The Vibe Shift And The Hollow Victory of The Heterodox Moment

May you live in interesting times

There once was a legend of a great and powerful king that emerged in the 12th century, captivating the imaginations of European rulers and church leaders alike with tales of a mighty Christian monarch reigning over a distant and fabulously wealthy kingdom to the East. The legend only grew when a letter, allegedly written by this mysterious king, arrived in 1165 at the Byzantine court and later circulated throughout Europe. In this letter, the king described a land overflowing with milk and honey: rivers filled with gems, palaces of gold, and a kingdom where justice and Christian virtue reigned supreme. He boasted of exotic creatures, miraculous relics, and a people untouched by sin, painting his kingdom as a utopia far beyond the reach of Islamic powers. Though no such king was ever found, his name persisted in myth and legend—the legend of Prester John.

As the years went by, the legend of Prester John only grew in Christendom. In the 13th century, the legend of Prester John grew even more potent as Christendom, locked in conflict with the Muslim world, projected their hopes onto this mysterious Christian monarch. Rumors spread that a great army from the East had crushed Muslim forces in battle, rekindling the belief that Prester John had finally revealed himself to aid his fellow Christians. Crusaders and European rulers eagerly speculated that his kingdom was drawing closer, ready to join their cause. Yet the truth was far more ominous—this was no lost Christian king, but rather Genghis Khan, whose name may have been distorted or mistranslated into the legend. Far from a savior, the Mongol leader would soon turn his forces toward Europe, leaving devastation in his wake.

Originally, that’s why I chose Prester John as my pseudonymous nom de plume when I started writing on Substack a year ago. At the time, like many people I knew, I was very frustrated with what the American left had become. For much of my political life, I had considered myself part of the left, but time after time, I saw the issues that were important to me continually either lose, compromised or subverted and sublimated into existing power structures that neutered the very causes they stood for. So, like Genghis Khan attacking the Muslim world, I planned my attack on what I saw as the aspects of the left that I think had lost their way. I wasn’t exactly on the right, but I wasn’t exactly on the left anymore, either. But I still believed the left could be changed and reformed, cutting away the excess and corruption and be used to enact positive change from within.

Pictured above: leftists trying to “change the party from within”

As such, I adopted the label “heterodox”. Perhaps somewhat of a cringe term that’s the “not like the other girls” of political labels, but we all have to start somewhere, right? Heterodox was a big tent that included everyone from disaffected leftists to right wingers with more unorthodox views or identities for the traditional right. In some ways, this was always going to be an alliance of convenience with figures who had little in common other than a dissatisfaction with the status quo and a desire for fundamental structural changes. So, while “heterodox” is a bit of a Rorschach test at best and meaningless marketing term at worst, it was still easier to call myself that than “Someone who was left leaning, but the kind of left leaning that comes from a labor democrat background who wants to end unnecessary wars, protect American labor, have sensible immigration policies that are fair to both native born Americans and immigrants, wants to hold the lizard people billionaires who crash the economy every 10-20 years accountable, have a healthcare system that isn’t such a disaster and generally has a distaste for “woke”, but not in the sense that I don’t want black people and gays in Star Wars movies, but in the sense I hate how legitimate civil rights movements have been hollowed out and sublimated by vampires who use identity politics to climb the corporate ladder and shield themselves and the systems of power they benefit from with surface level identity politics that generally hurt the very groups they supposedly advocate for and make everything worse” – but that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it?

In any case, only a year ago, what I and many saw as the status quo – call it what you want, “the system”, “the post-war consensus”, “the cathedral”, “capitalism”, “globalism”, it really doesn’t matter—the powers that be felt like they were unassailable. The system consisting of what is allowed in the overton window politically and culturally seemed to be set in stone. But over the last year, something was changing. Gradually at first, with a few isolated incidents that would have seemed unthinkable a few years before. The failed boycott of the video game Hogwarts: Legacy that would go on to sell 30 million copies. Athletes who a few years ago would have been kneeling for Black Lives Matter now doing the “Trump Dance” in the endzone. Mainstream artists who made pop or hip-hop like Beyonce or Post Malone singing country tinged hits. The backlash against the Bud Lite add featuring transgender media influencer Dylan Mulvany being walked back and Bud Light doing what amounted to an apology tour. Donald Trump, who was literally called the second coming of Hitler by the mainstream media making the rounds on the biggest podcasts in the world to largely positive reactions. Something was happening in culture. This is a phenomenon that has come to be known as “the vibe shift”.

The vibe shift feels abrupt in some ways, but like the bursting of a dam in others. Politically and culturally, there was a change that began slowly at first but now seems to be in full swing. The catalyst (or perhaps harbinger) was the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024. In some ways, it feels inevitable. Of all the political opinions one could have, one of the few that seems to be the least popular is “things were basically fine until 2015”. In fact, one of the few things the left and right seem to agree on is that things are bad and need to fundamentally change. Of course, they disagree fundamentally on what needs to change, but there is unity that the status quo is no longer working. The only party that seems to be toeing that line was the democrats, who had a seemingly insurmountable task of running on the message of “things are fine, and we did nothing wrong, but we will also be making a complete break from the past and making fundamental changes if elected”. I won’t relitigate the 2024 elections since I don’t think there can be an accurate postmortem of that historic loss for at least a decade, but personally, I ultimately put the loss of Kamala Harris on that contradiction. The myth neoliberalism was selling was no longer one that anyone was buying.

Do you feel the joy?

“The Vibe Shift” is one that feels very abrupt in other ways. With the reelection of Donald Trump with him winning both electoral college by a landslide and even the popular vote, it would appear that Mr. Trump and the republican party have a popular mandate from the people. Trump even made gains in almost every demographic—including the youth vote and the highest percentage of non-white minority votes for a republican since 2004. The only demographic Trump lost votes with, interestingly enough, was white people over 60. Not long ago, this would have been unthinkable. The shift goes deeper, in a stark contrast to 2016, Mr. Trump is entering office with world leaders and business magnates lining up to meet with him at Mar-A-Lago like he’s a king of old holding court.

This is something that gave me pause. Of course, there will always be sycophants who will go wherever the wind blows. What took me aback was business magnates like Jeff Bezos, Mark Andreessen, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg lining up to kiss the ring and sing his praises. People who, merely years before, called Trump a fascist and a threat to democracy itself now waxed poetic about how great of a man he is and how he will usher in a new “golden age” for America. Mark Zuckerberg in particular, who gave millions to the Biden campaign in 2020 went to the Trump inauguration and also went on to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast to tell the world how he’s totally sorry for all the censorship but he’s a cool bro now. Subsequently, the Zucc made a video recently where he informed the world that the old censorship regime on Facebook was over, the “fact checkers” were fired and Meta would be implementing a “community notes” feature similar to Elon Musk’s X.

“How do you do, fellow based, patriotic, right-wing reactionaries? Who wants to eat some elk meat, watch some UFC and not legislate big tech?”

Many other companies have followed suit, removing DEI programs from their company websites and policies. This was before an executive order from the Trump admin that also slashed DEI initiatives. Pronouns were removed from bios. Trans flag emojis were retired. The “current thing”, it seemed, has been replaced with a newer model. This signaled a seeming total defeat of the left. Or, at least what remained of the left. The Faustian bargain made in the first Trump and Covid era—compromising on economic and political change to get in line with the democrats to defeat Trump in exchange for concessions in the form of identity politics—seems to have worn out its usefulness to the corporate masters and now the devil wants his due. The left is defeated, subverted and used.

There were two recent interviews in the Doomscroll Podcast with

Joshua Citarella

in which Mr. Citarella sat down with two of the biggest figures from the Bernie Sanders/Socialist millennial left in Chapo Traphouse’s Will Menaker and Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova that feel emblematic of the current state of that faction of the left. Mr. Menaker, for his part, seems frustrated, tired and oscillates between the now-tired trademark irony and snark to an admission of defeat and lack of direction. He also makes more than one “ironic” illusion to how the only political project that is left for him and his colleagues is continuing to make money off commentary while giving up on the illusion of actual change. Mrs. Nekrasova, by contrast, has morphed into a darling of the new right in the years since her time as the “sailor socialism” and Bernie Sanders supporter. She gave a somewhat frustrating to watch interview soaked in vocal fry and irony in which she openly admits that she has no real convictions and her politics are more or less just opposing the status quo, no matter what form it takes.

This is a microcosm of what I find so frustrating about our current political and cultural moment. It’s just so fucking tiring. What is there left to do? Much is being made in the democrat leaning media right now about how “The US is becoming an oligarchy”, but I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this isn't a development that’s only just now taking off in 2025. I’ve seen this before. For those of us who remember, this moment feels very reminiscent of the era of Occupy Wall Street and the energy that existed at the time. The right, defeated after nearly a decade of cultural hegemony and the failure of the wars in the middle east, was thoroughly defeated by the election of Barack Obama and the mandate he was given electorally. But the election of Obama and his ascendancy was not only a defeat of the right, but the left. The left in America—to the degree that it existed—was defeated by victory.

The organic movement of Occupy Wall Street, while admittedly unfocused, was a legitimate populist movement that wanted accountability for the 2008 financial crash that devastated the American and global economy. But not only did the Obama administration not hold them accountable, it oversaw these people getting bonuses and bailouts while normal people lost their homes. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, but I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the time where people started to develop class consciousness and call for change in the actual structures of power that identity politics started to be pushed so heavily, and the polarization and culture wars really started to ramp up.

“How do you do, fellow left-wing revolutionaries? Did you know that Goldman-Sachs thinks trans people are heckin’ cute and valid?”

That’s what I see happening now. We do seem to be living through a moment in history—call it a “Vibe Shift” or a “realignment”—but there are changes occurring politically and culturally that would have not seemed possible not too long ago. In a way, I got my wish. We are living through a heterodox moment. The republicans are no longer the party of the upper middle class and traditional big business. As Mr. Meneakar put in the aforementioned Doomscroll interview, “The republicans are no longer the party of the suit and tie”. With the abrupt shift in loyalties of Silicon Valley, the republican base seems to be forming into the tech world and non-college educated voters in a coalition that is increasingly multi-ethnic. The Democratic coalition is fractured and defeated, but their defeat was not one where they stood on principals and lost valiantly, but one where they abandoned the principals that were important to so many of their base like me and they supported war, big business and the cultural and political establishment, offering very little contrast to the republicans in these areas and instead doubled down on cultural affectations that are increasingly unpopular to the average person. It’s one thing to sell out and win, but it’s a bird of a different feather to sell out and lose. That will be hard to come back from and I see the democrat party having a hard time running on the neoliberal policies that they have relied on since the Clinton era. Time will tell, but the game appears to have shifted permanently—and it’s shifted to the right.

That brings us back to the legend of Prester John. It’s a story that’s stuck with me since I first read about it many years ago. The intrigue aside, there was always something poetic about the tale. Prester John represented so many things over the years— hope in the face of overwhelming odds, the promise of adventure and bounty or the way that greed can blind us to danger. But to me, the most poignant meaning is that just as the kings of Europe mistook Genghis Khan for the mythical Prester John because he was decimating their enemies in the Muslim world, he was not their savior. In fact, as the Mongols went on to ravage eastern Europe after they devastated the Muslim world, the Khan was anything but. To me, the legend of Prester John being mistaken for the real historical figure of Genghis Khan represents one of the most important lessons one can learn in life—the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.

Time will tell how the Trump administration will play out and if he will keep his promises to his base. It still remains to be seen if the vibe shift will persist or is merely a flash in the pan. If the first Trump administration is anything to go by, the only thing to expect is the unexpected. If the incoming Trump administration actually follows through on improving things for the working class voters it courted or actually ends the unnecessary wars, I’ll be the first one to give credit where credit is due. However, call me a cynic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the second Trump administration is much like the first— a pretty standard republican president that throws some culture wars red meat to the base while continuing the now decades long process of stripping out the copper wiring from the walls of the US and selling the hollowed out husk to the highest bidder. Not unlike every democrat president within my lifetime. If his new friends in silicon valley are anything to go by, my hopes aren’t high.

Ultimately, however, this isn’t about Donald Trump or the “vibe shift”. This is a process That I have seen happen several times in my own living memory. To both triumphant conservatives or demoralized liberals, I would say this moment won’t last. Each turn of the gears in the consent manufacturing machine may have you on top and crushing your enemies today, but that machine never stops. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but I have a hard time trusting the zeal of a recent convert. I don’t relish living in an era without culture and only counterculture. I’m tired of culture wars. I’m tired of this Plato’s cave of shadowplay politics that goes nowhere. I’m tired of no structural change and the only thing that is on the menu is reactionary, culture wars exchanges that are undone every 4-8 years and the chessboard is reset. I’m tired of the oligarchical hereditary nobility changing skin suits every time the peasants get too uppity and start sharpening their pitchforks. We’ve melted down our swords for plowshares and had them sold out from under us. More than anything, I’m tired of just how lazy they have become at hiding it. But, oh well, maybe next election, right?