Let me tell you what’s really weird

Michael Cook
August 08, 2024 12 Reactions

The word of the year is certain to be WEIRD.

Democrats have discovered that it is a talisman which wards off the Trump bogeyman. Tim Walz, now Kamala Harris’s running mate, moved at warp speed from a distant possible to anointed Veep-in-waiting by describing JD Vance as “weird”.

It caught fire and suddenly Democrat panjandrums and journalists across the country have started using it around the clock.   

“I don’t know who came up with the message, but I salute them,” David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University, told the Associated Press. It allegedly captures the Republican vibe and “frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses”.

It’s also a bit puzzling. Politicians? They throw anything that sticks at their opponents. But journalists? They're supposed to be analytical and critical. But they certainly haven’t thought this one through.

For one thing, weirdness and greatness are aligned. Everyone knows that. Geniuses from Emily Dickinson to Robert Oppenheimer were 24-caret weirdos. Churchill was a bit weird. Teddy Roosevelt was a bit weird. General Patton was a fruitcake. 

Also, calling someone “weird” and vilifying them are kissing cousins, as neurodivergent people know all too well. 

If “weird” means anything, it means not-mainstream, left-field, unorthodox, non-conforming. Those are the qualities that made Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic countries like the US so successful, as some historians have argued. 

Remember when groupthink was a Bad Thing? “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. It's one of the most famous sentences in American literature and it used to express the rough-hewn greatness of the American spirit. And by the way, was Thoreau weird? Of course he was; he was a typical genius.

 

 

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Let’s not argue about who is weirder in 2024 – Democrats or Republicans, JD Vance or Tim Walz, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Scratch the surface and we’re all a bit weird.

The really interesting thing is why “weird” is everything everywhere all at once.

Its ubiquity gets the silver medal for weirdest thing in America’s election campaign. Politicians and journalists discovered this bit of political kryptonite at exactly the same time and cackle over their originality. It’s hard to imagine a purer example of the hive mentality.

But the gold medal in the Weird Olympics goes to the stupefying triviality of campaign rhetoric on both sides. A Middle East volcano is about to erupt and the media is literally talking about cat videos, which in saner times used to be a synonym for the most brainless, moronic, vacuous, vegetative pastime imaginable. The 2021 movie Don't Look Up painted the US as a nation of airheads who giggle at a planet-killer asteroid hurdling towards Earth. It could be a documentary about the 2024 campaign.  

According to Gallup, about half of Americans think that the following issues are “a very big problem”:

  • Inflation
  • The ability of Democrats and Republicans to work together
  • The affordability of healthcare
  • Drug addiction
  • The federal budget deficit
  • Illegal immigration
  • Gun violence
  • Violent crime
  • The state of moral values

Plus, there’s climate change, Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and the future of Europe, Taiwan, crumbling infrastructure, unfunded social security and Medicare, a birth dearth, and miserable public schools. For starters.

And Harris, Walz, and their supporters are making “joy” a campaign issue. "It wasn’t until [Walz's debut speech] that I fully realized just how much joy has been generating the electricity behind Harris’s presidential candidacy," gushed New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow. 

Ask anyone outside the United States. They’ll tell you that’s weird. Really, really weird. 

Is this article weird? Tell us in the comments below.

Michael Cook is editor of Mercator

Image: X.com 

 

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  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-08-10 14:20:37 +1000
    Yeah, I read about the bear story in the newspapers here. It doesn’t alter my opinion of him one way or another. I mean, who cares.

    BTW Harris’ momentum seems mainly due to RFK Jr voters deserting him. That’s not momentum, It’s a one-time hit which is why I’m fairly sure she’s going down in the Electoral College.

    The biggest “voting bloc” in US is the registered non-voters. Obama won because he was able to get enough of them to get out and vote for him to tip the balance. Harris is trying the same thing but I don’t think she’s up to it.

    What can I say. I’m a data nerd. Clinton would prob. have won in 2016 if it hadn’t been for Jill Stein.

    Al Gore would prob. have won Florida if he hadn’t had a Jewish running mate and/or Ralph Nader hadn’t been in the race.

    BTW Conservative groups were funding Jill Stein. They figured it would take away enough votes in swing states to defeat her.

    Trump isn’t the only narcissist running for president. Jill Stein is a bigger one.
  • mrscracker
    Sorry Mr. Steven I should have included that the RFK story involved a road kill bear he found and used as a prank. It should have qualified as genuinely "weird. "
    But I sort of like RFK Jr. too.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-08-10 08:35:02 +1000
    mrscracker, since RFK Jr has no chance of being president there’s no point.

    If I were an American in a deep blue or deep red state where my vote didn’t matter I’d probably vote for him just for the fun of it.
  • mrscracker
    I’m surprised RFK Jr. didn’t get mentioned in the weird awards.
    :)
    There’s a funny article about him in The Pillar today:

    “Some people have suggested that RFK’s presence in the presidential race is evidence we are no longer a serious country. But I would suggest the bear incident shows him to be a more interesting man than I would have otherwise credited him for being — certainly more worthy of my consideration than your average golfer. For a start, he prefers falconry.

    He has also shown a working knowledge of NY state game law, and that he is comfortable with ursine butchery. He apparently enjoys long dinners at pricey steak houses, but he is open to eating roadkill. Though he’s also previously gone on record as having contracted a parasitic brain worm, too, so we could have guessed that last one.

    Most importantly, he pranked the entirety of New York City, and then kept quiet about it for a full decade.

    If all this doesn’t qualify him for the presidency, we ought to at least have some kind of civilian medal to honor such a man. "
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-08-09 17:25:02 +1000
    Julian Cheslow, Anon Emouse,

    This Youtube clip NOT weird.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ffsw5Yl8Oc

    It’s way beyond weird. We’re in bizarro land.

    The whole clip is bizzaro but watch 3:44 to 6:10 and 9:30 to 10:35

    BTW I don’t think Aidin Ross is stupid. Just, well, bizarre.
  • mrscracker
    Yes, Keep Austin Weird has been a slogan for quite a while.
    I guess being considered countercultural is on the other foot now.
    :)
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-08-09 06:50:14 +1000
    mrscracker,

    Keep Austin Weird?

    Trumpies were wearing bandages on their ear in “solidarity” with their new Messiah’s supposed bullet wound that magically disappeared.

    Donald Trump Supporters Wear Bandage On Ear “in solidarity” with Former President
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYT-UZjZOgQ

    People get caught up in the moment.
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-08-09 06:13:57 +1000
    Julian has it right on the “bad kind of weird”.
    Steven – they are unhinged, undoubtedly. But I feel like “weird” gets under their skin just a bit more.
  • Julian Cheslow
    commented 2024-08-09 02:34:08 +1000
    Generally people who are the good kind of weird don’t get upset at being called that. I don’t think someone like David Lynch for example would get upset at that label.

    But people people who react strongly to it tend to be the bad kind of weird. And that is what a lot of Republicans are coming off as. It isn’t that hard to figure out
  • mrscracker
    I guess the DNC hasn’t been to Texas recently & noticed all the “Keep Austin Weird” bumper stickers. Weird’s considered a good thing in Austin.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-08-08 15:11:56 +1000
    I completely agree. “Weird” is an inappropriate word to use. Some of my best friends are weird. Some of my friends call me weird. Albert Einstein was definitely weird.

    No, Trump, Vance & Co are NOT weird.

    What they are is unhinged.
  • Michael Cook
    published this page in The Latest 2024-08-08 14:06:57 +1000

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