Summary
Former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz criticized Trump for economic chaos while taking personal responsibility for the situation during an MSNBC interview.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election — and we didn’t,” Walz told Chris Hayes. He called Trump the “worst possible business executive” and praised the Wall Street Journal’s editorial criticizing Trump’s tariff war.
Walz emphasized Democrats must offer something better, not just criticize Trump. Recently, he acknowledged a leadership void in the Democratic Party and admitted spending too much time combatting Trump’s false claims about immigrants.
It alienated me.
Most queer people identify with the label “weird”.
I also saw pro-corporate outlets praising it.
Oh see you said it alienated voters, plural.
What a ridiculous take.
I’m sure I’m not alone. America is a very pro-weird place.
That’s fair actually. When I first heard it without context, I also felt kind of alienated by it.
I think you can be weird in good and bad ways, context matters in this case. I think it’s fair to call out fascists for being “weird” in the sense that they are evil, crooked and - crucially - not relatable for the vast majority of voters. The “weird” thing is about the fascists not being “like us” - and thus very instinctively not trustworthy.
At the same time it’s also possible to be “weird” in an individualistic, relatable and validating way. Most people have insecurities or fears on some level and accepting this “weirdness” can be validating and actually show likeness. I think it’s very clear that Tim Walz didn’t mean it like this.
He didn’t call them weird out of the blue, but rather to sum up his other points about their unrelatable, evil behaviors. The message was something like: “The fascists are not real, believable people. They don’t seem driven by everyday worries like us. They don’t seem to have the same kind of feelings like us.”
And I think that is actually exactly the message that wins elections in this political climate. Debating the issues is getting you nowhere if your opponent has no actual beliefs to debate against. Calling them out for being fake people with no actual beliefs is a better strategy.
OK. First of all, words can have multiple meanings. Like the word “screw” or “bark” or “current”. We dont need to deprecate these multiple meanings in favor of just one. In conversation you pick the applicable meaning, and if you cant thats more a ‘you’ problem. I have enough problems of my own without taking yours on too. My use of the word doesnt affect you at all.
Secondly, I will stick with the normal usage that most people use. Language is an agreement between people around meaning, and the vast majority of the population doesnt agree that it has this new meaning. Sorry. Maybe in a few years “wierd” will have a more predominant meaning that you prefer, but today it does not, and again, even if it did, the word need not mean only one thing.
But it seems like your memories dont match your ability to show it now. Human memories are notoriously unreliable.
If you simply dont like that the word means what it means because you wish another meaning was more dominant, then I have a hard time feeling like you’ve much of a right to be aggreived at anyone about that. But by all means, be alienated if you want to. Just dont expect anyone else to make your alienation into a thing. Cheers.