Unhinged no more.

Every time Pee Wee Herman entered his Fun House, he started the day by turning on his robot, Conky 2000, and asking for the “secret word.” After receiving the word on a piece of paper, Mr. Herman would hold it up for the audience to see and then instruct us to “scream real loud” anytime anyone said the word out loud.

Now, I don’t have a Conky 2000, and Wordle typically satisfies my word-of-the-day fix, but lately, I keep seeing, reading, and hearing a word that makes me wonder if maybe I missed the secret word: Unhinged. I swear I read at least one headline a day, sometimes two, describing something Trump has done as “unhinged.” This morning’s sighting was in The New Republic’s email: Trump’s Unhinged Rant Announcing Matt Gaetz as AG Signals Chaos Ahead. After the word “weird” lost its punch, President Biden, Vice President Harris, news pundits, and other leaders started labeling the Crusty Craven Cheeto as “unhinged.” When the guy stood on stage for an hour and swayed to the worst high school reunion playlist ever, everyone, even life long, deep red Republicans called him “unhinged.”

Have you screamed real loud yet? Go ahead.

As the United States, the American Way, the American Dream, and America are unraveling, we have to revise our lexicon because the one we’re using now is meaningless. It’s not because we’re using the wrong words—unhinged is the perfect word to describe the absolute clusterfuck unfolding minute-by-minute before the world’s eyes. It’s just that the application of the word has lost its meaning.

I want to introduce you to another word if you haven’t already seen it pop up in your social feeds or group chats: kakistocracy. It describes “government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people in a state or country.” Hitler’s Nazi Germany is the poster child of kakistocracy. Other examples include Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, North Korea under Kim Jong-un, Nicolás Maduro’s administration of Venezuela, and from ancient times, Roman Emperor Caligula. Time will tell if Putin makes the list; I’d put him there, but apparently, the jury is still deliberating.

In a kakistocracy, what was normal is no more. What was once deemed unacceptable, corrupt, vindictive, oppressive, exploitative, self-serving, chaotic, disruptive, incompetent, inhumane, immoral, and unhinged is no longer shocking. We may still use these words to label the decisions and actions of a kakistocracy’s leaders, but to me, they’ve lost their power.

Now, we can’t just abandon words like unhinged, corrupt, or chaotic—they’re part of our vocabulary for a reason. But what we’re witnessing right now is beyond what these words were meant to capture. The language we’re using feels small compared to the reality in front of us. We need to adapt our vocabulary, to find words that don’t merely describe what’s happening but hit harder, demand more, and don’t let anyone off the hook.

It’s time to go beyond describing and start calling things out as what they really are—betrayal, public harm, dereliction of duty, unconstitutional, even treason. We need words that call us to act: intolerable, unforgivable, beyond repair. Words that don’t just identify the problem but remind us that we can’t afford to stay silent or passive. We are in the middle of a war, people and we’re long past the point of unhinged.