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Mumpocracy

In his newsletter today, Professor Timothy Snyder offers a new glossary of terms to use in the coming next few years:

1. Mump regime. Musk plus Trump. Mu…mp. The real centibillionaire and the fake rich person in the proper order.

2. Mump oligarchy. The regime is an oligarchy, rule by the wealthy few. Trump is the oligarchs’ spokesman. He might stay or go. The oligarchs will remain.

3. Mump as illness. Physical illness: we are made sick and scammed blind (think of RFK Jr and Ramaswamy). Mumps is one of the diseases that will return without vaccines. Mental illness: Musk’s idea of prosperity is that he hurts you and you thank him. See my work on sadopopulism.

4. In Mumptopia, Americans spend our time in front of screens, instructed whom to hate and worship by algorithms curated by immigrant software engineers. We die pointlessly young on an overheated Earth with the word “Mars” on our lips. The Mump mage performs a ritual rocket dance, leaping a few inches over our graves.

5. Mump not MAGA. The MAGA folks somehow did not realize that they were giving power to a an illegal immigrant South African centibillionaire. This is not their regime.

6. Mumpers. South Africans, Russians, and others close to power. Musk, Putin, Thiel, Sacks, Trump (today), Vance (tomorrow) and their closest circles.

7. Mumpery. Behavior typical of the Mump regime. Gaslighting, theft, scams, tax avoidance, disinformation, Putinism, dictator worship, threatening U.S. allies, submitting to U.S. enemies, persecuting Americans, suppressing speech with threats of violence and lawsuits, promoting pollution and global warming, ending public services.

8. Mumpets. Those who choose to submit to Musk. For example, senators who ignore their constitutional responsibilities and vote for Trump’s Cabinet nominees, whose buffoonery and fascism are meant to weaken the state so Musk can profit. Compare: puppet, pet.

9. To mumpify. To become a mumpet. Nouns can be formed from this verb. For example: “Senator Fetterman is pretty far along in his mumpification.” Or adjectives: “Yep, I’d say he’s mumpified by now.” Compare: zombify, zombification.

10. Mumpy, or mumpish. People influenced by the Mump regime, or actions that tend towards a mumpified world. “That’s mumpier than I would have expected.” “She’s gone all mumpy on me.” Supersedes: trumpy.

Works for me. I have been asking for suggestions on social media about what we might use other than the word “fascist” which I think sounds too old-fashioned, overused and academic. It’s perfect but I was thinking of something along the lines of “woke” which started out as Black vernacular that they appropriated to use as a sweeping pejorative for anything that smacks of progressivism and civil rights.

The best one I saw was “red-pilled” which is defined by Google AI as:

The term “red-pilled” is a political metaphor that originated from the 1999 film The Matrix. It’s used to describe someone who has become aware of what they believe to be political biases in society, and has developed an oppositional consciousness against those biases. 

In the film, the main character must choose between taking the red pill and accepting an illusory reality, or taking the blue pill and remaining ignorant. The term “red-pilled” has been adopted by a variety of groups, including men’s rights activists, conservative conspiracy theorists, and far-right and white supremacist groups. 

It seems to me that we should be able to make that into a pejorative along the lines of “woke” but it would take a massive effort on the part of the opposition. Since I am a nobody, I assume this will go nowhere. But I thought I’d throw it out there anyway.

However, Timothy Snyder is an icon and “mumps” may just be something that catches on.


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