Can you feel it? Something’s happening. It’s visible in all sorts of places from universities to the courts to the media. It’s present in the way in which ordinary Americans are now emboldened to stand up to the forces that have been keeping them down.

Despite the darkness of the winter days, despite the continuing problems in American life, and despite the continued dangerous mischief of whoever runs the “Biden Administration” (I’m looking at you, Barack Obama!), it seems that the vibe has shifted. In all sorts of ways, it’s morning in America.

Though Democrats are still busy downplaying Donald Trump’s electoral victory as only a matter of a percentage point or two in the popular vote count, that victory (gained against the usual universal opposition of major media, the academy, and the government itself) seems to have been the crack of dawn for a nation huddling in the dark for the better part of a decade. Since about 2014, and certainly since 2020, wokeness, authoritarianism, censorship, and division cast a pall over this country.

Educational institutions, always liberal left, competed with each other in the implementation of Maoist struggle sessions and rules for faculty, staff, and students. Corporations that had made loads of cash handed it over to BLM and other fraudulent and/or ideological organizations that would dictate the terms of compliance to the ideologies of DEI in imitation of the academy. Those corporate human resource departments made sure that the struggle sessions were not left behind once one had left school. No, the unholy trinity of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion were to be worshiped by all. And since all true worship involves sacrifice, this usually involved the immolation of some men or women who didn’t go along with it all. During the Covid years, the deities of Safety and Experts also demanded their incense and holocausts. Even high-ranking corporate executives, such as Levi’s president Jennifer Sey, could be defenestrated from the corner office for questioning the wisdom of lockdowns and school closures.

Corporate/regime media used their megaphones not to shout questions at the powerful, but to denunciations and commands at ordinary Americans who dared to question the new sacred dogmas about white privilege, transgenderism, lockdown epidemiology, and the duty to let illegal immigrants, drug addicts, and mentally unstable homeless people run the streets of your town or city.

All of the above institutions and more worked with the powerful forces in government to make sure that ordinary Americans couldn’t fight back even with words. The federal government worked with social media companies to ban or shadow ban people who refused to say that “transwomen are women” or that lockdowns weren’t effective with Covid or any number of other phrases. They colluded to keep Americans from knowing about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election. And the Justice Department spent its time investigating parents who complained at school board meetings about the racial and gender indoctrination of their children, making pre-dawn raids on pro-life activists, and, of course, engaging in lawfare against the President who just wouldn’t go away.

The old-timey news articles about baby showers and meetings of the Kiwanis Club would add, “A good time was had by all.” It’s fair to say that, for the last few years, a pretty bad time was had by all.

And yet something has changed in America. Colleges and universities are starting to think twice about their own ideological demands. No, woke is not dead. But it’s starting to lose its power. The University of Michigan, famous for its wholehearted devotion to the DEI cause, last week ended its demand for diversity statements for job applicants amid fears that its entire diversity apparatus might be dismantled.

Indeed, such changes are being felt. One friend in a large public university in a different state, long a pariah in his own department for his Christian faith and conservative politics, texted me this week that the “vibe shift” at his university since the election has been wondrous: “Inexplicably, my colleagues have warmed up to me a bit. 2020 is a million years ago, I guess.” 

So, too, corporations have been dropping their DEI divisions. Walmart, Coors, and Boeing are among the recent companies that have taken their focus off indoctrinating their employees and put it back on providing goods and services. Yes, there are still far too many involved in this dangerous game, but the more companies that end their DEI efforts, the safer others’ executives will feel in following them. 

In the courts, lo and behold Daniel Penny was indeed vindicated by a jury of his peers this week. Soros prosecutor Alvin Bragg hasn’t stopped making his city easier on criminals, but at least he’s no longer so successful at making it hard for heroes and law-abiding citizens. And lest the media machine continue to treat the hero as a villain, vice-president elect J. D. Vance invited Penny to be his guest at the annual Army-Navy game this weekend.

If the left were interested in some real diversity, they might well study a bit of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who believed that many of the problems in society stemmed from not naming things properly. That has been the case with our media, which has a crying need for the “rectification of names” called for by the philosopher. Thankfully, that is part of the vibe shift, too. This weekend, ABC News settled with Donald Trump with regard to his case against the network for its defamation of the former and future president. The $15 million they are paying in reparation will be donated to his presidential library.

While many on the left wail about ABC’s decision to settle in this case, it may well be that they have seen that the tangled webs woven by their own deceit were not worth it in an era when juries regularly award giant sums to those judged to have defamed individuals. What’s even better is that some legacy corporate/regime media outlets seem to be deciding on their own that at least a bit more honesty is the better policy.

The New York Times finally told us what we’ve all known: “Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U. S. History.” Yes, it’s too late. But it’s very useful to have them say it right before the Trump Administration begins and tries to clean up the situation Biden left us.

Even more interesting, the Gray Lady ran a piece this week asking, “Is the Awkward ‘Diversity Era’ of Hollywood Behind Us?” As conservative cultural critic Christian Toto wrote, “Yes, the essay has that hard-Left Times veneer, but it also points to serious cultural flaws in the dying era. The op-ed also pays tribute to classic movies, even the ‘problematic’ 007 franchise.” As he observed, the piece could have been written by one of the right-wing—or at least non-woke—commentators popular all over the internet.

When the hard left has lost The New York Times and even the right-wing professor is being treated with respect, you know that the vibe shift is real. But it’s observable in all sorts of other ways, too.

Yes, you’ll find crazies in every city ready to scream at you for supporting Trump, as this writer did the day after the election. But you’ll also find a lot of people who are ready to let go of the crazed Orange Man Bad religion that has plagued us for so long. You’ll notice that they are doing the “Trump Dance” when the YMCA comes on—or at least not having stroke symptoms when it happens. You’ll find that fewer of them are introducing themselves with personal pronouns or a description of their racial, sexual, or gender identities. And most of all, you’ll find that more people who hold conservative, religious—even Christian!—and traditional views about the world are not afraid to share them anymore.     

Whatever good the coming Trump Administration does—and we can hope and pray that it does a lot—what most Americans are happy about right now is that the new administration is almost here and the present administration is almost gone. Hope and change, one might even say, are the order of the day. Our freedom is not entirely gone. Our equality under the law has not disappeared forever. The ability to live with our fellow citizens in peace even amid disagreements is still an option.

For all these things, we are deeply grateful. It’s morning in America. The vibe has shifted. We’ve got our mojo back. And we’re more determined than ever to keep it.  

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.