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Donald Trump and the Vibes of Destiny
Trump critics need to understand the signs of the times, but we don’t want to.
There’s a scene in the 1996 movie My Fellow Americans where two former Presidents one Republican and the other a Democrat and played by Jack Lemmon and James Garner, are on the run. They meet up with a family the seems to be on vacation. The two presidents never got along very well and tended to bicker a lot. In the back seat of this family’s station wagon, they start to bicker again while disrespecting the family that took them in. It was then the wife spoke up. We find out that the family is not on vacation, but that they are experiencing homelessness and living in their car. In a low simmering anger, she talks about how their policies put them in this desperate situation. She throws them out of the car.
For the last few years, pundits have used the term “vibes” to describe the political campaign. At some level, it has bothered me because I’ve always believed that politics was about principles, and issues, not feelings. I think politics can be about principles and the like, but I’m starting to wonder if how people feel about the present moment, the vibes, can also play a role.
Donald Trump seems unstoppable and in many ways he shouldn’t. Not after January 6. Not after all those indictments. And yet, here we are. So, why haven’t anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats been able to prevent him from winning a second term?
I now think it all comes down to vibes, or to put it in the words of New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, “destiny.”
Douthat’s latest column on Trump as the Man of Destiny offers some insight to why Trump seems so lucky. In the words of Hegel, Trump is an avatar of populism. “He’s the archetype of a global phenomenon precisely because he offers something less coherent and predictable, more inchoate and vibes-based,” Douthat writes.
According to Douthat, Trump is more keyed into the media of today: he knows how to use social media, reality TV, and cable news to his advantage.
Douthat adds he is the dark side of the American dream: “not the Lincolnian statesman but the hustler, the mountebank, the self-promoter, the tabloid celebrity — at a time when American power…
