By Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, a professor of English at Central Michigan University, the Los Angeles Review of Books associate editor in charge of horror, and the founder and president of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic. Originally published at The Conversation.
Republicans, as you’ve probably heard, are being called “weird.”
In a quip that launched a million memes, Minnesota governor-turned-VP candidate Tim Walz referred to his right-wing political opposition as “weird people” in a July 23, 2024, interview on MSNBC.
Since then, the barb has stuck, with leading Democratic party figures, from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to presidential nominee Kamala Harris, branding their Republican opposition with the moniker.
Of course, in a classic deployment of the “I know you are, but what am I?” retort, the Republicans have tried to flip the script.
“You know what’s really weird?” Donald Trump Jr. opined on X. “Soft on crime politicians like Kamala allowing illegal aliens out of prison so they can violently assault Americans.” And in an interview with conservative radio host Clay Travis, former President Donald Trump said of Democrats, “They’re the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.”
While I get why both sides are hurling weird bombs at each other, I’m nevertheless not on board with all the “weird shaming.” It isn’t just hypocritical for each party to claim to speak on behalf of the forgotten and marginalized while mockingly calling the other side weird. It’s also deeply regressive.
The weird, I would argue, deserve respect. As someone who has spent the past three decades researching, writing about and teaching topics including vampires, ghosts, monsters, cult films and what gets categorized as “weird fiction,” I should know.
‘Wyrd’ History
When politicians use the term weird, they’re trying to depict their opponents as odd or strange. However, the origins of the term are much more expansive and profound.
The Old English “wyrd,” from which the contemporary usage is derived, in fact was a noun corresponding to fate or destiny. “Wyrd” signified the forces directing the course of human affairs – an understanding reflected, for example, by Shakespeare’s three prophetic “weird sisters” in “Macbeth.” An individual’s “weird” was their fate, while use of the term weird as an adjective connoted the supernatural power to manipulate human destiny.
Despite the progressive generalization of the term to refer to all things strange, fantastic and unusual, resonances of the weird’s “wyrd” origins are retained by what has come to be called “weird fiction,” a subgenre of speculative fiction.
The weird tale, explained early 20th-century writer H.P. Lovecraft in his 1927 treatise “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” is one that challenges our taken-for-granted understandings of how the world works. It does this through – to use Lovecraft’s characteristic purple prose – a “malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguards against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”
A statue of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft sculpted by the artist Gage Prentiss in Providence, R.I., where the author was born and lived for many years. David Lepage/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The weird tale pushes back against human pretensions of grandeur, hinting at just how much we don’t know about the universe and just how precarious our situation truly is.
Meanwhile, the freaks, geeks, outsiders, misfits and mavericks are weirdos who push back in a different way. They are the nonconformists whom, as Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out in his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” “the world whips … with its displeasure.”
Where would we be, I wonder, without the artists and scientists and thinkers developing “weird” ideas and unorthodox ways to see and appreciate the world?
In this sense, nearly all progress is part of weird history, propelled by visionaries frequently misunderstood in their own time.
From Denigration to Celebration
Of course, not all weirdos change the world through grand gestures and history-altering interventions; sometimes weirdos just do their own thing.
That, too, has been a large part of the story of the past century, as Western culture has increasingly – if reluctantly – made room for once-unorthodox or even taboo forms of self-expression, from tattoos to drag shows.
Proliferating subcultures, gender identities and forms of self-expression – although no doubt propelled by capitalist market forces – nevertheless demonstrate the premium placed today on individualism.
In fact, pop culture has been keen to invite historical weirdos back into the fold – so much so that vampires, ogres and fairy-tale villains such as Maleficent from “Sleeping Beauty” now enlist audiences’ sympathies by telling their side of the story.
The true villains are now often seen as those who demonize difference and insist on straight-jacketing individual freedom of expression. Many contemporary monsters aren’t bad, they’re just misunderstood – and their monstrous behavior results from being bullied, excluded, insulted and rejected for being “weird.”
Reclaiming Weird
However sincerely felt, the Democrats’ deployment of the weird characterization is, of course, strategic.
Walz’s barb clearly managed to get under the skin of a crowd for whom the idea of not being “normal” is apparently distressing – and it is for this reason, I believe, that the Democrats have repeatedly tried to make the idea stick.
Historian of political rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca told The Associated Press, “The opposite of normalizing authoritarianism is to make it weird, to call it out and to sort of mock it.” Said another way, to refer to your opposition and their policies as “weird” is to denigrate it as abnormal.
Political expediency, however, comes with consequences – and here, much to my dismay, I find myself agreeing with Vivek Ramaswamy – the conservative entrepreneur who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination.
Ramaswamy wrote on X that the weird insults are “a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches ‘diversity & inclusion.’” Ironic puts it mildly.
This whole “they’re weird” argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile. This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest. It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches “diversity & inclusion.” Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) July 29, 2024
While there may well be utility in deploying the term “weird” to frustrate political opponents, I’d prefer to reclaim the weird as something to appreciate, respect and celebrate.
The weird is that which introduces cracks into the edifice of the status quo, liberating possibilities for different futures and forms of expression. There are many different, more specific adjectives politicians and others can use to characterize their rivals.
Let’s keep America weird.
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Conor Gallagher: Thanks for this article. Author Weinstock does a service by reminding people that the original meaning of weird is fate, fated. The idea of destiny lurks in the weird.
I think that Weinstock is stretching a tad in going from the deep meaning of weird to weirdo to Lovecraft. There is more to the weird than Game of Thrones. There is more to weird than weirdo and individualism. But I’ll give Weinstock credit for the effort.
Many great works of art are weird. (I almost wrote all, but the novel, being a bourgeois genre, often avoids the weird.) I am thinking of the astounding production of the Oresteia that I witnessed here in the Chocolate City about two years ago — a stage full of murderers, gods, revenge, and the endlessness of war crimes. Madama Butterfly also is weird, Turandot even weirder in its examination of fates, yet Puccini wasn’t exactly a weirdo. Emily Dickinson and the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters also are weird and prophetic. So is the Mona Lisa.
The current spate of name calling indicates a whole lot of emotionally stunted people wandering about. It does not bode well for the Harris campaign. Lancet estimates 186,000 dead in Gaza, and the oh-so-clever Democrats want to talk about who is a booger. Not that the Republicans have acquitted themselves well.
Fortunately, the Democrats and Republicans didn’t go into the word eerie. The word eerie is like weird — fates, fears, the hairs on the back of one’s neck rising. I have had to explain the word eerie to my Italian friends, because Italy has the weird (la fata, il destino) but less so the eerie. Hmmm.
How marketing pollutes meaning: Now “sophisticated” come to mean “Having or showing much worldly knowledge or cultural refinement.” Like the original meaning of “sophisticated” was “adulterated” and “spoiled,” as in “vintners sophisticating bad wine by adding sugar of led to sweeten it.” Deliberate heavy metal and other forms of poisoning to sell “sophisticated” product was, and remains, well, “weird.”
Mark Fisher wrote a book called The Weird and the Eerie. Very highly recommended.
It was a decidedly effeminate strategy. Like, ew. Let’s be real though, high school never truly ends.
The preponderance of society’s and the world’s problems have been created by highly normal people pursuing highly normal goals. Normality is the problem. Just sayin’.
In case anyone wanted more discussion on this, Matt Taibi and Walter Kirn had a pretty interesting long-form discussion on this topic a few days ago on their Racket News stream. Worth checking out.
In politics, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
And, first insult in usually wins, never mind the schoolyard responses. Trump has made a career out of delivering the first *clever-ish* insult, now that the script is flipped he’s like a butterfly with a pin through his chest holding him onto a cork board – all he can do is flap his wings.
Insults like weird aren’t thoughtful or deep, truly creative insults can be a joy; “She has delusions of adequacy” or “This student has fallen to the bottom of his class and is showing signs of digging.”
I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky – a city that prides itself on being weird, like Austin – but Louisville is also big on sports, especially college basketball. A friend living there just had a baby, I asked if she was going to play guitar (like her Dad). Mom replied, “No she’s not going to be a weirdo. She’s gonna’ play sports.”
Fwiw, I play guitar.
Best…H
The fact that the Kamalabots have decided to try to out Trump Trump is why some of us regard this upcoming election with dread. It’s like our elites are living in a Peter Pan world where they never have to grow up. It’s all just a game to then including the foreign policy manipulations described elsewhere today.
And the “individualism” of people who spend all their time on smartphones or social networks seeking other people’s approval is not exactly the stuff of Walden pond. This fight between factions will be between people who are desperate to conform and parrot whatever party line is on offer.
The good news is that the pieces in the D party are finally in motion, much easier to influence them compared to when everything is stuck in concrete.
Have you read “Second Class” by Batya Unger-Sargon? She says the party that best aligns with labor will succeed.
Best…H
Kamala Harris seems like exactly the kind of person who was a leader of the “in” clique in high school, and made sure the weirdos weren’t invited. That is so perfectly PMC . . . but it only appeals to the same 20% who are already voting for her.
The comparison to Tina Fey’s Mean Girls has been mentioned elsewhere but really it’s too early to say what Kamala is, at least for those of us who don’t live in CA. And as this election goes on she may seek to keep us in the dark with her one and only true campaign theme which is “I’m not Trump.”
Tom, I’ve been unable to put my finger on it until now. Thank you. You got it, I think.
Reckon I had finally blocked out those years.
If I were gonna be real Girardian about it, I’d say using the phones (for both sides) is just as important as seeking the approval. Everyone has one, therefore everyone is alike. They’re not like BMWs or Corvettes; everyone appears to have the same gear. It’s a new totalizing effect. Red and blue also both seek encouragement re sticking to their prior concepts, as per Carolinian…via the phones; they’re both doing the same thing. They are too much alike, hence Girard’s “undifferentiation.” Where big problems begin. Don’t tell me they’re just a part of life we have to accept.
We need to prepare for life with electricity blackouts happening more often.
If a weapon works , why not use it? Trump certainly does. And if using his own weapon back on him can drive him to stop using it, then his targets can stop using it too. And then everybody can go back to taking the high road together. Until then . . . ” When they go low, we go lower” would be the best approach.
Only a liberal would worry about “not being as bad as they are”. That refusal to use effective countermeasures against those who use measures against liberals is part of what has brought liberals into such contempt.
“That refusal to use effective countermeasures against those who use measures against liberals is part of what has brought liberals into such contempt.”
As a candidate I hear that argument a lot. Look, if we’re having an a-hole contest I am a worthy competitor. But I’m just not sure I want to win a “biggest a-hole” contest… and going lower only galvanizes the other’s opinions, much better to respond neutrally. “Oh, that’s interesting.” I also look for things we agree on, it’s usually not that hard to find. Once you have a relationship it’s easier to have productive discussions that include differences.
As a liberal, I see the problem as liberals being out of touch with working class people wherever they live, and rural people whether they work or not.
Best…H
Its hard to know who is really right. So it might be best for people to act on their own belief and perception of ” what is” and “what to do” because people will do their best work in line with what they most deeply percieve and believe.
From time to time different people and groups can compare notes and see what really has worked better than what else.
In my perception, in the narrow focus view, I see the KamalaWalz team calling Trump weird getting Trump to more and more self-destruct on camera and hotmike. If they cause him to react by melting down in public so badly that his handlers are able to convince him that “this isn’t working like it used to”, then he can decide to go high, and KamalaWalz can go high, and everyone can go high and everyone can have an elevated discussion.
Your method could well work with normal or near-normal people. I think “going even lower” would work better with a Trump or a Gingrich or a Lee Atwater or etc. . . . IF it were designed to destabilize their mind like injecting a neutron or a heavy alpha into an unstable nucleus. It can’t be just ” any old insult”. It had to be tailored if possible to the particular enemy needing destroyed.
Really, as a bonifide weirdo since high school, I wear the label proudly. Of course, most of my weirdness is due to my political and artistic bent. Also, quite interesting to finally know why Shakespeare spoke of the three witches in Macbeth as ‘weird’ so thanks for that as that language was never quite clear, Mike Liston
me, too….such that i have embraced and identified(sic) as a “weirdo” since around 5th grade.
if not for weirdos, humans likely would have died out…it was weirdos who came down out of the trees and decided to try that fatty stuff in the leg bones of that there carcass…
then, perhaps, that funky looking mushroom growing out of that dung.
or ate meat burned in a natural fire….or got a toe in the milk(parmesan)…or left the grain in the rain(beer)…
left grain in the rain, that guy could have been more lazy than free thinking. Kamala’s motley troupe calling team red’s best and brightest “weird” seems a play out of the Karl Rove handbook. The whole affair brings me back to middle school. “Na na na na na na – He’s weird.” Pass the popcorn, sigh.
Karl Rove’s handbook worked very well for Rove and most of Rove’s candidates.
If only Bernie Sanders had it in him to advance his past and present views and goals with Rove/Gingrich/Atwater methods. He might have won. We will never know.
An example of wonderful Republican weirdness:
Minnesota Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, Royce White: “We face an enemy that intends to bastardize our citizenship through an idea called globalism…We must begin to understand how the global affects the local and take a stand for God, Family, and Country…women have become too mouthy…Donald Trump could get up on stage, pull his pants down, take a sh*t up at the podium, and I still would never vote for you f*cking Democrats again.”
That Woke me up!
Pseudo-events are weird.
I don’t know about all you weirdos but I’m glad that I am the only norbal one here. :)
Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.
– Hunter S Thompson
This one’s for the freaks
For you’re so beautiful
For all the devotion
Written in your soul
This one’s for the freaks
For the lost and weak
For the butterflies and devotees
And the disciples of our destiny
[Chorus]
And like the underdogs we are
Shining bright but now disappeared
And like the underdogs we are
Passing like some fading stars
Like some fading stars
[Verse 2]
And this one’s for the freaks
The beaten down and crushed
The shy and withdrawn
Or just out of touch
May you stay like freaks
May you make mistakes
May your will never break
For underdogs revenge is sweet, revenge is sweet
[Chorus]
And like the underdogs we are
Shining bright but now disappeared
And like the underdogs we are
Passing like some fading stars
Like some fading stars
[Outro]
This one’s for the freaks
This one’s for the freaks
People like you, need to fuck
Need to fuck people like me
This one’s for the freaks, for the lost and weak
This one’s for the freaks
— “Underdogs”. Manic Street Preachers, the best Marxist glam-rock band ever to come out of Cardiff
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ~ Bucky Fuller
“We can’t solve today’s problems with the mentality that created them.” ~ Albert Einstein
Weirdness defined?
There have always been, and still are, people in any community who perceive different realities associated with wyrd or weird and, from a systems perspective, weird people man and woman the edges and are able to sense changes and dangers before the normies. With the DP using the term “weird” to describe those of us who don’t believe in the DP’s efforts to restrict speech, force us into boxes on a spreadsheet and avoid wrongthink. I know who I am not going to vote for. Of course they lost me long ago with their cons (Russiagate anyone).
Having said that it is useful for them to declare the rest of us deplorables and weirdos as “out” and their vision of the world as “in” and “normal.” Most people, ever more so today, are in need of a coherent Narrative to define their lives and make is easier to avoid thinking and analyzind. Withe the DP’s almost complete control of all media (entertainment and news) this effort to make those of us who don’t want to live in an athoritarian, endless war-making society as weird may work to install them into power. Maybe, one day, those five-percent of us who are actually on the left (as opposed to the conservatives cartoon version of the “left”) may get some respect but I’m not counting on it.
It’s such a mind(fam blog) that cartoon version. Indiscriminate to a fault, and progressive, like cancer.
“If you’re normal who wants to be normal.” David from movie, David and Lisa.
Boys are weird.
So says the brat girl.
We have the 12 year old boy and the 14 year old girl fighting over who gets to play Captain, as the engine rooms fill with water and first class heads for the lifeboats with the cases of champagne.
It might be politics all the way down, but it’s economics all the way up and the rip in this ship is that 34,35,36… trillion in debt.
At quote someone else, America is like maggots on a corpse, with the Democrats rooting for the maggots and the Republicans rooting for the corpse.
Beautiful imagery from the beginning and striking at the end. I love creative (if mixed) metaphors.
The bull is power.
The matador is art.
A ‘few’ years back, I adopted the motto, “when the going gets weird, the weird go pro!” (Sorry – I’m a bit fuzzy on the provenance ;^) Thanks Conor for a great Sunday post!
That is Hunter S. Thompson…
_Doctor_ Hunter S. Thompson.
Hey Cuz. Hunter S. Thompson said it. If memory serves, it’s in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness, [highly recommended] posted some musings on the current weird Zeitgeist in his Burning Shore substack:
“Weirdness, then, is a moving target, and somewhat in the eye of the beholder, so much so that many of us suspect that “normal” that attends it, stated explicitly or implied, has little value beyond a scrawl on the back of an envelope.
That said, by the back of my envelope, today’s Republican party is still pretty family blogging weird. Trump himself is a lewd, carnivalesque, bizarre figure, capable of slipping into dreamtime with a nightmarish ease. The 4chan sensibility that minted Pepe Nazi memes and helped shape right-wing troll culture is aggressively weird; indeed, most of the podcasts I did when High Weirdness came out bemoaned the fact that Operation Mindf*** launched by Robert Anton Wilson and the Discordians in the 60s, has proved rather successful of late. And though loony conspiracies have played an active role in the populist right since long before the Birchers, the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy narratives that motivate both base and superstructure have reached a new surreality (and new banality). Even their Christianity is weird. Far from restating old Moral Majority fundaments or the dispensationalism of yore, the Dominianism of Christian Nationalism derives from a heterodox reading, not only of the gospels — it was render unto Caesar, not seize his throne — but of old school millennialism. Today’s Dominionists don’t want to rapture, they want to rule.”
Many thanks to you (and Cyclist and Starry Gordon above) for the ‘mental floss’ – of course it’s HST – I took the easy way out and chalked it up to a ‘senior moment’ – let’s hope it’s not post – Covid “brain fog”…..
Will certainly check out the recommended Substack and I mostly endorse your back of the envelope musings- R. A. Wilson’s semi-esoteric machinations (Illuminati, anyone?) have created quite a‘what if’ mycelia for the theorists and puppeteers to play with. Interesting times indeed! Enjoy your Sunday and beyond!
I got a kick out of the entire “weird” thing, but maybe some are overthinking it. It may be much simpler. After the attempted assassination of Trump, the narrative managers talked about toning down the rhetoric and name calling. Of course we knew that wouldn’t last, but would no doubt change.
My PMC friends love their little pet names for Trump and the Red Hats, as they call them. Dump is one of their favorites, along with Slump. They really enjoyed the name calling, but when they got the latest memo; weird it will now be. This sounded much nicer than Orange Hitler, fascist, and all the other names they loved to call Trump and the racist scum that support him, but they were told to turn it down a notch.
So they still get to call them names, just nicer ones, as instructed by the very people they oh so worship. After all, these are the most righteous people on planet Earth doing what their political gods instructed them to do.
We should thank them for fighting to get Kamala elected so she and the democrats can save the world from Orange Hitler, Putin, and the Red Hat army.
King Donald L’Orange.
Prince Earache the Dunce.
I got a million of them.
One of the best I have seen is MAHA hat— Make American Hats Again…
Truly distressing to see/hear/read Harris ‘policy’ rollouts. I must be listening far too closely to the vapid empty rhetoric…. too many disheartening four-year election cycles. And to think a President will get anything signed with a divided congress is DCD: Delusional Cognitive Dissonance.
I still cannot vote Trump.
Stein or no vote for the Big Ticket, perhaps down-ballot at state and local. Many days to marvel at what unfolds— after the last few years, I can wait.
There may be worthwhile referrendum or initiative issues to vote about right where you are.
And local and hyperlocal officeholders have an effect on local and hyperlocal day-to-day outcomes right where you live.
I see it as a characteristically brilliant way of reaching out to disaffected millennial voters who crave the acceptance of their elders that conformity offers. It is a special kind of cunning, I think, and it will be interesting to see how well it plays.
The article misses the mark for me – it does identify the underlying reason as to why the weird insult landed and stuck but proceeds to conflate this into a defense of weirdness writ large. There is a wide gulf between people who know they are weird and are comfortable about, and those that insist that they are not, The Republicans have been demonstrating the latter quite a lot recently.
A large part of right wing culture wars has been to point to their opponents and demonstrate to the audience why they are freaks, weirdos, etc to pretty good success overall. The goal is to cast them in a way that makes them off putting to the general public. This has been their wheelhouse for years on end.
The tell for me is that quoted tweet from from Ramaswamy – setting aside the false equivalency it’s pretty apparent they are upset that they are getting fed the treatment they’ve dished out on their opponents for a long time. Dems have been long the standard bearer of the ‘you go low, we go high’ routine and it just has not worked, especially against Trump who historically is very good at landing the insults. Walz took the Dems down to that turf and the results have been undeniable thus far.
What’s also missing from this article I’d say is there’s no mention of JD Vance. I’d argue if it were not for his presence in this race the ‘weird’ insult likely would have never stuck so well. The quotes that are being regularly unearthed from Vance’s interview circuit over the last 4ish years has been fueling that narrative (and really has me wondering what was going on with the Republican vetting committee). <a href=" Hell, even Trump threw him under the bus as reported when he was asked about the weird insult he replied “Not me, they’re talking about JD”. Absolutely brutal for him to have done that.
More than anything, it’s ‘weird’ to see the Dems politicking effectively and the Republicans being in disarray. There’s plenty of time left in the campaign for things to change but I am not used to seeing the Trump era Republicans flop sweat like this.
I, too, am entertained this season. Big Blue is coming out swinging, and things feel lighter somehow, despite all the corpses, again. Must be that Momala energy!
Cheap Trick covered this ground 46 years ago: “Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little …”
Good gracious! Was that really 46 years ago?
I’m an old [family blogger]!
Cheap Trick – Surrender (from Budokan!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbkypX1OhZ0
I don’t understand why people haven’t settled on ridiculing Trump as a method of attacking him. He is clearly unable to deal with it, and ignoring (or seeming to ignore) the likely resulting temper tantrums would cause his head to asplode…
Also, whenever Trump releases another one of his noisome lies about one target or another, and that target is asked about it by the Media ( ” Did you hear what he just called you? Let’s you and him fight”. ), I would like to see the target respond with a brush-off dismissal containing a suitable nickname for Trump, since Trump likes using nicknames so much.
” Well . . . Trashy Trump is trashy. This isn’t new. This shouldn’t surprise anyone.” And then just studiously ignore the Media person’s endless tape of efforts to get the target to respond to Trashy Trump any more than that. it gets the nickname known, it drops a wet blanket on Trashy Trump’s effort to get under the target’s skin, and the longer the target maintains silence in the face of the Media’s continued effort to get the target to respond further, the more trouble that Media itself might get into for ” dead air” or “not getting the story” or whatever.
The two dominant words/memes at this stage of the election season appear to be “weird” and “joy”. Put these together and you get Weird Joy. This would make a fine name for a band, or a handle for a commenter here at NC.
I just saw a compilation of Kamala related news titles with “joy” in them. There is a small group of people somewhere out there getting mucho bucks to come up with words like that, and then send the memo to everyone at the same time.
Let’s dance to Joy Division/And celebrate the irony/Everything is going wrong/But we’re so happy
So happy/Yeah, we’re so happy/So happy/Yeah, we’re so happy
(The Wombats’ “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”)
And on to Cream and “I’m so glad, I’m so glad, I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad”.
‘Glad’ is one of those words, that, the more you look at it, the weirder it gets.
And now the circle is complete.
A thought. By definition, those supporting “weird” politicians must also be “weird” just like all the Blesséd Hillary’s “deplorables”. And yes, it’s just a way the Democrats think they can shame politicians, even their fellow Democrats, who voice the interests of the deplorables and want to bring a significant degree of change, for better or worse, to an ossified political system dependent on donors demanding that laws be shaped in their interest, and politicians selling out the American middle-class and the impoverished they purport to represent to pander to foreign powers of no positive consequence to the ordinary American.
Ukraine spends America’s financial and military treasure in a pointless war ensuring that it’s population can never recover from the loss of it’s young men and women, every country’s greatest treasure, to satisfy the desires of a demented old man who whiles away his days having his chin wiped as he sits in his big chair in his big white house, while the Israelis are engaged in systematic genocide, torture, rape and sniffing ladies’ knickers as part of some whimsical fancy that God gave them the right to take another people’s land and everything in it, including that nice pink nightie in the wardrobe of the Arab slut we just gang raped and murdered.
But I do think that the Republicans should gracefully accept that they are weird, and wear it as a badge of honour, because any one who wishes to re-industrialise, renew and replace failing economic, financial, social, political and physical infrastructures to the benefit of the people must be weird – like Lincoln, the two President Roosevelts, JFK and his assassinated brother, not to mention Nixon and Reagan’s reshaping of geo-politics (again, for good or ill) because they had a vision of the country for the people they wished to lead. And in the collective West, that is really, really weird,
And that kind of weird is what people want to hear from President Trump, JD Vance and politicians of every party, even those which will not be on the ballot in every state. Maybe Vice President Harris might manage to utter a visionary cackle or two about the cloud and how AI might fit into the American future. That’d be a start. And maybe someone might even sneak in a mention about the opportunities offered by peace and reconciliation, international co-operation and a common prosperity in a multipolar world.
“wishes to re-industrialise, renew and replace failing economic, financial, social, political and physical infrastructures to the benefit of the people”
Wake up! They are not doing it for the benefit of the people. It might arguably be ‘to’ the benefit of the people, but that’s just a possibly unavoidable side effect.
I’m going to go in a bit of a different direction. I think the reason that the Democrats have chosen the word weird to describe their opponents is so that they can take it away from their opponents to be able to use it against Kamala. We all know that Kamala has a weird laugh and she says truly weird things. Also, it’s kind of weird that she became the vice president choice in 2020. It’s even weirder to think of who’s running the actual government now that biden’s mental state has been revealed. And then again it’s weird that he can’t run as a candidate and yet he’s perfectly fine to be president. to put the cherry on the top, it’s even more weird that Kamala somehow became the nominee for president in 2024.
So with all of those odd and unexplainable things, the Democratic operatives probably thought it would be a good idea to co-op the word weird right out of the gate. That’s my thesis anyway.
I think the Democrats have chosen the word weird so that they can co-opt it from the Republicans being able to use it! Everyone knows the weird cackle of the Kamala bird. And the weird stuff about going up into the future without being burdened by the blah blah blah.
And how did she actually become the vice president anyway? That was kind of weird. And then if I’ve got this straight the president of the United States is senile and we don’t know who’s actually running the country, so that’s really *very* weird. And also, somehow or another, in some weird way, Kamala bird became the Presidential nominee. How exactly did that happen again?
And now, after being a useless vice president, she’s suddenly the best thing since sliced bread and we can’t use the word weird to describe that? Because I think that’s really weird. Isn’t it weird that she can’t do interviews because that would put her off of her “streak” of giving such great speeches?
To me it seems absolutely obvious that the Democrats wanted to take that particular word away from the Arsenal of the Republicans.
What Rip Van Winkle said above re Cheap Trick for the win!!! Well Played.
I think anyone who has had the misfortune of visiting Portland Oregon and witnessed the extreme juxtaposition of Liberal performative, virtue signaling ‘weirdness’ and their complete lack of substantive human decency can tell you how obnoxious and useless the concept is.
As the saying going “Keep Austin Weird”. What a huge family blogging disaster that became. The Travis County DA now has tax payers paying for his security at his home because Austin has become so weird, lots of people are out to get that useless DA. When I see the keep it weird shirts now I just chuckle, “Keep It Weird, huh? How did that work out for you? Enjoy living in a meth camp?” Both sides are weird as hell. I think it’s sad that the Democrat party has nothing more than “They are weird!” and everyone at the rally screams and cheers. What a sad party.
Weird is blessing somebody after they do a fairly routine body maneuver by sneezing, an odd leftover from when we were afraid of the dark.