“Weird” Is a Rebuke to Republican Dominance Politics

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when she had to explain the phenomenon [that Trump/Vance and Maga are "weird"] to Vivek Ramaswamy, is a far cry from the sadism we’ve come to expect from Trumpworld: “Trying to watch what LGBTQ+ people do all the time is abnormal. Punishing people who don’t have biological offspring is creepy,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote crisply, as if annoyed to have to spell it out.

Are you weird? According to Democrats—who have made “weird” a new term of art for Republicans—you’re weird if you get overexercised about the genitalia of Olympic athletes, think childless people shouldn’t have the right to vote, and generally fixate on controlling women, families, gender, and sexuality for reasons that seem transparently bound up in your own embattled masculinity and deep shame. You’re weird if you yell in public about sharks, or about “Joe Biden’s border bloodbath,” especially while your hands dance to music only you can hear. You’re weird if you want to track strangers’ menstrual cycles but are mad that people know you Googled “dolphin porn.” You’re weird if you campaign vigorously on issues that fly against common sense, such as getting rid of library books, abolishing the Department of Education, and giving the President dictatorial powers. “Weird” is multipurpose, a catchall designation for extreme or intense things that Republicans do or say. Its capaciousness is part of its appeal."

Go Katy Waldman! (another reason to subscribe to the NY-er)

I can't find this meme/photo that made the rounds in the middle of the pandemic. It's two people sitting next to each other on a public bus. A little old lady in a big overcoat and a nonbinary kid with fuchsia hair. The caption reads: Urban nightmare! I might be adding the exclamation point but I loved that photo. Nothing is more bullshit and nothing riles me up more than Trump and his outer-exurbia Maga country minions hating on cities as "living in hell." I've lived in Seattle since the late 1980s, and lived in Portland and the Bay Area (San Jose) in the early '80s; so I've lived in cities for going on half a century. They've had their problems but their problems are NOT women making reproductive health care decisions for themselves or LGBTQ+ people or immigrants or people of color or minorities or even protesters. Never have been. 

Repuglicans right now are weirdly obsessed with punching down at marginalized groups, women, people in drag, people speaking in a different language or with an accent, people protesting state violence in the streets. They maybe always have been bad but they at least haven't been this bad about it in a long time; since America was "great" in their way of thinking, I guess. Project 2025 really is a Handmaid's Tale dystopian nightmare. And despite Trump's denials Project 2025 is in fact a perfect distillation of Trumpism, with the fingerprints of over 200 former officials of the Trump admin all over it. 

The biggest problems in the city of Seattle, from my humble perch in the peanut gallery, are living wages, homelessness, and the rich do not want to pony up (with taxes) for obvious infrastructural needs like public housing and green sustainability reforms, and the mayor and political establishment are for some inexplicable reason intimidated by the fascist Trump-endorsing police union. 

I'm usually a passive supporter of those "Keep Portland/City X weird" campaigns. So the crucial qualifier here, made by Walz at their Michigan rally, is "creepy" weird. Trump/Vance are creepy weird on steroids. You don't want to hear them talking about your family or anybody else's families. Let's put this creepy weird stuff behind us. We really do have better, more pressing, things to do.