Weird

The Political Adjective of the Moment and Why Republicans Hate It

Foundational to right-wing tribalism, the focus of my new book, is the desperate need to retain one’s membership in the group at all costs. For most conservatives, especially MAGA Republicans, acceptance requires homogeneity. To be liked by others requires being like others, to have few markers of difference – especially when it comes to race, religion, sexuality, and gender identity. They need impermeable psychological and literal walls to segregate like from unlike. To paraphrase psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, they hold it together by keeping things apart. Their xenophobia informs more than a set of policies. It is an organizing worldview. Strangers need to be kept out. And even strangeness itself must be banished. There is no room for weirdness.

Republicans must sing from the same hymnal, worship the same deities (Trump and Jesus), and, on talk shows, utter whatever the line of the day seems to be. When they do act wacky, it is done collectively so as not to appear weird. Such was the case when GOP delegates all donned auricular panty liners as if they were MAGA crucifixes – symbols of reverence for the sacrifices of their savior candidate whose ear was nicked in an assassination attempt. Looking ridiculous does not draw ridicule as long as it is en masse.

Interestingly, the focus on MAGA weird has emerged only since the selection of the GOP’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance. Although Trump's behavior, rhetoric, and appearance would meet many people’s criteria for weirdness, it’s been baked in for eight years. While his words continue to appall many, no one is surprised. His lunacy, rants against democracy, anti-science screeds, and bloodthirsty calls for vengeance have long ago ceased to be novel. However, there is something jarring about hearing the same fascist wack-jobbery come out of Vance’s mouth. Somehow, as inured as many of us have become, we can now hear the customary nonsense anew. Channeled through him, MAGA misogyny, racism, and the normalization of domestic violence seem to be drawing more attention and fresh revulsion. Vance has restored strangeness to MAGA.

The deeply weird Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, Trumpworld’s Mein Kampf, combined with the public pronouncements of its lead author, Kevin Roberts, and other missionaries of MAGA, lay out with crystalline clarity the step-by-step path to the dystopian future envisioned by GOP policy wonks – state-mandated pregnancy, deportation of immigrants, internment camps for dissidents, ending Social Security and Medicare, accelerating carbon extraction, staffing the federal government (including law enforcement agencies) with political loyalists instead of public servants, and substituting the Christian Bible for the constitution. Like JD Vance’s cringy utterances, including his incendiary call to arms in the forward he wrote for Roberts’ upcoming book,  the publicity garnered by that document has provided a similar wake-up call to voters who may have been sleep-walking toward Trump 2.0. Unfortunately for the former president, the Heritage Foundation manifesto for a Cro-Magnon America has been getting poor ratings, which has prompted a desperate but unconvincing effort on his part to distance himself from its proposals. Even though it was put together by 140 of Trump’s closest allies, he insisted he had no idea who had assembled it.

Right-wingers have always striven to appear mainstream and even define what it means to be “middle of the road.” They have claimed to speak for the “silent majority” or “average Americans.” However, their stylistic and policy weirdness now stands out in sharp relief. The more people learn about the plan for a MAGA future, the more they oppose it. The vision offered up by Project 2025 is that of political outliers. The extremity of its ambitions makes it marginal; it promotes a world few want to live in. In the past, those ideas only surfaced as a garnish on Trump’s incoherent world salad. They were slogans, not blueprints. Now, they are readable intentions in unambiguous, hard-to-ignore black and white. Their notions are, by definition, weird; they are statistically and ideologically fringe.

For liberals, by contrast, “weird” can be a badge of honor, a playful way that left-wing tribes celebrate their heterogeneity and non-conformist novelty. Blue cities have proudly adopted it as a signifier of their identity. Bumper stickers that call for their fellows to “Keep Portland [Austin, Berkeley, et cetera.] Weird” can be found in liberal urban areas nationwide. That was the case even in the wholesome hippie town where I spent several decades, Fairfax, California. More than a few bumpers were adorned with the words “Fairfax: Mayberry on Acid.” That bumper sticker remained popular long after it stopped matching reality.  The town’s gentrification and the influx of career-focused tech bros, their CEO spouses, and their ever-upwardly mobile kindergartners who had resumes far longer than my own did not stop the townsfolk from continuing to let their freak flag fly. Unlike red cities, for Fairfax, the image of psychedelic-enhanced eccentricity and bohemian goofiness only increased real estate values. In blue America, weird can be a charming virtue. So, when we wield it against MAGA, we needn’t worry about retaliation in kind. That sort of boomerang just makes us smile.

Partisan differences in weirdness mask radically distinct notions of freedom. Left weirdness is about the freedom of self-expression – playful and creative acts of individuation that don’t harm or infringe on the autonomy of others. Right weirdness is about the freedom to dominate – to rule over and be worshipped by those below. It also expresses an entitlement to subjugate and persecute those whose identity markers taint them as “inferior” outsiders, like immigrants, women, non-whites, and sexual minorities. Conservative weirdness is revealed in the bizarre practices and fetishes of authoritarians. Project 2025 is their political Kama Sutra, a collection of positions that mandate the rest of us be their bottoms. There is nothing funny about the world they want to create. So, we must laugh at them. For those like Trump, brittle baby-men who would be kings, ridicule is their Achilles heel.