What’s in a Word: Weird

Tim Walz, the Governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s running mate, gave new meaning to an old word when he called Trump and Co, “weird.” Leave to a high school teacher and a football coach to come up with that word to describe Senator JD Vance and the creepy Republicans who lie, cheat, steal, and who would turn American-style democracy into an authoritarian state. “Weird” must have been a word that Walz heard when he taught high school and aimed to keep the cafeteria in some sort of order during raucous lunchtimes. It’s the sort of word that high schoolers would use to designate classmates who were over the line, crazy, and, well just plain “weird,” like writing the word “fuck” on their foreheads and going out on the football field without any clothes. “Weird” works better for me than “reactionary,” “populist” or anti-communist. It’s a word everyday Americans understand and grasp.

I have never thought of myself as “weird” though I did call myself a “freak” in the Sixties, as a way to distinguish myself from hippies. To be a freak was a compliment in some countercultural circles; it designated someone who didn’t fit-in to the American scheme of things, and the cultural norms, but who didn’t tie his or her identity to Tie-dye T-shirts, long hair and a vocabulary punctuated by words and phrases like “groovy,” and “dig.” JD Vance is definitely a weirdo in my book, a kind of throw-back to the racist, homophobic past that once threatened to dominate much of American society and that threatens to rear its ugly head once again and enforce rightwing conformity. I say let’s not vote for Trump and Vance; keep the weirdos out of the White House and off the levers of power.

The post What’s in a Word: Weird appeared first on CounterPunch.org.