Jun.09

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This Week in Freudenfreude: The Sultan of Slowjamastan

Today's posting has been pretty heavy, so we're going to conclude with something as light and fluffy as cotton candy. We give you Randy "R Dub!" Williams, who by night is a San Diego DJ, and by day is the Sultan of Slowjamastan.

Williams hobby, when he's not spinning records (well, these days, playing mp4s) is traveling the world. By the time the pandemic started, he'd made it to every nation recognized by the U.N. except for one (Turkmenistan, which he has since checked off the list). Disappointed that there were no new countries to visit, Williams decided to create his own. Thus was born the micronation of The Sovereign Nation of The People's Republic of Slowjamastan, which occupies a plot of land in the desert north of San Diego. Since he bought the land and founded the country, Williams thought it only fair that he should be named its sultan.

Slowjamastan is a dictatorship, except on those days that it's a republic. It has a plaque, a big road sign, and a (pay) telephone. The nation issues passports, prints currency (dubles) and has a national flag and anthem. Slowjamastan has already accepted 500 "citizens," who are forbidden from wearing Crocs, mumbling rap lyrics, or putting their feet on the dashboards of their cars. Another 4,500 people are on the waiting list for "citizenship." The Sultan's main policy goal, right now, is to open up an all-you-can-eat Mongolian BBQ restaurant in Slowjamastan. He would also like formal diplomatic recognition, but thus far his e-mails and Twitter DMs to Joe Biden have gone unanswered.

The whole "I'm creating my own country" shtick is actually an old bit, of course. Indeed, Williams was inspired by His Excellency President Kevin Baugh, who founded the Republic of Molossia in Nevada back in 2018. Other examples:

• Liberland: Founded in 2015, on an unclaimed piece of land between Serbia and Croatia, as a self-proclaimed "Libertarian paradise." If it holds your interest, you can apply for citizenship here; you have to swear that you value private property, that you're not a communist/Nazi/other extremist, and that you have no criminal record.
  
  
• Sealand: This is one of the most famous faux nations. It was established in 1967 on an abandoned World War II-era gun platform, located in international waters off the coast of England. The founder was a British army veteran named Paddy Roy Bates, who granted himself the title of "prince." Today it's ruled by his son, Prince Michael. Formally known as The Principality of Sealand, it has its own chapel, prison, national flag, stamps and passports. Should you ever want to have a noble tile, Sealand sells them here for a very reasonable price.
  
  
• Aerican Empire: This one was founded by a 5-year-old Canadian. (Uh, oh.) It doesn't actually have any territory, though it one day aspires to have a reach equal to that of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets. The official motto of the Aerican Empire is "Mundi est ridiculum; Custodiunt illud quod modo," which is translated as "It's a silly old world; let's keep it that way."
  
  
• Talossa: Founded in 1979 by then-14-year-old Robert Ben Madison, the nation's original territory was his bedroom in a Milwaukee home. Indeed, "Talossa" means "inside the house" in Finnish. It now claims territory across the state of Wisconsin. Unlike most micronations, Talossa has its own language.
  
  
• Kingdom of North Sudan: There is a South Sudan, but no North Sudan. Virginia farmer Jeremiah Heaton decided to rectify that, laying claim to an unincorporated piece of land in Africa, primarily so he could make his daughter Emily a princess. Disney was going to make a movie about the whole thing (which would theoretically have made Emily Heaton the second Disney princess to be a real person, following Pocahontas). However, people on Twitter said that such a film would have colonialist overtones, and so the project appears to have been canceled.

Why is this item apropos for a politics-focused site? Well, to a greater or lesser extent, these various micronations are all examples of performance art, all of them making the point that national borders in particular, and the various other lines drawn between "tribes" in general, are arbitrary constructs that should not always be taken so seriously. Given thar tribalism may be the single biggest problem in American politics today, it's worth noting the efforts of someone who's trying to poke a small hole in that balloon.

Have a good weekend, all! Or, failing that, a better weekend than the people around Donald Trump are going to have. (Z)

The four states where Robertson won the GOP delegates are Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, and Nevada. Obviously his strength was in states where delegates could be won on the strength of relatively few votes, either due to a small overall population or due to the use of a caucus system. That's a setup that works for a candidate with a small but devoted band of supporters.