First Witch: Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Second Witch: Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Third Witch: Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.
—Macbeth
Weird has become the bon mot of the US Presidential election, a linguistic weapon accidentally plucked from the lake of tired political vocabulary and now being wielded with fierce aplomb by the Harris campaign against the Orange manbaby.
The word has succeeded against the formerly invincible Trump campaign in ways that more obvious descriptors such as fascist, anti-democratic, white supremacist, misogynist and even rapist haven’t quite been able to achieve. It cuts through their defences like Excalibur and its deployment has Team Trump running around like headless chooks.
This piece in that beacon of journalistic “normality”, USA Today, sets out precisely what weird is describing and why it is effective:
The rise of Trumpism and the bizarre chaos it ushered in ‒ from family members lost down conspiratorial rabbit holes to the denial of facts and abandonment of shared reality ‒ has given us election lies and Trump-branded Bibles and Rudy Giuliani giving an insane news conference outside a landscaping business in Philadelphia and a dude called the QAnon Shaman wearing a horned fur cap as he joined an attack of the U.S. Capitol.
…The GOP presidential nominee is a twice-impeached, one-term president who was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a case involving hush money paid to an adult film star. He has had multiple bankruptcies, faces hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from a civil fraud ruling and was found liable of sexual abuse. And he is revered by the Republican Party's evangelical base.
…His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has a slew of past interviews in which he derided “childless cat ladies” and suggested the votes of people who have children should count more than the votes of those who don’t.
…Do you want to know what’s weird to a majority of Americans who are just trying to live their lives? EVERYTHING IN THOSE PREVIOUS THREE PARAGRAPHS!
But weird doesn’t work just because it describes the concrete list above, but because it captures something intrinsic.
Weird hurts Trump and befuddles his cult because, for all their weirdness, they see themselves as conservative, as normal. They understand themselves as the last best hope of normalcy. Their whole political and cultural project is based on a deeply held ideal that they are returning the country to normalcy, to sanity, to this white, Christian, patriarchal ideal that will make American great again.
To call this “normalcy” weird not only challenges their most fundamental beliefs about how the world should be and their own self-image, it reminds them of something they know in their hearts to be true and that is the casus belli of their war against the modern world, the root of the violence that inflects their politics; namely, that most people don’t want to live in their world.
Weird is salt in an enormous wound, reminding them that the culture wars they have waged over generations regarding gender, sex, religion, race, education, music, literature, drugs, and on and on, have been lost. Trampled underfoot.
I suspect, though, that the power of the word goes much deeper than that, in ways that can barely be grasped rationally and comprehended consciously. The way in which weird is being deployed against Trump unleashes an entire etymological vibe that cuts deep into Trump’s self-image as a dominating, aggressive man.
Weird is deeply feminine. The entire history of the word is steeped in a rarefied mythology of feminine power, especially around the idea of prognostication. The way in which the word is currently being wielded by a political campaign headed by a strong, laughing, woman of colour is just about the most terrifying thing a man like Trump can imagine.
Whether he knows it or not.
This rather lovely Wikipedia entry on the origins of the word gives you some detail:
Wyrd is a noun formed from the Old English verb weorþan, meaning 'to come to pass, to become'. Adjectival use of wyrd developed in the 15th century, in the sense 'having the power to control destiny', originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, who in the Elizabethan period were detached from their classical background and given an English personification as fays.
…The modern English usage actually developed from Scots, in which beginning in the 14th century, to weird was used as a verb with the sense of 'to preordain by decree of fate'. This use then gave rise to the early nineteenth century adjective meaning 'unearthly', which then developed into modern English weird.
The modern spelling weird first appeared in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and was taken up in standard literary English starting in the 17th century. The regular form ought to have been wird, from Early Modern English werd. The replacement of werd by weird in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".
…Wyrd is a feminine noun, and its Norse cognate urðr, besides meaning 'fate', is the name of one of the deities known as Norns. For this reason, Wyrd has been interpreted by some scholars as a pre-Christian goddess of fate. Other scholars deny a pagan signification of wyrd in the Old English period, but allow that wyrd may have been a deity in the pre-Christian period. In particular, some scholars argue that the three Norns are a late influence from the three Moirai in Greek and Roman mythology, who are goddesses of fate.
Emphasis added.
The fact that this line of attack emerged organically, almost accidentally, at this point in the campaign helps explain its power. It avoids the overweening cleverness and humourlessness of most political communication and is, in this sense, turning Trump’s greatest weapon—his actual, post-political weirdness—against him.
Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon.
Kamala.
The effectiveness of "weird" , unlike "deplorables" (accurate but politically ill-judged) doesn't rely on applying it to Trump's white christian base, but rather to Trump and Vance personally. The effect of cultural change is that the charge can't be turned back on liberals for being gay, trans etc. in the way it would have been 20 or 30 years ago.
But "weird" has done its work now. Dems should move to "creepy" (even more specifically appropriate) and then, if possible to "disgusting". Disgust is the key motivator for rightwing voters, and needs to be turned against Trump in particular
Thanks for this Tim, it's a really interesting take. I've been thinking about "weird" all week. When Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters 'deplorable', she was painted as villain - the bully - in the same way as people who call out racism - think Marcia Langton during the Voice referendum - are criticised for calling out racism. The reason for this is that those with power - white people being racist towards black people as one example - will not tolerate those with less power holding them to account. They won't accept people challenging their authority. Same thing happens when women call out sexism, and even when women make allegations of rape. Look at how many men rushed to make Brittany Higgins the villain and Bruce Lehrmann the victim/hero. It is a form of weaponised victimhood. Weird, on the other hand, is a way to challenge power by taking the mickey out of it. Nothing destroys political capital as quickly as mockery. Remember when Tony Abbott put the nail in his political coffin by announcing he was bringing back knights and dames? He became a laughing stock and could not regain his political credibility/authority. I think (hope) this is what is happening with MAGAs being called "weird". No one wants to be the weird kid because the weird kid is shunned, the weird kid has no power! MAGAs only support Trump because he makes them feel powerful (legitimising their racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry etc.) You strip him of the power to give them power and they will go away quietly - again I hope!