You may recall this interesting moment in the 2024 Presidential election when Tim Walz called Donald Trump and his MAGA crew “weird”. Here’s the link to the video if you need a refresher: VIDEO: Tim Walz calls Donald Trump weird

Next thing you know, the Harris campaign has chosen Walz as their VP candidate, but also told him to stop calling Republican politicians weird. They discovered a meme in the wild that could spell victory, and then they just squashed it. Pretty weird, am I right?

At the beginning of the 2024 election process, neoliberalism (as represented by the Democratic Party) was the default ideology of the American people. Most Americans who have serious problems with how the US government is run don’t understand that neoliberalism (which is essentially a politically-oriented religion centered around perfecting capitalism) is the thing that they don’t like, but they know they like normalcy. As the occupiers of the American center (which is to the right of center), what the Democratic Party really represents is normalcy, and because they cannot offer change (thanks to their relationship to wealthy people), all they can offer is normalcy. Therefore, calling their enemies “weird” is an effective tactic.

OK, but what’s the problem with that?

My problem with that is that it leaves absolutely no one to defend weirdness and weird people. Weird, when applied to people’s behaviors, just means that it varies from what most people do. Not only do I like “weird” but the essence of freedom is creating a society where people are weird. You can’t reject weirdness while simultaneously embracing freedom because weirdness is the natural and unavoidable byproduct of freedom — by definition. In contrast, an authoritarian society lacks any variation in people’s behavior — everyone behaves the same, they all conform — no one is weird. Certainly, the MAGAs are weird, but it isn’t their weirdness that is the problem — it is their ignorance, irrationality and spite that is the problem. The Democratic Party’s opposition to weirdness is required because all they have is their appeal to normalcy.

The first problem the Democrat Party has with labeling MAGAs as weird is that the Democrats cannot appeal to the left sincerely. The only people they can appeal to sincerely (based on the limitations placed on them by wealthy donors) is Republicans. However, calling MAGAs “weird” creates an opportunity like the one Hillary Clinton created in 2016 when she said this:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

If you read the long form of the quote (which is why I’ve used that version), it is clear that she isn’t calling moderate Republicans “deplorables”. She wanted to appeal to moderate Republicans. But this quote creates an opportunity for MAGAs to cut it down to a more concise idea: That Democrats think all Republicans are deplorable. The Tim Walz “weird” quote has exactly the same problem: It is about MAGAs but can be twisted to apply to all Republicans.

The second reason for the DNC telling Walz to stop using the word “weird” is because it could very easily be turned around on them. The Democratic Party doesn’t really care about LGBTQ people, it doesn’t care about the left, it doesn’t care about Muslims. I could go on, but the point is that the Democratic Party needs to create the impression that marginalized groups will get something from voting Democrat while also appealing to those who are addicted to normalcy, so it doesn’t want people to think too much about what, exactly, is weird. That kind of contemplation will cost them votes when people realize that the people they claim to support are weird (even though they are always ready to throw any marginalized group under the bus).

Both Democrats and Republicans (meaning people who explicitly identify as one of those things) hate weirdness. This is probably the single biggest hurdle to positive change in this country. It makes it extremely easy for bad actors to villainize marginalized people and prevents Americans from imagining novel solutions to problems. Rather than being a force of freedom, the United States is really a machine that constantly tries to crush novel behavior, and the weirdness only emerges because a few heroic people react to that attempt at destroying their weirdness by getting more weird, even while people like them are trying their best to conform.

Excuse me, I’m going to go be weird now.