“It scared me, the word ‘vibrations.’” —Brian Wilson

The word “vibe,” once a plaything of hippies, has itself become a vibe. It’s the vibe of our times, a lazy devil-may-care linguistic shrug radiating through culture and, now, politics. If you have nothing to say, at least you can say “vibe shift.”

I did an exhaustive search of every opinion column published by major U.S. newspapers since the recent election, and I found that the phrase “vibe shift” appears 4,322 times. That number is a complete ...