New words for the new regime
The resistance will be neologized.
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We’re only three weeks in, and — like you, perhaps — I’ve already reached the I-can’t-even stage with Trump 2.0. The outrages are too numerous, and are coming too fast, for me to keep up. (I rely on Susan Glasser at the New Yorker to maintain the tally and provide some level-headed analysis.)
What I can do is examine how we’re talking about the outrageousness. Here, then, is the first installment of a lexicon of neologisms for this miserable new world. Thanks to my invisible pals on Bluesky and to James A., Laura P., and Andrew A. for their contributions in the Chat.
The Oval Office
Mad King. “Our Mad King has the highest disapproval of any President at this point in their Presidency, and concerns about his reckless economic policies are rising,” wrote
in Hopium Chronicles on February 11. The reference is to Britain’s King George III (1760–1820), whose derangement was the subject of a play and a movie.1 Rosenberg is not the first to call Donald J. Trump a “Mad King”; the epithet was already in circulation early in the first Trump administration. (See The Hill, May 21, 2017, which misspells principle; and Rolling Stone, December 9, 2019.) George III was, as I’m sure you know, “the mad king who lost America.”Gaz-a-Lago. In a press conference on February 4, Trump said the U.S. would “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into “a new Riviera.”2 On February 5, The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg was calling it the “Gaz-a-Lago” plan, a reference to Trump’s gaudy Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. (I’ve always favored Merde-a-Lago.) The Dallas News echoed “Gaz-a-Lago” and also tried out “Trumpsylvania.” The independent Jewish publication Forward chose the clumsier “Gaza-a-Lago.”
The unelected president
Muskocracy. “Is this democracy or Muskocracy?” wondered Stephen J. Lyons on ZNetwork. New Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (who represents my California district) “has had to adjust on the fly to a Washington consumed with disaster relief politics, rapid-fire executive orders, the unchecked power of the Muskocracy, a Republican trifecta of government control and the daily lurch of chaos,” wrote Joe Garofoli in the San Francisco Chronicle. And legal scholar Laurence Tribe made it a trifecta: “It’s a Muskocracy and not just a techno-monarchy that Elon is trying to foist on the United States of America. Government of, by, and for the Cyberbarons.” How times have changed: Just a few months ago we were calling it a kakistocracy.
Muskovite. A Muscovite is a resident of Moscow, which makes Muskovite a bitterly apt moniker for the Putin fans now running the show in Washington. “Some US officials had begun calling the young engineers the ‘Muskovites’ for their aggressive loyalty to the SpaceX owner,” reported Andrew Roth for the Guardian on February 5. (He continued: “But some USAid staff used another word: the ‘incels’.”) Economist
had nailed it a day earlier: “What if the Musk people — Muskovites? — try to muck with systems they don’t understand, believing that they’re super smart and can master everything with the help of a little AI? It’s not hard to imagine the whole federal payments system — including, by the way, servicing of federal debt — crashing.”Dogebags. Another name for Elon’s teen troops. (DOGE is the Department of Government Efficiency — although it isn’t an actual government department — headed by unstable gazillionaire Elon Musk, who was neither vetted nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate. “Doge” is a famous meme that became the name of a cryptocurrency.) Credit goes to Jon Favreau, co-host of the Pod Save America podcast: “On Thursday, a federal judge in D.C. ruled that the Treasury Department cannot provide access to any payment record or payment system of records to Elon’s Doge Bags. I’m calling them Doge Bags.” Pronounce it DOHJ-bag, with a wink to douchebag.
Teslamensch, kindercoup, Qbitler Youth, Coup Klux Klan. The splendid (and splendidly fake) “Papua New Guinea Courier” — a creation of
— found a place for all of these inventions in its February 5 “Letter from London.” A qbit is a quantum bit; the reference is to the tech bros, age 19 to 24, “who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project” (Wired, February 2).
Kindercoup — kinder is, of course, German for “children” and has nothing at all to do with kindness — has had some traction.
Shitler Youth. So many Nazi references! I saw this one on Jenny Rice’s Bluesky timeline.
Swasticar. Swastika + car = Tesla. This one may have originated in the U.K. — thanks, comrades! Newsweek reported it on January 30: “A U.K. group called Everyone Hates Elon is branding hundreds of Tesla vehicles in London with stickers saying “don't buy swasticars,” according to a Novara Media Instagram post.” Of course, a Tesla Cybertruck is still a wankpanzer.
Obeying in advance
Rainbow-hushing. From Emma Goldberg in the New York Times: “Companies that just one year ago celebrated Black History Month and stocked Pride products on their shelves are in a new phase — what some lawyers refer to as ‘rainbow-hushing,’ meaning dropping or quietly rebranding their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.” (Gift link. Hat tip: Michael F.) The term predates the current unpleasantness; AdWeek wrote about it in 2023, in an article headlined “Marketers Are Caught Between Rainbow-Hushing and LGBTQ+ Controversies.” Compare with rainbow-washing: deploying messages that are only superficially sympathetic to LGBTQ communities for whom the rainbow flag is a key symbol. (For “obeying in advance,” see
’s On Tyranny.)Remember JD Vance?
The nominal vice president? Yeah, this guy. Back in 2016 he wrote a memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his tough upbringing in Appalachia-adjacent Ohio. Later he converted to Catholicism, and lately he’s been demonstrating the blindered fervor of the recent convert — so much so that Pope Francis found it necessary to chide him this week in a sharply worded letter. Perhaps, writes
in , we should start talking about JD’s “Hell-Bully Energy.”Wikipedia: “In adapting the play to film, the director Nicholas Hytner changed the name from The Madness of George III to The Madness of King George for American audiences, to clarify George III’s royalty. A popular explanation developed that the change was made because there was a worry that American audiences would think it was a sequel and not go to see it, assuming they had missed ‘I’ and ‘II’. An interview revealed: ‘That’s not totally untrue,’ said Hytner, laughing. ‘But there was also the factor that it was felt necessary to get the word King into the title.’”
omg, and Paul Krugman today used the word "Muskenjugend", so great
I like the Rasputin idea, too, except this time Rasputin has his own troops and news outlet. I'm fed up with all the hoo-hah and I'm trying to think about other things. Waiting for someone to get arrested.