People Feel Negative Because Donald Trump Wants It That Way
People Feel Negative Because Donald Trump Wants It That Way
He’s a big source of the bad vibes, and if you give in to dread, you're playing into his hands
The liberal political world is abuzz about vibes.
What are vibes? Are the vibes bad? Can they be controlled? Shifted? For the most part, the vibes discourse has centered around perceptions of the economy, posited as an explanation of why the relationship between economic sentiment and economic fundamentals has broken down. But the bad vibes aren’t limited to perceptions of the economy.
The broader vibes are almost as bad now as when inflation peaked over a year ago, hovering close to where they were in mid-2020, when Donald Trump’s COVID-19 failures had killed tens of thousands of Americans and confined tens of millions of people to their homes for months. Something significant is clearly at work on the national psyche if people feel no more optimistic now than they did in the depths of the pandemic.
But even that observation is enough to divide left of center. Many feel the whole concept of vibes is fatally imprecise; others think it’s the most important one in politics right now. Everyone is probably, to some extent, tired of hearing the word.
In the interest of bringing the conversation back down to Earth, and of reaching those who want a clearer sense of how non-material things can affect people’s relationship with the material world, I’m going to posit a simple hypothesis that can at least partially explain why people feel so bad that isn’t primarily material.
The hypothesis is: Donald Trump is still a very important public figure; for different reasons this upsets people in ways that bleed into other aspects of our lives; and that is his design.