The Mump Oligarchy -- A Glossary

Ten Words for the Wise

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." Supercedes: trumpy.

This warning might seem just to skim the surface, or to be too much about personalities, or to lean too much on language, or to be too playful. These substack essays enable me to be brief and suggestive. For those who wish to go deeper on the issues of oligarchy, technofascism, sadopopulism, and the politics of catastrophe, there are the six books I wrote in the last decade, each of which in some sense anticipates where we are now.

My book On Freedom is a hopeful set of recommendations about a better future based upon a philosophical account of liberty. A Musk-Trump regime does figure in the book, however, as the negative scenario. Musk-style “libertarianism” and its link to fascism is a theme. Technofascism and oligarchy are discussed conceptually there and at length. I also wrote a philosophical essay called “And we dream as electric sheep” that goes into even more technical depths, published as a book in German, but available here with notes and here without. The origins of technofascist oligarchy was the subject of my earlier book, The Road to Unfreedom. For my thoughts on health and democracy, there is Our Malady. As ever, On Tyranny offers some proposals for those who wish to oppose all this. And for those who wish to consider the past, Black Earth provides a historical argument about the politics of catastrophe and its architects, past and future.