Sunday, July 28, 2024

The Summer of "Weird"





But “weird” is what seems to be sticking, in part as an apparent simplification of warnings about the threat to democracy that Trump poses – which dominated 15 months of Biden’s re-election campaign.

Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz appears to have started the “weird” political trendline. He posted on X, “Say it with me: Weird,” in response to a video of Trump speaking about Lecter. Walz later followed up with “these guys are weird” to describe Trump and Vance.

During a Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Walz was asked if “weird” had replaced existential threat to democracy as a more effective attack strategy. The retired high school educator and football coach replied: “It’s an observation because being a schoolteacher I see a lot of things.”

Walz added that a second Trump presidency could indeed put women’s lives at risk over reproductive rights after three of his US supreme court appointees helped eliminate federal abortion rights in 2022. He also said Trump could end other constitutional liberties – but musing about his embodiment of a threat to democracy “gives him way too much power,” Walz argued.

A KEY observation! "You're not as bad as you think you are, Trumpie. You can't overthrow our democracy! A person who thinks that is just WEIRD!" "Weird" minimizes power without minimizing the real threats he poses.

"Trumpie, you told your Christian friends you're going to "fix it" so that this is the last election they'd have to vote in? I would have thought being arrested four times in a year and convicted of 34 felonies would have taught you that there are severe limits on your "fix it" powers."

...

“Listen to the guy. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and whatever crazy thing pops into his mind,” Walz said.

You could play a laugh track to Trumpie's speeches!

“I think we give him way too much credit."

"If you just ratchet down some of the scariness and just name it what it is.  

"Have you seen the guy laugh? It seems very weird to me that an adult can go through six-and-a-half years of being in the public eye and when he laughs it’s at someone – not with them.”

I HAVE MADE THAT SAME POINT FROM AS FAR BACK AS 2016! HE DOES NOT LAUGH! HE HAS NO SENSE OF HUMOR! Calling someone "weird" is telling them you don't take them that seriously. You're laughing at them, and the one thing autocrats and proto-crats cannot abide is being made fun of. It emasculates them.

“That’s very weird behavior,” Walz explained on State of the Union. “I don’t think you call it anything else. It’s simply what we’re observing.”