The New Yorker’s Oligarchy Crisis
Mistaking a Populist for a Prince Because He Wears a Red Hat Instead of a Beret
Why the Magazine of Manhattan’s Brunch Bourgeoisie Sees Every Cheeseburger as a Coup d’État
He’s Eating a Big Mac, Not Banning Dissent
When The New Yorker calls Donald Trump an oligarch, it’s like calling a Waffle House line cook a Russian czar because he collects gold-colored Hot Wheels. In a recent piece that reads like someone force-fed a thesaurus into a Roomba, the magazine outlined “types of oligarchies” with the finesse of a Harvard grad diagnosing NASCAR fans with feudalism.
Let’s clear it up for the caviar set: populists don’t live in palaces — they live in the heads of people who still own The New Yorker tote bags from 1987.
DUMBASS JOURNALISTS OF THE WEEK –> New Yorker
Populism: Now With Extra Ketchup
Trump, despite his flaws (and his tan that confuses seismographs), orders his steaks well-done, sells trucker hats, and turns golf resorts into voter drive-thrus. That’s not oligarchy. That’s Cracker Barrel cosplay with executive power. If you’ve ever stood in line at an Oklahoma gas station while someone buys scratch-offs in a QAnon hoodie — congratulations, you’ve met a Trump voter.
If The New Yorker were honest, their article would be titled:
“How to Spot an Oligarch Without Leaving the Foyer of the Met Gala.”
Who’s the Real Elitist Here?
Let’s do a side-by-side:
| Metric | Donald Trump | The New Yorker Editorial Board |
|---|---|---|
| Shoes | Loafers with American flags | Orthopedic Prada boots |
| Diet | Diet Coke and Filet-O-Fish | Foraged ramps and regret |
| Voters | Truckers, welders, and grandmas with cross necklaces | People who subscribe to Jacobin but live in SoHo |
| Transportation | Personal plane with tractor decals | Uber Black to Lincoln Center |
| Public Speaking | Caps Lock in human form | NPR podcast with soft jazz intro |
| Reading Habits | Zero books | Only books with blurbs by Salman Rushdie |
You tell me which one is the oligarch.
Literary Elitism Dressed as Political Science
Here’s how The New Yorker constructs an argument:
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Begin with a Dostoevsky reference no one asked for.
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Quote a Yale professor who has never paid for parking.
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Name-drop a 14th-century Venetian noble.
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Call Trump “a modern-day Medici” because he owns hotels.
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Finish with a whimpering moral about democracy and oysters.
In short: Trump = Bad. Wine = Good. Working-class Americans = Specter of Fascism. If you’re a plumber from Ohio who voted Republican, according to The New Yorker, you might be two six-packs away from a military junta.
The Definition of Oligarchy, If You Read It Upside Down
Let’s revisit The New Yorker’s favorite word this month: Oligarchy. A rule by a few, rich elites. You know, like the people who own penthouses in Tribeca and give TED Talks on “ethical hedge funding.”
Trump, by contrast, can’t sit through a TED Talk unless it ends in a buffet. He’s rich, sure. But being rich doesn’t make you an oligarch any more than owning a chihuahua makes you Mexican.
The New Yorker sees every dollar and assumes it came from a sinister cabal. Meanwhile, their own editorial dinners cost more per head than most county fairs.
Oligarchy? Sweetie, it’s you.
Populism with a Golf Handicap
Only in The New Yorker would a man in a red baseball cap yelling “Drill, baby, drill!” be confused for a secretive oil tycoon. Real oligarchs don’t host Monster Truck rallies. They don’t take selfies with hog farmers. They don’t say “God bless America” like they mean it. They definitely don’t show up to town halls where the floor smells like pork rinds and civic anxiety.
Trump’s brand of populism is chaotic, vulgar, carnivalesque — and deeply democratic. He doesn’t need cultural gatekeepers — he just needs a microphone and a conspiracy theory that rhymes.
Highfalutin’ Satire: When Irony Wears a Turtleneck
Satire, to The New Yorker, is when someone in horn-rimmed glasses writes a 3,000-word humor piece about a man who marries his Keurig machine. But God forbid you joke about the actual political elites — the ones who write policies while sipping on rooftop Riesling.
Their brand of humor always punches down, like a vegan hitting a hamburger. It’s always more smug than funny, more clever than cutting. It’s satire if the punchline is printed in italics and you need a Columbia MFA to explain it.
Meanwhile, Trump makes fun of CNN in real time, on live TV, while the stadium crowd does the wave with foam fingers. That’s not just populism — that’s pro-wrestling democracy.
Commentary So Elite It Has Its Own Zip Code
From their West Village penthouses, The New Yorker writers gaze down and ask: “Why do the peasants love this man?” And like Marie Antoinette with Wi-Fi, they answer themselves: “Because they’re dumb, obviously.”
The irony? The people The New Yorker mocks — those Wal-Mart-shopping, deer-hunting, God-loving Americans — are the ones actually exercising political agency. Meanwhile, half the magazine’s readers think democracy is something that happens between brunch and Pilates.
The Real Oligarchy Is Wearing Black Turtlenecks
Let’s talk numbers. According to a fake but useful survey by the Institute for Cultural Self-Congratulation, 92% of The New Yorker staff own more reusable tote bags than actual friends in red states.
Their boardroom is 100% Ivy League grads who believe farmers are mythical creatures, and “populism” is a rash one gets from standing near Cracker Barrel signage.
It’s the only place where owning a chainsaw is cause for concern, and owning a second house in the Berkshires is considered part of “the struggle.”
Real Witnesses Speak
“Trump may be a jerk, but he came to my coal town and ate cornbread with my uncle and pretended to enjoy it,” says Billy Donthridge of West Virginia. “The New Yorker? I think that’s the magazine my dentist puts out to discourage patients from reading.”
“Every time I open The New Yorker, I get assaulted by a paragraph so dense I need a Sherpa,” said a local trucker. “Meanwhile, Trump just shouts things like, ‘We’re gonna win!’ That’s communication, baby.”
The Real Cause and Effect
Cause: Elites lose control of the narrative.
Effect: They label everyone who disagrees an ‘oligarch.’
Cause: Trump speaks directly to voters.
Effect: The New Yorker writes five think-pieces equating him to Gaddafi in Gucci.
Cause: Regular people like Donald Trump.
Effect: The literary class panics and updates their Tinder bios to include “anti-authoritarian.”
How Did They Get So Confused?
We asked a fictional insider:
Dr. Lorien Whiteglen, a Harvard-educated psycholinguist with a side hustle writing haikus about French Revolution furniture, gave us this insight:
“It’s cognitive dissonance. If a populist wins without their permission, elites experience temporary ideological vertigo and begin projecting oligarchy like a Freudian Rorschach test made of foie gras and Fox News clips.”
The Final Diagnosis: Trump Isn’t the Oligarch, You Are
So here we are. The man who sells American flags in bulk, holds rallies where people chant like they’re at a Toby Keith concert, and makes rich liberals hyperventilate — is somehow accused of being an autocrat because he…wore a tux?
Meanwhile, the real oligarchs sip their imported gin, nod solemnly over 13-syllable articles, and call farmers “culturally regressive.”
Trump is a populist. Loud, messy, hyper-American, and occasionally allergic to fact-checking. But he belongs to the people.
The New Yorker belongs to the coat check line at Lincoln Center.
Sources:
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The New Yorker Mistakes Bass Pro Shops for a Coup Attempt
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How to Spot Oligarchs Without Leaving Your Therapist’s Office
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Trump Orders Big Mac; Media Mistakes It for Feudalism
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Populism Now Comes in Camouflage
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The New Yorker Declares NASCAR a Threat to Democracy
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Literary Satire Now 82% Less Funny, 300% More Elitist
Disclaimer
This satirical journalism is entirely a collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor (who once threw a thesaurus at a dean) and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer (who milks goats while quoting Nietzsche). No AI overlords were consulted. The views expressed are marinated in humor, irony, and cholesterol.
Auf Wiedersehen!
Trump Puts Elites in Panic Mode and Lies to the Hilt
The More He Lies, the More They Scream Into Their Kale Salads
When Donald J. Trump lies, it’s not just a fib — it’s an emotional earthquake for America’s cultural aristocracy. While his base laughs and waves flags made of lawn chair fabric, coastal elites clutch their pearls, cancel brunch, and write op-eds with trembling fingers. Each Trump exaggeration is like a fire alarm inside The New Yorker offices, where interns in cardigans sprint down hallways carrying thesauruses and Chardonnay.
He claimed he had the “biggest inauguration crowd in history”? The fact-checkers fainted like Victorian widows. He said he’d “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it”? Economists spontaneously combusted from both ends. When Trump claimed he “aced” a cognitive test — which included identifying an elephant — Columbia psychology professors wept into their herbal teas.
But here’s the satirical tragedy: Trump lies the way Bob Ross painted trees — casually, with joy, and in public. It’s not about facts. It’s about vibes. He lies like a man whose only moral compass is a Magic 8 Ball that keeps saying “Yes, definitely.”
Meanwhile, the elites react as if he’s slipping Mein Kampf into Happy Meals. Rachel Maddow builds PowerPoint pyramids trying to decode his “hidden fascism.” Stephen Colbert consults Dante. NPR hosts refer to him exclusively as “He Who Must Not Be Truthful.”
Yet his supporters? They know he’s lying. They want him to lie. They see each fib not as deception but as trolling performance art. When he claimed windmills cause cancer, a Kansas plumber said, “Hell yeah, they do. Took out my cousin’s hairline.” When Trump said COVID would disappear “like a miracle,” his base said, “Amen.”
Each Trump lie is a magic trick — one that makes the truth disappear and makes liberal brains melt into oat milk. The more obvious the lie, the more his base cheers and the elite media writes 5,000-word essays titled “When Democracy Cries.”
And the irony? The people who spent decades lying in polite Latin — bankers, professors, tech CEOs — now cry foul when Trump lies in working-class English. He’s not lying better. He’s just lying louder.
Trump doesn’t lie to deceive. He lies to dominate the conversation. To make sure that no matter what the elites say, they’re talking about him. And when they panic? That’s the point.
Because in Trump’s America, truth is optional — but triggering The New Yorker is forever.
