A friend points out that this definition of "trans woman" in Merriam-Webster's would likely confuse readers (doubly true in light of MW's own definition of 'woman'). But this definition *wasn't written for* regular dictionary readers. It was written to appease activists.

2/ While not the most pressing example, this sums up how the collapse of institutional authority works. Institutions no longer even pretend to serve "the people" in some broadly conceived sense, but rather to show, to a much smaller subset of "the people," that they

3/ are on 'their' side. When the same public health orgs decry the dangers of anti-lockdown protests and then flip 180 to downplay the risks of very similar BLM protests, that's the collapse of institutional authority. When major media outlets cover "defund the police" favorably

4/ without even mentioning actual public-opinion polling on the issue, that's the collapse of institutional authority. Overall, it is a very dangerous thing, because you end up having basically no institutions you can trust to provide (to the extent human bias makes this

5/ possible) unvarnished information divorced from any one particular political agenda. Civic life becomes completely fuzzy and polarized. I hate watching this happen because I've always supported these institutions and viewed them as an important counterbalance.