For the past forty years meritocracy has been used as a smokescreen to justify policies that increase inequality. Donald Trump won the 2016 election with this proposed solution to inequality: meritocracy, capitalism and nationalism. Meritocracy has become a rationalization that allows the rich to abrogate any sense of duty to those less fortunate. In fact, meritocracy serves to justify the status quo – perpetuate the existing upper class – merit can always be defined as what results in success, thus whoever is successful can be portrayed as deserving success, rather than success being predicted by criteria for merit. Meritocracy supports a growing oligarchy as demonstrated by the growth in income inequality and a reduction in economic mobility. Shapeshifting has been an essential characteristic of capitalism that may continue. Uneven economic growth and the widening gap in wealth and income may accelerate capitalism’s shapeshifting.1
Perhaps one of the most intriguing characteristics of shapeshifters is that it is sometimes difficult to sense their intent. Many can be good, evil or both. The Japanese kitsune, a fox, takes the form of a young girl, a beautiful woman or an old man in order to seduce or advise confused humans. We are all psychological shapeshifters, constantly shifting between archetypes based on our current circumstances and setting. By recognizing our archetypes and consciously choosing to shift between them, we can develop new patterns of behavior that are more aligned with our goals and values. What does shapeshifting symbolize today? This ability allows characters to assume various identities, animals, or even objects, which can symbolize deeper themes such as transformation, deception, and the fluidity of identity.
“If Trump wins, we’re entering uncharted territory where private actors with vast wealth and power join with a corrupt president to pursue their own ends and not those of the people of the United States.” Charen added that the conservative Supreme Court greased the wheels for all involved by essentially making the former president above the law. As she put it: “Put those things together, and you have a perfect recipe for massive official corruption.” In Leo Strauss’s view perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them. At the core of the thinking of Straussian neocons is the idea of lying to achieve their goals. Project 2025 is a right-wing wish list for another Trump presidency developed by the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s most prominent right-wing think tanks.2
Trump has a dramatic range no other candidate can begin to match. This was important for Trump’s initial success in the 2016 primary. With Trump, you never have the sense that it’s a one-or-the-other binary choice. Instead, he is working a dial, which he can turn to whatever setting he wants. Cash notes that all political systems must endure some such exposure to the lure of narcissism, fantasy, illogicality and distortion. Cash thinks that psychoanalytic theorist Joel Whitebook is correct that “Trumpism as a social experience can be understood as a psychotic like phenomenon, that “[Trumpism is] an intentional […] attack on our relation to reality.” Whitebook thinks Trump’s playbook is like that of Putin’s strategist Vladislav Surkov who employs “ceaseless shapeshifting, appealing to nationalist skinheads one moment and human rights groups the next.” Trump changed our understanding of both public opinion and the media.3
In 2021, when J.D. Vance was asked at a conference why he had converted to Catholicism just two years earlier, he had a fairly simple answer. “I really liked that the Catholic Church was just really old,” he said. Vance tells the story of how his beliefs have changed by reference to other people. After serving for four years in the US Marine Corps, in 2007, with the world not yet ended, he went to Ohio State University. He read the New Atheist thinkers Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and declared himself one of their number. He rejected his faith, he explained in a 2020 essay in Catholic journal the Lamp, to fit in with the “social elite” he was now surrounded by. “I began to think and then eventually to say things like: ‘The Christian cosmos is more like North Korea than America, and I know where I’d like to live.’”
Peter Thiel changed Vance’s mind. At Yale Law School in 2011, Vance went to talk by the right-wing venture capitalist billionaire, who was “possibly the smartest person I’d ever met”—and yet, a Christian. Inspired by Thiel, Vance read St Augustine and the French Christian philosopher René Girard, questioned his beliefs once again and, in 2019, was baptised as a Catholic. In the Lamp essay, Vance explains his journey back to faith in that period, during which he wrote his bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy. He liked the idea, as advocated by Girard, that Jesus was a “scapegoat” for society’s sins. It made him think about the way people pick on society’s “chosen victims” – the targets of online mobs, say. He took to heart the Biblical dictum, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged”, meaning that people should examine their own faults before finding them in others.4
The former president also says he wants to deport up to 11 million migrants. If he’s elected, you can bet he’ll try because Trump is Trump. For all his faults, this man lays his cards on the table. Vance, though, discards over and over again, always creating a new hand, like life is one big rummy game. Vance is a shape-shifting opportunist. He will bend his viewpoint to whatever is advantageous. He’ll morph to climb: When a person first confronts the realities of elite power, they have a decision to make. Play along or burn it down. Vance has always played along with whoever can offer him the most power. He was never a voice for the voiceless, as Charen once called him; with his book, he sold out the working poor for prestige. And Vance is only 40 years old. If he survives these headlines and continues to morph, he may prove to be the perfect kind of politician for this click-driven century.5
Most shapeshifters can only take on the appearance of others, meaning skills and memories are not copied and as such they can’t answer questions about the person they impersonate. This requires some knowledge about the person in question but is usually a good way to identify a shapeshifter. This constant shape-shifting gives Mr. Vance one more very interesting function in American politics, beyond the present moment. At some point between 2016 and 2022, when he won his Senate race in Ohio thanks to Mr. Trump’s backing, he sensed that being with Donald Trump was more profitable than being against him. The Ohio senator once condemned abortion ban exceptions, but has shifted his view to better match Trump’s. But Vance’s record reveals a politician who seems more than willing to go where the winds blow when it comes to one of the most divisive and strongly-felt issues in American politics.
Sometimes Shape Shifters get caught in flux, as Trump did in 2021, when he bragged about Project Warp Speed and got booed by Alabamians who didn’t believe in vaccines. Three years later, Trump now considers his rival, independent candidate and anti-vaxer Robert Kennedy Jr. for a significant health portfolio. It should be no surprise. Shape Shifters don’t like it when anyone questions their inconsistencies. Donald Trump’s antipathy toward the press isn’t because it’s the “enemy of the people.” Journalists are in natural opposition to Shape Shifters because they write things down and record things. The trouble with Shape Shifters is that, while they’re good at rising to power, they often don’t know what to do when they get it. For Trump’s next try, that has been taken care of. He has surrounded himself with admirers who will be in his administration to implement new ideas, along the lines of Project 2025.
In political shapeshifting there is no law only power. In 2024, a political world overrun with politicians making similar shifts, voters are left to wonder which manifestations are real. People say what they have to say to get ahead. These individuals will change their beliefs, their clothes, their haircuts – whatever it takes – to suit the situation, to please whoever’s approval they crave. These are the characteristics of the shapeshifters, Donald Trump and JD Vance. Basically, there is no real Donald Trump or JD Vance, they change as their circumstances do. Trump and Vance shifted abortion position during the vice-presidential debate. The goal here is to get back into power which is incredibly dangerous and problematic. Today with social media they can shapeshift in real time. Vance is adept at appealing and adapting to power. Vance’s addition to the ticket inspires little confidence and further deepens concerns about the future of American democracy.
1 https://questioningandskepticism.com/meritocracy-disguises-inequality-supports-growing-oligarchy/
3 https://democracyjournal.org/alcove/donald-trump-shapeshifter/
5 https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/08/04/opinion-jd-vance-changed-views/