Never Forget the Vibeocracy

Establishing a Permanent Collection in the Museum of Political Stupidity

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz covered in bananas and vibrating at high speeds

The vibes at first annoyed me. Then the vibes confused me. Now they provoke me. It is crucial to remember there was a significant moment in the 2024 presidential campaign when the explicit embrace of nothingness became the primary strategy to prevent Donald Trump from returning to office.

Surely you remember it now; it’s fresh in your minds. “Yes,” you might be saying, “she certainly leaned into the whole ‘vibes’ thing.” But you also recall the extended period when even “vibes” felt too substantive—too concrete—and something even more vacuous had to be summoned. BRAT.

At least vibes has a definition, even though the definition leans towards nothingness. Vibes are an ephemeral, hard-to-pin-down feeling. They are linked to words like evanescent, liminal, and intangible. While these words may not provide complete clarity, they offer a reference for orientation. These terms appear in dictionaries and suggest that vibes, while elusive, can be approached and perhaps understood. Attempting to understand vibes is neither folly nor inherently contradictory to their nature. Vibes are like quantum physics—complex, mysterious, but not entirely unknowable.

Brat, on the other hand, is Schrödinger’s Cat. Both present and absent, its very essence shifts depending on how it is perceived. Brat is not merely elusive; it is an assault on the idea of having a concept at all. Its defining feature is its refusal to be—except insofar as it allows the wielder of brat to deflect any attempt to define or critique it with a dismissive, “You just don’t get it.”

Soon, the inability to "get" Brat became a surrealist litmus test, a kind of no-soap radio trick designed to reveal who was too uncool to grasp the cleverness of the Brat branding. We finally got to see what happens when you force “fetch” - and the results are not good. Jake Tapper tried to engage with it. He was uncool. The Guardian was cool:

Brat? Great tactic. Worthwhile message. Resonant. And, of course, they’d say otherwise if they thought brat was shape-shiftingly meaningless. But why would they possibly say that? There was hardly any “Brat backlash.”

All of this would be perfectly acceptable as a plot element in one of Ionesco's later works. But as a political message—or worse, a political strategy—it was, of course, idiotic. So idiotic, in fact, that it deserves a prime exhibit in the Museum of Political Stupidity, or the MoPS, as it is familiarly called. The problem is, brat and vibes were so absurdly ill-conceived that I fear they will be memory-holed as a mere blip, dismissed by future generations as no more significant than Ronald Reagan’s professed love of jelly beans or Bill Clinton’s jogging through Little Rock. Yet, this wasn’t just an appeal to vibes as part of the Harris campaign—it was the Harris campaign, for far longer than it ever should have been.

Vibes were important. Vibes were unifying. Vibes were working, Vibes were scaring Trump. In assembling our museum, ensuring that future generations never forget, I would submit all of the linked-to articles, and hundreds more, as evidence. There you would also find Vox on Vibes:

Part of the reason people are so optimistic about Harris is that they see her as a change candidate, even though she’s technically an incumbent. She’s part of the administration. People are willing to forgive some of her association with Biden and look past some of the more unpopular parts of the Biden presidency and not blame her for that and give her credit for the more popular aspects.

Every assertion in the above paragraph proved to be incorrect. Likewise, this Vanity Fair headline stands as a relic to delusion:

Dick Durbin’s birthday is November 21, 1944. When he provided that quote he was a still-youthful septuagenarian, which is why Vanity Fair would give give over their subhead to his insights on energy.

In the MoPS you would have the online posts that utilized lime green galore:

Instagram post from The 19th

Assuming you are a “friend who doesn’t know why “Kamala is brat” is trending - does this 19th post clear it up?

You would find magazine covers that, in retrospect, seem to mock their subjects—even as readers eagerly purchased them in earnest.

You would have posts like this, which weren’t part of the problem, but tried their damndest to explain it to normies who didn’t understand how Harris’ clunkiness added up to the political cryptocurrency of vibes.

Imagine you have two teachers. One of them has worked at the school for decades and isn’t particularly popular, but one day shows up with a big Flavor-Flav inspired clock around her neck and says, “Yo, yo, yo, I’m gonna teach you about prime numbers through rap!” Then imagine that a lot of her raps were actually about how important it was to do your homework. This teacher is Hillary Clinton.

Now imagine another teacher—this one shows up to class and obliviously sits on a banana peel. She doesn’t realize she sat on the banana peel and continues to teach the class. A bunch of the kids start joking about how they should call her Mrs. Banana. The term “Mrs. Banana” slowly becomes endearing, because Mrs. Banana doesn’t seem upset about it, and in fact, seems to be fine with it. But—crucially—she isn’t pandering to it. She isn’t showing up to class in a big banana costume. But maybe it would be okay if she did. Mrs. Banana is not the establishment, even if she is the teacher and holds the power. Mrs. Banana is, in many ways, an underdog, at least as far as coolness goes, which actually makes her cooler. Mrs. Banana is Kamala Harris.

Maybe I should ask

Cartoons Hate Her

to curate this wing of the museum. She’s at least as good an explicator of vibes as Brian Greene is of String Theory.

The museum would include every instance of vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz deferentially thanking Harris for bringing back the Joy. As for the gift shop? It would practically stock itself.

We would hire docents to guide visitors to the section of the museum dedicated to answering the frequently asked question, “If not vibes, then what?” They would showcase political speeches by other candidates—some successful, others less so. I might even include a clip of Kamala Harris herself, stepping away from the vibes strategy. In that moment, she would rely on neither abstract appeals nor overly detailed plans, but would instead deliver something rare: a truly meaningful and resonant moment.

Our docents would be prepared to address visitors’ most frequent questions. They would explain that, no, the opposite of a "vibeocracy" isn’t dull position papers or detailed policy plans. The opposite of vibes isn’t “substance”—it’s connection. Vibes struggle to convey meaning, but an audience can still be moved toward definable passions. Politicians—or any effective communicators—aim to transcend vibes and reach the common ground of shared values. Qualities like competence, passion, steadiness, and expertise are the tools of a skilled communicator. Vibes, by contrast, are the refuge of the swindler.

Upon exiting the Permanent Vibes Collection of MoPS, visitors would pass through a space designed for quiet reflection. Here, anything garishly green or overly bright would be carefully avoided, replaced by neutral tones and soft lighting. Etched in marble above this stark yet inviting area would be a single quote. At the Holocaust Museum, a solemn quote reads:

"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness"

The 9/11 Museum’s single quote are these words from the poet Virgil

"No Day Shall Erase You from the Memory of Time"

And for Museum of Political Stupidity, the quote that visitors will reflect upon silently and somberly after emerging from the Permanent Collection on Vibes will be this:

And if you want to go to Third World – if you want to go to Third World status, lose your reserve currency. We have to have it. We cannot lose it. If you go to – you’ll go to Third World status in this country, because you take a look at the way things are running. If a country tells me, ‘Sir, we like you very much, but we’re going to no longer adhere to being in the reserve currency. We’re not going to salute the dollar anymore.’ I’ll say, ‘That’s OK, and you’re going to pay a 100% tariff on everything you sell into the United States, and we love your product. I hope you sell a lot of it into the United States, but you’re going to pay 100% tariff.’ He will then follow it up by saying, ‘Sir, it would be an honor to stay with the reserve currency.’ I will be – that will be like just playing – that’s not even chess; that’s checkers.

This is what you reap when you trust the vibes to save you.