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Sorry, we meant “Trump Era”

By Ed Goldman

Now that a new political era is in full swing, some terms may pop up with which we’re not entirely familiar (such as “Constitution” and “due process” ). Consequently, we—and definitely not the royal “we”—have decided to present you with a homonymic dictionary to help you keep up. (By the way, “homonyms” are not whom our new Secretary of Defense, Pete “For-a-Good-Time-Call” Hegseth despises. He’s actually against having any Transitive Verbs in uniform.)

Annex: A term enjoying a current vogue as it pertains to what the U.S. would like to do to Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada. It can also refer to a person you used to be married to, especially if there have been two or more such persons (hence the article “an”—otherwise you’d only say “the” ex).

Autocracy—What we say a “motorhead” is.

CDC— What U.S. tourists hope to do when they visit the nation’s capital.

Current Events—What occur when you try to re-wire a circuit box with wet hands. Not to be confused with “currant events,” which can occur if you drop a jam jar because your hands are wet.

Euthanasia—A Boy Scout troop in China.

G7—What a little kid says when his grandfather asks him how old he’ll be on his next birthday and the kid thought his own grandfather would know. Also, something to do with the seven largest world economies.

Kim Jong Il—The broken-English answer to the question, “Why did Kim Jong die?”

Impeachment—A process used to make an American even more orange.

Lassez-faire—An economics minimalist government-intervention policy and what a famous dog has for dinner.

Monarch—A flood-proof male-only Jamaican boat.

NATO— The foot digit that always votes in the negative.

Noah—What the vague captain of the aforementioned boat said when asked if he thought they maybe should have brought some female passengers. In later conversations, he boldly switched his answer to “Maybe, uh…”

Oligarch—When shouted two times and followed once by the word “oxen” and three times by the word “free,” what Russian kids say to let their playmates know they can give up their hide-and-seek places.

Oligarchy—What an oligarch uses to open his door. (Meanwhile, and at no extra charge, Gorky Park is where oligarchs take their children to play on equipment that includes the dzhungle  dzhim (aka the Minsky bars), the defenestration playhouse and the always popular teeter-topple (a seesaw for the leaders of vulnerable republics)). 

Ombudsman—The vendor of mantra headphones for people who like to meditate on-the-go.

Tariff—With “the,” whom Bob Marley claimed to have shot in a 1973 recording. “No Deputy” refers to whom Bob Marley insisted he didn’t shoot in the very same song. But since that makes the phrase a double negative (“didn’t shoot no”), criminologists and strict grammarians agree it’s likely that Bob did, in fact, shoot the tragedy-prone deputy. For extra credit, see “Marley & Me,” an unauthorized tell-all about the late reggae pioneer, allegedly co-written by Owen Wilson and his tragedy-prone Labrador retriever.

TikTok—What epidemiologists engage in with each other at conferences.

Unilateralist—The firefighter who brings only one climbing device to a conflagration.