As a genuine weirdo, I don't mind giving up the title

Call me "eccentric." Call me "quirky." It's FINE.

Get a load of these fuckin’ weirdos

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz held their first rally as the presumed Democratic Presidential running mates Tuesday night, and…hold up, what is this? It’s a strange feeling of lightness, a sense that maybe things might be on their way to turning around. Is it…hope??

Nah, nah, I don’t want to go that far. There are a lot of very smart people on the internet who have made it their life’s mission to remind other people that hope is for suckers, and that the only way you won’t be disappointed in anything is to live your life in a constant state of smug cynicism. But I will say that it was…nice to see a political rally that seemed joyful and light-hearted, instead of a bunch of scowling assholes in ill-fitting suits airing out a long list of grievances. It was…good to see the future of America spoken about in terms of “we,” and not endless, sweaty loyalty pledges to the Only Man Who Will Save Us.

Oh, fuck it: it gave me hope.

I was already feeling pretty good about Harris, and now I feel great after her savvy choice of Midwestern Dad Walz as her running mate. Despite Republicans’ enduring belief that Democrats are godless Communists who gleefully suck on the government teat, Walz all but embodies American values: hard work, dedication, and equality for all. No one is going to say that a veteran turned teacher and high school football coach doesn’t represent “real America.” You can tell that Republicans know this, because as of right now all they have to mock him with is that (a) he’s overweight (as opposed to Trump, that epitome of glowing masculinity and good health), (b) he got a DUI more than 30 years ago (I mean, come on, that’s way worse than just raping some broad), and (c) he thinks schoolchildren should have access to free feminine hygiene products (my tax dollars shouldn’t go towards stopping girls from bleeding all over themselves in front of their classmates¹).

Walz sounded good to me as a potential Vice-Presidential candidate even before Harris selected him, for one reason (and not because he’s a Steely Dan fan, though that helps): it’s because he’s the one who came up with referring to this current breed of Republicans as “weird.”

I grew up weird at a time when it behooved you to be as much like everyone else as possible. That’s not a point of pride for me: while I do think it probably helped build character, at the time I would have given just about anything to be perceived by my peers as “normal.” It wasn’t an affectation. It wasn’t a choice. I simply did not know how not to be weird and awkward, and when I tried to fake it, it ended up looking even weirder. I don’t think anyone admired my “individuality.” I think they mostly felt sorry for me, and God knows I felt sorry for myself.

By the time I got to high school, I didn’t so much lean into my weirdness as just give up on trying to be otherwise, figuring that maybe at some point I’d meet other people who might get me. I did, eventually, and it helped a lot. When you get to a certain age (old), you stop giving a shit about fitting in. My kid is grown, I don’t have to worry about “embarrassing” her (not that I ever really did, she’s weird too), everyone who knows me accepts me for who I am, the kind of person who reads mortuary supply catalogs for fun. I am now comfortably weird.

When Tim Walz describes people like Donald Trump and JD Vance as “weird,” I understand what he means. It’s not the quirky kind of weird, like someone building their own theremin. It’s the “tearing the wings off of flies” kind of weird. There’s simply no other word to describe Trump’s recent obsession with referring to “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” a fictitious serial killer (who is not, in fact, dead, according to canon), whenever he starts babbling about immigration. No one seems to know what he means by this. His insiders claim it’s a joke, but offer no explanation as to what the punchline is. It’s been speculated that Trump is simply confusing the kind of “asylum” migrants seek with the kind for insane people, which, if true, is the saddest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard.

Whatever it is, Trump has latched onto the phrase “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” like a dog with a bone, repeating it at every stop on his endless campaign tour. Whatever he thinks it means, to him it’s a very smart, clever thing to say that, most importantly, drives the radical left crazy. It’s weird.

There’s no other word to describe JD Vance’s obsession with “childless cat ladies,” who he speaks about in the same disparaging tone someone would use to discuss heroin dealers. Women who have made the informed decision to not have children are Public Enemy #1 to JD, and a critical danger to the future of America. JD thinks that not even rape or incest are valid reasons to require an abortion: ladies, it’s for the good of the country that you have those incest babies! Just don’t expect any kind of support net for prenatal care, childcare, or feeding and sheltering them. He hasn’t come out yet and specifically said that he envisions a future where women are held down and forcibly impregnated, but you can see in his little piggy eyes that he’s thought about it, and that’s very fucking weird.

Matt Gaetz did something to his face that makes him now look like a puzzled Vulcan. Weird. Ted Cruz has picked public fights with Elmo and Big Bird. Weird. Ron DeSantis looks and acts like an alien wearing human skin. Weird. Jordan Peterson once claimed that drinking a glass of apple juice caused him to go without sleep for an entire month. Weird. Former America’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gave a press conference unaware that hair dye was oozing down his face like chocolate sauce. Weird. Scott “Dilbert” Adams has claimed at various times to have cured himself of several incurable diseases, that he would be assassinated by leftists if Biden was elected President, and that he taught A.I. the concept of hypnotism². Weird. One of the most popular conservative Twitter pundits calls himself “Cat Turd.” Weird. I don’t have enough space to list all the ways Elon Musk is weird. Tucker Carlson has pushed “testicle tanning” as a way for men to reclaim their masculinity. Incredibly weird.

And of course, no one is weirder than typical Trump supporters, who, following (admittedly unfounded) accusations that he wears adult diapers, began showing up at rallies also wearing diapers, later swapped out for comically large bandages on their ears after the (questionable) injury he supposedly received during an assassination attempt, which magically healed itself in about a week. To compare, this would be like if George H.W. Bush supporters all made a point of vomiting on someone in public as a show of solidarity after he barfed on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. But they didn’t, because this kind of shit is unique to Trump supporters. They’re very weird.

A few people have complained that weird is too soft, and that what these people actually should be described as is dangerous. See, the problem with that is that they like being described as “dangerous.” Dangerous means scary. It means unpredictable. It means you have to step carefully around them. They want you to think that way about them. “Weird” is better because it tells the truth: they’re not normal. Oh, they think they are. People like Trump, and particularly Vance, who will coast on that “I’m from real America” shit for the rest of his natural-born life, think they’re the defenders of normal American values, and that the real weirdos are drag queens and people who think that kids should learn about slavery.

So I’m fine with giving up “weird” as a description for myself, for a little while at least. I know the difference. I know that when people describe me as “weird,” they don’t mean they’re pretty sure I’ve had sexual relations with a couch, or that I might be the Zodiac Killer. I’m the fun kind of weird, they’re not, and my best hope is that, come November, we show them what happens to that kind of weird.

1. In actuality, the argument here is that, because said hygiene products are available to boys too, it’s more evidence that liberals have an agenda to make every single person under the age of 18 trans by 2052.

2. He followed this incredibly random statement up with a note that he would not be explaining how he did such a thing, because such information was “too dangerous.”