By Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, professor of English at Central Michigan University, horror editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and founder and president of the Society for American Gothic Studies. Originally published on The Conversation.
Republicans, as you’ve probably heard, are called “weird.”
In an interview that launched a million memes, Minnesota VP candidate Tim Walz called his political opponents “weird people” in a July 23, 2024 interview with MSNBC.
Since then, the barb has stuck, with leading figures in the Democratic Party, from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to presidential nominee Kamala Harris, voicing their Republican opposition to the moniker.
Of course, in the classic usage of “I know you are, but what am I?” In response, Republicans tried to flip the script.
“You know what’s really weird?” Donald Trump Jr. commented on X. “Soft-on-crime politicians like Kamala allow illegal aliens to get out of prison to violently attack Americans.” And in an interview with conservative radio host Clay Travis, former President Donald Trump said of the Democrats, “They’re the weirdest. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird isn’t it.”
While I get why both sides throw weird bombs at each other, I’m not on board with the whole “weird shaming.” It is not just hypocrisy that each party claims to speak for the forgotten and marginalized while mockingly calling the other side weird. It also recedes deeply.
Ironically, I would argue, it deserves respect. As someone who has spent the last three decades researching, writing and teaching topics including vampires, ghosts, monsters, cult films and what is classified as “weird fiction,” I should know.
‘Wyrd’ History
When politicians use a strange word, they are trying to portray their opponents as strange or unusual. However, the origin of this word is much broader and deeper.
The Old English “wyrd,” from which the contemporary usage derives, was actually a noun associated with fate or destiny. “Wyrd” symbolizes the power that directs the course of human affairs – an insight shown, for example, by Shakespeare’s three “weird sisters” in “Macbeth.” Man’s “strangeness” was his destiny, while the use of the word “castle” as an adjective described a supernatural force controlling man’s destiny.
Despite the continued expansion of the word to refer to all things strange, wonderful and strange, the resonances of the “bad” origin of the strange person are preserved by what has come to be called “strange myth,” a diminutive of speculative fiction.
The supernatural story, described by early 20th century writer HP Lovecraft in his 1927 book “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” is one that challenges our taken-for-granted understanding of how the world works. It does this by means of – to use Lovecraft’s characteristic purple prose – “a misplaced and peculiar suspension or defeat of those immutable laws of Nature which are our only protection against the onslaught of the chaos and demons of waterless space.”
Portrait of horror writer HP Lovecraft by artist Gage Prentiss in Providence, RI, where the author was born and lived for many years. David Lepage/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The strange myth goes back to man’s pretense of beauty, pointing out how much we don’t know about the universe and how precarious our situation is.
Meanwhile, freaks, geeks, outsiders, misfits and mavericks are otherwise regressive weirdos. They are nonconformists, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” “the world beats …
Where would we be, I wonder, without artists and scientists and thinkers who develop “strange” ideas and unusual ways of seeing and appreciating the world?
In this sense, almost all progress is part of a strange history, inspired by the often misunderstood visionaries of their time.
From Appearance to Festival
Of course, not all weirdos change the world with big gestures and history-changing interventions; sometimes weirdos do their own thing.
That, too, has been a big part of the story of the last century, as Western culture has increasingly – if reluctantly – made room for exotic or unusual forms of self-expression, from tattoos to drag shows.
Growing subcultures, gender identities and forms of self-expression – although undoubtedly fueled by capitalist market forces – nevertheless reflect the premium placed today on the individual.
In fact, pop culture has been willing to invite historical monsters back into the limelight — so much so that vampires, ogres and mythical villains like Maleficent from “Sleeping Beauty” are now asking audiences to sympathize with them by telling their side of the story.
The real villains are now often seen as those who demonize differences and insist on avoiding individual freedom of speech. Many of today’s monsters are evil, misunderstood – and their horrific behavior is the result of being bullied, ostracized, insulted and rejected because they are “strange.”
Reclaiming the Strange
However sincere it sounds, the Democrats’ deployment of a strange situation is, of course, a strategy.
Walz’s barb apparently managed to get under the skin of a crowd that clearly finds the idea of not being “normal” oppressive – and it’s for this reason, I believe, that Democrats have repeatedly tried to make this idea stick.
Political rhetoric historian Jennifer Mercieca told the Associated Press, “The opposite of normalization is legitimizing it, calling it out and making fun of it.” He put it another way, to refer to your opposition and their policies as “weird” is to demean it as odd.
Political expediency, however, comes with consequences – and here, much to my dismay, I find myself agreeing with Vivek Ramaswamy – a conservative businessman who failed to win the Republican presidential nomination.
Ramaswamy wrote in X that the ironic insults are “ironic from a group that preaches ‘diversity and inclusion.'” Ironic is putting it mildly.
This whole argument that they are “weird” from Democrats is dumb and new. This is a presidential election, not a high school queen pageant. It’s also ironic from a group that preaches “diversity and inclusion.” Win a policy if you can, but please cut the crap.
– Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) July 29, 2024
While it may be useful to use the word “queer” to frustrate political opponents, I’d like to reclaim queerness as something I can enjoy, respect and celebrate.
Irony is what presents a rupture in the structure of the status quo, releasing the possibilities of different futures and ways of speaking. There are many different, specific adjectives that politicians and others can use to describe their opponents.
Let’s keep America weird.
