UK, not because the ideological commitments of politicians within parties have coalesced but because they’re now terrified of being “primaried” if they vote against the party line. Re-election is a powerful inducement because the money politicians make during their careers is many, many times what might be expected given their notional earnings from their salary and entitlements. There are few easier ways to get rich, thus the incentive to “toe the party line”. This behavioural change, mapped onto something which structurally remains unchanged, is one of the many factors which have produced a country now apparently as polarized as ever it has been. The nature of that polarization is sometimes misunderstood because of the proliferation of “red state, blue state” maps of the US which make the contrast between the “corrupting coastlines” and “flyover states” seem so stark but each state is of course a shade of purple (some darker, some lighter) but because of the way the two parties now operate, politics as it is practiced tends to represent the extreme, radical elements which now control the machines. So while in the last twenty-odd years there’s been much spoken about “the 1%” in the sense of the tiny number of people who own or control so much, it’s political scientists and historians who much fret over the less conspicuous “1%” able to maintain effective control of the two parties, something of even greater significance because the state has put in place some structural impediments to challenging the two-party political duopoly.
In the US, the state does not (in a strict legal or constitutional sense of the word) “own” the Republican or Democratic Parties because they are “private” organizations protected by the constitution’s First Amendment (freedom of association). However, over the years, something biologists would recognize as “symbiosis” has evolved as the state and the parties (willingly and sometimes enthusiastically) have become entangled to the extent a structural analysis would recognize the parties as quasi-public although not quite at the status familiar elsewhere as quangos (quasi autonomous non-government organizations). Despite being “private concerns”, the parties routinely conduct state-regulated primaries to select candidates and in many cases these are funded by tax revenue and administered by state electoral instrumentalities. Beyond that, it needs to be remembered that to speak of a “US national election” (as one might of a “UK general election”) is misleading because as a legal construct such events are really 50 elections run by each state with electoral laws not wholly aligned (thus the famous (or dreaded, depending on one’s position) Iowa caucuses) and in many states, it’s state law which regulates who can voted in party primaries, some permitting “open” primaries in which any lawfully enrolled voter is allowed to cast a ballot while others run “closed” events, restricting participation to registered members of the relevant party. What that means is in some places a citizen can vote in each party’s primary. That done, those who prevail in a primary further are advantaged because many states have laws setting parameters governing who may appear on a ballot paper and most of them provide an easier path for the Republican and Democratic Party candidates by virtue of having granted both “major party” status. As objects, the two parties, uniquely, are embedded in the electoral apparatus and the interaction of ballot access laws, debate rules and campaign finance rules mean the two function as state-sponsored actors; while not quite structurally duopolistic, they operate in a protected environment with the electoral equivalent of “high tariff barriers”.
Given all that, Elon Musk’s (b 1971) recent announcement he was planning to launch a “third party” (actually the US has many political parties, the “third party” tag used as a synecdoche for “not one of the majors”) might seem “courageous” and surprised many who thought the experience of his recent foray into political life might have persuaded him pursuits like EVs (electric vehicles), digging tunnels (he deserves praise for naming that SpaceX spin-off: “The Boring Company”) and travelling to Mars were more fulfilling. However, Mr Musk believes the core of the country’s problems lie in the way its public finances are now run on the basis of the “Dick Cheney (born 1941; US vice president 2001-2009) doctrine: “Deficits don’t matter” and having concluded neither of the major parties are prepared to change the paradigm which he believes is leading the US to a fiscal implosion, a third party is the only obvious vehicle. In Western politics, ever since shades of “socialism” and “capitalism” defined the democratic narrative, the idea of a “third way” has been a lure for theorists and practitioners with many interpretations of what is meant but all have in common what Mr Musk seems to be suggesting: finding the middle ground and offering it to those currently voting for one or other of the majors only because “your extremists are worse than our extremists”. Between extremes there’s much scope for positioning (which will be variable between “social” & “economic” issues) and, given his libertarian instincts, it seems predicable Mr Musk’s economic vision will be “centre-right” rather than “centre-left” but presumably he’ll flesh out the details as his venture evolves.
Mr Musk can’t be accused of creating a “third party” because he wants to become POTUS (president of the US). As a naturalized US citizen, Mr Musk is ineligible because Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the constitution restricts the office to those who are a “natural born Citizen” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5). Because the US Supreme Court (USSC) has never handed down a definitive ruling on the matter it’s not absolutely certain what that phrase means but the consensus among legal scholars is it refers to someone who was at birth a US citizen. That need not necessitate being born on the soil of the US or its territories because US citizens often are born in other countries (especially to those on military or diplomatic duty) and even in international waters; indeed, there would appear no constitutional impediment to someone born in outer space (or, under current constitutional interpretation, on Mars) becoming POTUS provided they were at the time of birth a US citizen. Nor does it seem an interpretation of the word “natural” could be used to exclude a US citizen conceived through the use of some sort of “technology” such as IVF (In Vitro Fertilization).
As a naturalized US citizen, Elon Musk can’t become POTUS so his new party (tentatively called the “America” Party) will have to nominate someone else and the constitution stipulates (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5): “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States”. The age requirement is unambiguous and in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), Justice Joseph Story (1779–1845; associate justice of the Supreme Court of the USSC 1812-1845) explained the residence requirement was “…not an absolute inhabitancy within the United States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy as includes a permanent domicil in the United States.” That means Mr Musk can consider nominating Lindsay Lohan for president. She’d apparently flirted with the idea of running in 2020 but at that point would have been a few months too young; on all grounds she’ll be eligible for selection in 2028 and many would be attracted to the idea of Lindsay Lohan having her own nuclear weapons.
Whether or not it’s “courageous” (or even “heroic”), to build a new third party in the US time will tell but certainly it’s ambitious but Mr Musk is also a realist and may not be planning to have a presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states or even contest every seat both houses of Congress. As he’ll have observed in a number of countries, “third parties” need neither parliamentary majorities nor executive office to achieve decisive influence over policy, some with comparatively little electoral support able to achieve “balance of power” status in legislatures provided those votes are clustered in the right places. Additionally, because the polarized electorate has delivered such close results in the House & Senate, the math suggests a balance of power may be attainable with fewer seats than historically would have been demanded and under the US system of fixed terms, an administration cannot simply declare such a congress “unworkable” and all another election (a common tactic in the Westminster system); it must, for at least two years, work with what the people have elected, even if that includes an obstreperous third party. Still, the challenges will be onerous, even before the “dirty tricks” departments of the major parties start searching for skeletons in the closets of third party candidates (in a rare example of bipartisanship the Republicans and Democrats will probably do a bit of intelligence-sharing on that project) and the history is not encouraging.
It was the Republican party which in the 1850s was the last “third party” to make the transition to become a “major” and not since 1996 has such a candidate in a presidential contest secured more than 5% of the national vote. In the Electoral College, not since 1968 has a third-party candidate carried any states and 1912 was the last time a third-party nominee finished second (and 1912 was a bit of a “special case” in which the circumstances were unusually propitious for challenges to the majors). Still, with (1) the polls recording a general disillusionment with the major parties and institutions of state and (2) Mr Musk’s wealth able to buy much advertising and “other forms” of influence, prospects for a third party may be untypically bright in 2028 elections and 2030 mid-terms. There are no more elections for Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) and it seems underestimated even now just what an aberration he is in the political cycle. While his use of techniques and tactics from other fields truly has since 2016 been disruptive, what he has done is unlikely to be revolutionary because it is all so dependent on his presence and hands on the levers of power. When he leaves office, without the “dread and awe” the implied threat of his displeasure evokes, business may return to something closer what we still imagine “normal” to be.