Trump, his tacky tech bros & their tyranny – I thought they were supposed to be ‘geniuses’? 

 (can it get more high school ‘clique’ than this?) 

No song lyric has ever, ironically, been on a repeated loop in my mind with as much intensity as “the history book on the shelf/ Is always repeating itself” from Waterloo by Abba. I well aware that it’s catchy but the point here is that Waterloo was initially released in 1974. The Handmaid’s Tale was released in 1985. 1984 was released in 1949. The Hunger Games was released in 2008. A new Hunger Games novel will be released in 2025. And the list goes on. 

A pattern to consider here is that most dystopian writers write with a purpose, a warning, a prediction or are just drawing from the world around them. And like the song lyric suggests, history is always repeating itself and these writers keep having reasons to write such novels over this span of time because our world is a spinning axis of dystopian nightmares. 

And the pinnacle of dystopia is how Trump was inaugurated on January 20th 2025 (feel free to squirm in your seat, or standing, or wherever you are, just squirm). And instead of his cabinet being the front row, it was a line of pathetic rich men. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg. Sindar Pichai. Shou Zi Chew.

Desperate and pathetic are words that spring to mind when I think of these men. And most unfortunately ‘rich’ which begs the question:

Why are unelected idiotic billionaires with a concerning amount of concentrated power at the front row of the inauguration? 

These men were not voted in, yet the power that is concentrated in their hands is immense and should instill some sort of warning or concern. Trump was somehow democratically voted in, but I think that people tend to forget how huge dictators and extremists were also voted in. (Are we forgetting Hitler?) 

And Biden’s final speech gave me chills as he warned the country about this, suggesting how this presidential era was entering America into an ‘oligarchy’. He highlighted how this is threatening democracy and basic human rights, which is evident through Trump’s initial actions of: removing the reproductive rights website, wanting to remove birthright citizenship and the reversal of queer/trans legislation. He’s already managed to tackle and remove the rights of the people he hates the most. In a day. And he’s befriended similar psychos with bigoted perspectives. 

Which takes me to one of the most psychotic events to take place at the inauguration which was Elon Musk’s salute. He thanked the crowd and then proceeded to do the salute. Not just once, but twice, potentially because of the cheers and claps that erupted from the crowd. Some people came to his defense claiming it was a ‘Roman salute’ (with no evidence to back that up) but he experienced a lot of backlash for this fascist gesture. Regardless of what you believe his intention was (although bare in mind that if you claim this man is a ‘genius’ I’d assume he’s aware of what he’s doing?), this action propels further extremists and other people to believe they can get away with brewing such hate. And the fact that he was able to do this in front of so many people, at such a significant event is bizarre, concerning, disturbing and really emphasises how we’re all living in a dystopian novel. The very novels that they aim to ban. 

The world is burning both literally and figuratively and I look around, I read the news and my mind places the blame on the rich pathetic men who are projecting their inner insecurities and lack of love they’ve received onto the rest of us. Here’s a suggestion: get into therapy baby. You’re all rich enough to afford those £60+ private therapy sessions. Unlike some of the people you’re inflicting trauma upon. 

I understand how overwhelming it is to witness such hate being circulated so freely and to see the rise of an evident oligarchy  (I saw the phrase ‘broligarchy’ the other day) but in true spirit as someone who was raised admiring Katniss Everdeen, “If we burn, you burn with us.” 

Words By Momnah Shahnaz

Cover Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr