WHY "WEIRD" WORKS

One of the more surprising things this past week has been the number of folks who don’t get why “Weird” is such a perfect description of the terrified old man and his MAGA minions. I’ve been been lectured in the comments sections of several substacks for failing to understand that Trump Is Dangerous And We Cannot Let Him Be Made Less So.

Several of these people have been told to go jump in their Volvos and please go drive off the nearest cliff.

This is what “Weird” does:

While the senile terrified old man may have previously been heralded as a supervillain and aspiring dictator, describing him as a big weirdo deflates him - it’s like taking a Bowie knife to one of those Baby Trump balloons. It also drives the MAGAts crazy because the more they say they aren’t weird, the more they demonstrate clearly that they are indeed very weird. “Weird” takes away them being admired or feared that these losers never were anywhere else in their lifetime loser lives. Instead of being Edgelords, they get reminded that they’re just the weirdos in the corner eating glue off their hands that they’ve always been.

The weirdest of the weird MAGAts, Vivek Ramaswamydingdong, said this about the word: “This whole ‘they’re weird’ argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile. This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest. Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please.”

See?

“Weird” is an insult that doesn’t work both ways. We childless cat ladies have spent a lifetime being told we were weird, and we have learned to wear it as a badge of honor. But when your whole political movement is based on a return to some screwy black-and-white-TV vision of American normalcy, “weird” hurts. It gnaws at you in the middle of the night, to wonder whether you really are just kind of, you know ... Lame. A loser. Weird.

As the inventor of the current usage of the word, Governor Tim Walz, puts it: “These guys are just weird. We’re not afraid of weird people. We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”

Walz has described his word choice as a deliberate way to take the wind out of Republican sails. Yes, they might be bullys and authoritarians, but bullying behavior is usually just masking cowardice. And we all know that El Jefe Del Mar A Lardass is a coward who folds every time.

That “not afraid” bit is important. Telling everyone the fat old fool is an Existential Threat to Democracy doesn’t necessarily create a resistance fighter in everyone who hears that. Some listeners hear that and get scared. And then they withdraw. Not what we want.

But “weird” is someone you can laugh at. And guess what the one thing the old mob wannabe absolutely cannot stand is? He can’t abide being laughed at. He’s said so more than once. Instead of being the Great And Powerful Oz, he’s the old guy behind the curtain you’re not supposed to pay any attention to.

I will now hand the microphone to my friend Dr. Brian Klaas, DPhil, who has a very good explanation of why Weird Is Good.

“I will conclude this with a novel political usage that is appropriate: applying the word weird to those who wrongly believe that “childless cat ladies” run the world; to those adorn themselves in bizarre t-shirts that depict Trump as a ripped superhero riding a bald eagle; or to a candidate who praises the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” in one breath before meandering over to his favorite story about sharks and boat batteries.

“But rather than elucidating these objectively weird behaviors at length, I’d like to explain why this punchy little label has cut through and made a difference in the 2024 election campaign. It harkens back to an edition I wrote previously: Schemas and the Political Brain. If you’re interested in the world of political communication, I’d recommend reading the whole thing, but here are a few key paragraphs:

“We often process information using schemas, a key concept within psychology, neuroscience, and cognition. Understanding how they work is crucial for making sense of modern politics. The political brain is a brain defined by schemas. Political movements that understand that fact will usually beat those that don’t.

“While political junkies might be able to rattle off an endless array of statistics and understand the minutiae of policy, very few people devote that level of intellectual bandwidth to politics. That means that most people process political information using a lot more cognitive shorthands, making schemas exceptionally important.

“Effective politicians are able to imbue a constellation of facts with a new meaning, providing voters with a fresh cognitive shortcut to make sense of the political world. Donald Trump is not, as he’s claimed, a “stable genius,” but he is extremely skilled at defining his opponents in ways that stick. In effect, he’s providing voters with a new schema with which to understand the political landscape.

“The lesson, then, is not that fact-based arguments are meaningless in politics, but rather that facts are most effective when they’re nestled within a ready-made intellectual framework for how to make sense of the world. Effective political movements use facts to reinforce schemas, but they understand that the schemas are what matter most. It’s a depressing truth, but getting the right taglines, slogans, and vivid ways of presenting political opponents is often far more important than being right.

“In this instance, the slogan is both effective and right. What’s ingenious about the use of the word “weird” in this context is that it’s so obviously true. It is weird.

“Calling something weird doesn’t diminish the importance of describing the serious stakes of the election and why Trump’s machinations pose a threat to America’s democratic institutions. But it does provide a neat, memorable schema that voters can use to make sense of a lot of bewildering information, classifying some of it under a single, devastatingly effective label.”

So, for all the Very Serious People who think using “Weird” means we’re not serious as a fucking heart attack...

Lighten up.

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