War of the Weirds
Things are getting weird on the campaign trail.
In a triumphant rise from the ashes of their own incompetence, Democrats this month retired their quintessential Old White Man of Office and replaced him with a charismatic Wine Mom Presidential Barbie; aligned their PR approach with a hyperpop club girl album; and subsequently engaged in their new campaign tactic of calling Republicans “weird.” In many ways, the change has come as a relief to those of us who have strained at the bit of Democratic inefficacy for nearly a decade (if I’m being generous) as the Republican party has moved only further right, transitioning from a party of “small town values” to a party of “what kind of genitals does that child have/all vaginas should be used for childbirth/all immigrants are criminals unless they are white.” Namely, it has become a party of weirdness, a party that’s gained traction primarily as catharsis for those confused and therefore threatened by a spreading cultural notion that people don’t need to be so intense about genitalia all the time. Democrats historically responded to this populist turn with such advanced tactics as “politely disagreeing” and “doing nothing;” so the Dem’s Brat Summer is a welcome change.
But what is “weirdness”? There’s the visceral sense that something is wrong, a perversion of cultural norms. When the Dems say “weird,” they tend to collapse it with “creepy”—consider their recent ad full of “Republican voters” as sweaty, yellow-teethed white men who want to ban condoms and monitor each other’s porn use. Obviously, an obsession with kindergarteners receiving HRT in public schools (which isn’t happening) and AI drawings of Trump-as-Jesus carrying a bald eagle (which demonstrates a full departure from reality or at least really, really poor media literacy skills) provoke a sense of perversion—why would you not only support but obsess over these images? You’re bad, but in a way that is too strange to be dangerous: you’re weird.
It follows, then, that weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. If weirdness is defined as a perversion of norms, then your norms dictate what constitutes weirdness. I’m reminded of a Sociology course I took in grad school, where the professor assigned us a piece on the practices of a strange, foreign culture who were then revealed to be American frat boys. When described abstractly and as an outsider, the sexual practices and hierarchy rituals of the American frat boy were extremely strange. Paddling each other’s asses to determine masculine hierarchy, desiring sex with women but primarily for the ritual of discussing that sex with other men—any community, put in the right language, can be weird.
All of this is to say that in recent weeks, it’s felt like Republicans have lost whatever hold they may have had on the zeitgeist as Democrats seem to be taking the lead in the long-running culture war. Obviously there are still those “silent minority” voters who believe that Norman Rockwell was a documentarian, that men who drink wine become gay and women who know math are lesbians, but whatever bully-like dominance they had over Democratic political messaging has vanished; the Dems are having a summer glow-up, and what used to read as terrifying displays of power on the part of Republicans now reads as sort of sad and pathetic. Republican attempts to turn the “weird” finger back on Dems by posting videos of drag queens and criticizing women with cats only makes them feel outdated—don’t they know Glee came out in 2009? Don’t they know straight men are watching Drag Race?—rather than provoking the “gotcha” moment they’re seeking. The left has managed to align itself with inclusivity, creativity, coolness. Kamala has Megan Thee Stallion; Trump has Kid Rock.
But there’s a degree of cynicism about it all that I can’t shake. While I’d never deny that the Republican party has crossed a meaningful threshold into a domain of all-encompassing weirdness, is the Democratic party’s grip on dominant culture any more normal or fair? Is Kamala adopting the branding of a cocaine-fueled synth-pop album made by a British woman “normal”? Is it good policy?
Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a kente cloth during the George Floyd protests—weird. Pussy hats—weird. Biden promising to fight for “reproductive freedom” on the campaign trail but never saying the word “abortion”—weird. Biden is president, and Roe v. Wade is overturned; police brutality has increased since 2020; straight women in “egalitarian marriages” are still doing about double the amount of housework as their partners.
The lip service we give to our ideologies means very little when placed beside actual behavior—even more so for politicians and their policies. Raising $15 million for Kamala’s campaign while Flint doesn’t have clean water, donating to the ACLU while paying your staff minimum wage, “supporting” women in the workplace while leaving your wife to do all the domestic labor; neoliberal center-left voters are steeped in their own strange mire. Sure, Republicans are getting “weird” with it—but Trumpian inanity only makes the Left’s hypocrisy feel normal. Republican beliefs are the grotesque outcomes of an overarching system of power in which the vulnerable are objectified; and what is the Democrats’ perpetual neglect of the people whose lifestyles they leverage to gain power, if not objectification? Kamala’s Brat Summer feels refreshing after whatever gambit the Republicans have been playing by courting xenophobes, incels, and tradwives; but the Dems, just like Republicans, are treating the cultures of oppressed people as steppingstones for personal and political gain. Kamala is brat, Lockheed Martin is your best friend, US Bank is genderqueer—there’s a difference between verbal acceptance and material support. Seems weird to mistake one for the other.
