The first time I was called weird was at primary school. I spoke and walked a little differently from other boys and liked playing with girls. That was enough. I was not unhappy, but once christened with the title, I was now “weird”, a sufficiently broad categorisation for everyone to understand. Luckily, there were a couple of other kids the same. Weird loves company. Swelled by minor ranks, I began to notice that everyone gets painted with the “weird” brush from time to time. If you’re fat. Weird. Wear glasses. Weird. Ginger hair, a lisp, a birthmark. All weird. Preferred books to TV? Practically a different species. Super-weird.
In the past two weeks, since reframing the US election with an astonishingly speedy turnaround of political fortune, Kamala Harris has successfully reversed this playground insult. The sharpest, most effective Democrat line of casual rage directed at the Republican ticket of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Project 2025, in a battle that suddenly has real heat, has been, “you’re weird”. On press releases, tweets, from her supporting Democrat cast. The line against Trump 2024: weirdness. It’s beginning to stick. The sharpness of the insult, in this instance, is that Trump/Vance present themselves as a median line to sanity. Their political mission is the voice of the common man (heavy emphasis on the gender).
