By Mattie Timmer
WEIRD.
It’s the word du jour among the anti-Trumpism class in their most recent effort to describe what the public has been served up in an unrelenting stream from the former president and his sycophantic tribe for the better part of a decade now. Use of the term has spread like wildfire by an almost relieved cross-section of pundits and voters - as if suddenly everyone around them removed the milky filter from their eyes and realized what they’d understood all along but couldn’t quite communicate.
“You know, you aren’t kidding, that’s really @#^%-’ing weird!”
But why, after years of trying to put a name to the lying, the lawlessness and the conspir-a-lunacy we’ve collectively witnessed, have we so easily connected all the dots with such a seemingly silly label?
What is it about WEIRD that gets us? Why do we finally feel seen?
In all honesty, I’d initially wrestled with the embrace of that word as the latest synonym for MAGA brand madness because, as a smart, semi-introverted and admittedly nerdy girl growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, weird was a description I was personally familiar with. Weird is what bullies called kids like me in middle school.
So why does this throwback taunt land the punch when other more serious analytics of Trumpism left us swinging impotently? Trump would happily shutter our institutions and end the American experiment just to save his own ass and we call it…weird? Doesn’t that diminish the seriousness of the situation? Are we really that juvenile? I’ve seen a few comments to the same on social media.
Fox and Friends’ chief MAGA boot-licker Brian Kilmeade tried leaning into the moniker this week, opining that since “we’re all a little weird” that it makes MAGA more relatable.
The problem with that is, it doesn’t. Most of us are weird in some way or another, sure. Some of us don’t like our foods to touch the other foods on our plates. Some of us experience mild frustration if our “favorite” parking space is occupied. Some of us have serious conversations with our cat Some people just can’t wear socks.
But we aren’t Jewish Space Laser weird.
We aren’t drink bleach weird.
We aren’t monitor women’s periods weird.
We aren’t bask-in-the-glow of compliments from murderous dictators weird.
Most of us aren’t fretting over imaginary litter boxes in elementary schools or trembling with vexation over anything with a rainbow on it. Neither are we sending out family Christmas cards with our 8-year-old hoisting a long gun or open carrying said gun into Kroger to pick up spaghetti sauce
I’m willing to bet that most haven’t bought clothing or artwork or shoes or flags or blankets or coins or hats or BIBLES that venerate an old, rambling, oddly-painted, slightly sweaty and reportedly incontinent politician with the religious fervor of a swaying, fainting tent revival.
We just aren’t that weird.
None of these examples are new revelations. And there’s always more just around the corner.
The gnarled and frothy anger over an endless pipeline of invented outrages like Big Bird, M&M’s, Bud Light, daddy penguins, Doritos, Starbucks, Target and Mickey Mouse has rendered many of us desensitized to just how f’ing WEIRD it all is.
Today, MAGAs are tearing their garments over French drag queens depicting an imaginary, albeit outlandish, ancient Greek orgy as an affront to all things decent. How dare they attack what we hold dear!!
Yet these exact same folks watched a painted, half-naked “shaman” climb the rostrum in our nation’s capital while his cohorts beat the tar out of police officers, hoisted Confederate and Nazi flags, and smeared feces on the walls where heroes of our Democracy once stood - and called it patriotic.
So why, then, has it taken us so long to call all this freaky shit, well, freaky shit?
I’m going to assert my former (alright maybe still) nerdy theory on this.
As a 12-year-old hovering outside the circle of cool, my mom encouraged me to wear my weirdness as a badge of honor. Fitting in isn’t as important as being yourself, I was told. Someday, they said, the weirdos will be running the world and the bullies will be working for them. I mean, Biff does end up working for McFly in the end. Classic, right down to the carload of manure.
I think a lot of nice kids of my generation were raised on this notion – be patient, ignore the bullies. Just be nice, friendly and kind because, eventually, the truth about who they are will be obvious to everyone.
Sorry. I hate to say it Mom, but you were wrong, and these aren’t the weirdos you bargained for.
We’ve spent YEARS watching for these bullies to get their grand comeuppance and waiting for someone other than us to do it.
Have we been gently slipping into our Fred Rogers cardigans and trying to hug it out with this testosterone-fueled, supremacy-laden, freedom-dismantling, theocracy-demanding, teetering over the edge of violence gang of weirdos and hoping for the best? No, of course not. But we’ve focused nearly all our objection on the relative merits of what they stand for, or maybe more accurately, what they don’t.
We expected a persistent drumbeat of rationality to eventually win the day. We have facts on our side. Science. “When they go low, we go high,” as it were.
It’s our very normalcy that has disarmed us.
We excused it. No matter how unbelievably weird everything had gotten. We silently shook our disappointed heads when our Facebook feeds revealed an ever-increasing population of conspiracy nutters and haters wrapped in Christian indignance. We tried to stay polite when our bigoted neighbors put up hand painted plywood “white lives matter” signs on their farm fences. We avoided making eye-contact with previously normal and genuinely kind family now caught up in a web of anger and distrust.
But this word, it unlocked something in those of us who’ve been quietly keeping our heads down as we walked alongside the crazy hoping it would just go away.
Scut Farkus with his creepy yellow eyes shoved Ralphie into the snow one too many times, a tiny, red-hot flame got ignited within, and suddenly it was enough.
We are Ralphie.
We’re tired.
And they are weird.
