A tale of two vibe shifts

Right in time for the next 250 years

Can you feel it? There’s a vibe shift afoot, and it spans across the American left-liberal coalition. Self-righteous bloviation and performative nihilism are out. Community care and collective joy are in. I am always beating this drum, but it is not just me now. The Atlantic believes, and would also like to coin a term. Jacobin’s all in, and they’re hoping other socialists hop on board. Vox can’t help but notice that something’s in the air. Counter Punch, vehemently disagrees with Vox’s framing, but in doing so argues that there’s something even more radical and beautiful at play. Amanda Litman feels it. So too, Anne Helen Petersen. And also, presumably, my two current favorite cultural bellwethers, the two gentlemen who don’t know each other handing out free baklava at the Knicks parade.

Petersen asked me about all this, when she interviewed me yesterday for Culture Study. Do I feel it too? Of course I do. Very much so. I even threw out some historic precedents to make the case. "Would you like to hear about Western New York in the 1830s?” I asked, and somehow she was up for it.

I realize that it is both audacious and unscientific to issue a declaration on these matters, but where would we be without audacious and unscientific declarations? “I’m in love!” “This pain can’t last forever.” There’s always next year.” Those too are statements of faith.

And anyway, there is evidence, perhaps circumstantial, but growing. It’s not just that a large U.S. city wth a joy-spreading socialist mayor had an ebullient basketball parade and then elected even more smiling socialists. It’s not just that the defining story of the World Cup has been about good times, man, especially of the grassroots intercultural variety. It’s that people really are grasping— especially in the wake of this winter in Minneapolis— that building care infrastructure with our neighbors isn’t just a pleasant pastime, but an essential and urgent political building block.

Obviously, there’s a difference between applauding green shoots of hope and declaring premature victory. Fascism did not disappear last year merely because Zohran’s campaign was powered by scavenger hunts and post-canvassing happy hours. Institutional racism did not dissipate into a cloud of dust because the residents of Lawrence, Kansas have been nice to Algerian soccer players. Times are rough, and even I concede that it’ll take more than just potlucks to cleanse the world’s million wounds.

But there’s something in the air, and it’s notably not despair. The left, particularly here in America, has every reason to collapse into apathy and sourness. We have so many structural cards stacked against us. And also, isn’t that the rub on us? That we’re humorless scolds whose primary pastime is telling everybody in our vicinity that they’re doing it wrong.

But instead, we’re back to bread and roses. And not just in the abstract. We are baking fresh bread together and delivering roses to each other’s doorsteps. Perhaps not as much as we need to (if you are lonely or hungry and nobody is visiting, then we have work to do), but sparks are being lit.

This turn, it should be noted, is not about clinging to the kind of false hope that ignores all the tragedies of our moment. We live in a world of death and despair, both in the ways of all rigged, hierarchical societies, and in ways specific to MAGA’s barbarous anti-logic. We are cultivating joy not in spite of an awareness of current conditions, but precisely because of it. Prefigurative politics is back, baby. Spread the word.

But that’s only one half of the equation. Since I am now in the business of wild declarations, here’s another one: We are actually in a moment of two vibe shifts at once, with the left and the right are moving in increasingly disparate energetic directions.

When I say there is a vibe shift in American conservatism, it is from garden variety bad to world historically putrid. The right has always been embittered and exclusionary, but recently it has slouched past Bethlehem and straight off a cliff. Here’s a partial scene report.

-Last fall, Charlie Kirk died. What followed was a sweaty attempt, on the part of the entire conservative apparatus, to both make him a martyr and terrorize the rest of us into supplication. It didn’t work. Instead, the brief arena-sized declaration of conservative unity quickly descended into a battle royale between various heirs to his throne, individuals whose ideologies range from garden variety bigotry to actual Naziism. This is not surprising, of course, because that’s what happens when a political movement has no organizing principle other than spite and power lust.

-The current regime’s primary attempt to consolidate power after 2024’s putative electoral mandate was a shock and awe immigration enforcement campaign. After immensely cruel displays of force in Chicago, Minneapolis and other major cities, the effort failed to rally Americans to their side, largely because while we are far from a perfect populace, we still bristle at images of state agents locking up five year olds and murdering protestors.

-Trump and Netanyahu started a war, which has been both awful in the way of all wars, and uniquely stupid in the way of wars led by two vainglorious strongmen with limited understandings of cause and effect. Pete Hegseth was also prominently involved, which dramatically increased the overall level of red-faced rants about warfighters. We did not win that war, even in the eyes of those who believe any wars are winnable.

-The President of the United States, a man obsessed with self-aggrandizing artifice, attempted to turn the reflecting pool in Washington DC an unnatural shade of blue. Instead, it is a goopy algal green and now the regime is arresting bystanders who come too close.

-It’s not just that Trump’s birthday celebration/UFC fight in the Rose Garden was garish and bizarre. It’s that nobody in attendance— at what was purportedly an entertainment event— could even feign having a good time. Everything was too expensive and nothing was presented with care because the UFC, like Trump, holds its own fans in contempt. At the end of the night one of the fighters made a vile circa-2017 Michelle Obama joke, because that’s what it means for comedy to be legal again.

-Trump sure does seem to fall asleep a lot these days, a difficult look for a supposed strongman.

-J.D. Vance just published a book about how being born again as a Christian cured him of ambition, which is why he desperately needs to be the most powerful man in the world .

-Elon Musk has more money than God now but clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he keeps on inciting race riots.

Modern conservatism is sleepy and embittered and tearing itself apart. It is a movement of petulant hall monitors who want to fire you for talking ill of Charlie Kirk and arrest you for pointing at their moldering reflective pool. It might ship you off to war, and then grow bored with the enterprise a few days later.

This was always how this current moment in American conservatism was going to end, with both a whimper and a scream, because while reactionary populism is always sold as a people’s movement, its core ethos is a deep and abiding hatred for people. You can’t welcome your neighbors around the table if you surround it with barb wire and nobody has money for food.

Again, this doesn’t mean that MAGA is dead, nor that the left is guaranteed to take the reins. What is true, however, is that our country— a profoundly imperfect place whose best moments have always come from its most loving residents— is turning 250. Many commemorations of that anniversary (either excoriative or celebratory) have focused on litigating how well we’ve done up to this point. For the right, there’s an aggrieved, defensive pride. For the left, it’s an honest critique, but of the kind that could lead us to also stop trusting our potential to ever do better.

But if we shift the question to not be about the last 250 years but the next, then we have a choice. Will the next page in American history be written by those of us who love or hate other people?

We could really muck this up. Or, put more gracefully, we might struggle to climb this current social change mountain, because the status quo has all the money and power and if history is a guide, those forces will cling to current hierarchies with all their might. They’re going to be so nasty, you all. Nasty and cruel, in way that will require us to get far better at protecting each other. But they’ve chosen their path, which means we need to commit to our own.

As we speak, one movement is tilting towards care and the other is churlishly hurtling into a reactionary abyss. They control the institutions, but we have the momentum. And that may not be enough to dramatically change society in the short term, but it’s more than enough to build our ranks, especially thanks to unforced errors on the right.

Don’t believe me? Pretend that you had no preexisting ideological bent. Whose movement seems like a better time— the one with the potlucks and parties in the street, or the one that hates everybody and looks like J.D. Vance?

It’s time to push those vibes further. More care. More fun. Doors swung even wider. Bread and roses and art and music and everybody finding the place that makes them light up the most. Every invite helps. Every welcome mat begets another. Every celebration makes it a little easier to believe.

End notes:

1. A very good way to grow more hopeful about this moment is to organize a fifty state relay of inspiring community gatherings. Fortunately, another way to grow more hopeful is to take part in that relay— perhaps as an event attendee, but especially as a host. The application deadline for a whole bunch of states (IA, KS, MO, AK, OK, TX and LA) is June 30th. Applying isn’t hard and, if I’m being honest, neither is hosting. It is fun, though. You should do it! And even if you don’t, you should check out our website and get inspired as new event reports from our past hosts keep rolling in.

2. Also, if you’re in the Salt Lake City area and a trans movie night seems like it’s up your alley, that’s our Utah event! And it’s coming up soon— July 5th. Details here.

3. As I mentioned over at Culture Study (great interview, by the way), while the Interdependence Relay is supported by a very kind grant, as of right now I have not received any salary from my full time job putting on that relay (so as to free up funds for my colleague and stipends for our hosts). There may come a time in the future where that changes, but right now I’m able to put on a national network of events that prove the promise and potential of community because of my income from this newsletter. Which is great, except that it’s harder (for a bunch of reasons) to earn an income from a newsletter than it was even a year ago. What’ll make the difference? Literally a few more of you reading these little messages at the end of my essays and saying “hey, I could help! I really enjoyed that last piece and want to see this work continue!” Thanks!

4. It was also very nice to have one of my favorite pieces of all time reprinted by the terrific Katherine Goldstein at The Double Shift (a great newsletter).

5. I have many favorite songs that are essentially faith-filled declarations about how

   political tides are about to change because we’re building something special but as much as I am not one for celebrating mass drownings, my favorite remains “When the Ship Comes In” by Dylan. Too bad he ended up being too cool for political organizing. The guy could write a good movement song when he wanted to.