BROWN-STAGE CAPITALISM: Not quite dead but long past deodorant. It's the rot economy with a venture capital pitch deck; enshittification scaled to empire. A stage where platforms, once gleaming temples of disruption now resemble medieval latrines: taxing, toxic & teeming with digital parasites.
Doctorow dissects how tech giants, having reached End-Stage capitalism, no longer innovate but ingest their own users like ouroboros in heat.
#HeterodoxDictionary #BrownStageCapitalism
ELECTORAL COLLEGE: democracy’s escape hatch where 270 anonymous strangers rescue the nation from the burden of choosing for itself.
SAUDIFICATION (n.) the modern drift towards theocratic feudalism; where citizens kneel as subjects, rights shrink into privileges, & elites rule by sanctified decree instead of law.
#HeterodoxDictionary
#Enshittification
#Saudification
Usage: "The Saudification of America is under way." -- Karen Attiah, the Guardian (Nov 18 2025)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/18/saudi-arabia-america-jamal-khashoggi
From: @raganwald
https://social.bau-ha.us/@raganwald/115601412358032674
SOLITUDE (n.) The slow realization that silence, once chosen for freedom, has begun answering back.
FASCISM (n.) A political religion worshiping the State in uniform. Characterized by nostalgia for a mythical past, fear of difference & an erotic fixation on flags. Publicly denounces elites while privately merging with them. Promises order through obedience, glory through war & unity through silence. Usually begins with parades & ends with prisons.
CRITIQUE (n): the mirror polished by thought, which offends not by distortion but by accuracy. The dull mistake it for an assault; the vain, for a betrayal. True critique wounds only those who secretly agree with it.
CRITIQUE: the mirror that enrages those who mistake their reflection for an enemy.
GERONTOCRACY (n.) Government by the embalmed; a political system where the nation's pulse is weak because its leaders' are weaker. The art of mistaking longevity for wisdom & dementia for tradition.
AKA the Ruth Bader Ginsburg syndrome.
SARCHASM: ( n ) the gap between sharp sarcasm & the blunt minds it bounces off.
The silence that proves mockery has better timing than truth.
DICTATOR CHIC: The aesthetic lovechild of tyranny & tackiness according to Liberace’s decorator. Gilded toilets, marble everything, oversized portraits, & a pathological fear of subtlety.
#DictatorChic
#heterodoxdictionary
H/T @g3om4c
From: @jalefkowit
https://vmst.io/@jalefkowit/114836327565878420
It's not the absolute worst thing about the current era, but it's still disheartening that it is all just so fucking tacky https://sherwood.news/power/the-oval-office-is-getting-even-more-shiny-and-gold/ #USPol
🇪🇷Götterdämmerung