Who Can Govern a Nation of Weirdos?
Is 'weird' a bad thing now?
The presidential campaign of VP Kamala Harris is leaning into a strategy labeling her opponents "weird."
Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies are emphasizing a new line of criticism against Republicans — branding Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as “weird.”
Democrats are applying the label with gusto in interviews and online, notably to Vance’s comments on abortion and his previous suggestion that political leaders who didn’t have biological children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.
Not to be outdone, the Trump campaign is countering with "we're not weird, you're weird"-type messaging. At a recent rally in Georgia, Vance said, "I think it’s especially weird when Kamala Harris comes to Atlanta, I believe came here to this… arena. Kamala Harris comes to Atlanta and talks with a fake Southern accent, even though she grew up in Canada, you can’t make it up, that’s pretty weird.”
Now admittedly, much has happened in MAGA-world that strikes me as pretty weird. Like this ...
And this ...
But the problem with what is happening in those photos isn't that the people are weird, it's that they're supporting or engaged in criminal behavior.
Progressives also embrace a lot of things that I think are pretty darn weird, like these things that happened last week at the Olympics opening ceremony ...
But I thought it was OK to be weird in America? Maybe it’s just my experience and you have a different take. I do live close to Austin, TX, a city which embraces the label with its "Keep Austin Weird" motto. And I grew up in Florida, a state which is a magnet for weirdos, one of the things I love about it.
More than that, I believe much of our Bill of Rights can be summarized as, "you can be as weird as you want to be as long as it's not too much of a burden on the rest of us." We all appear normal to everyone who is like ourself and can seem weird to those who are aren't. Or to paraphrase philosopher John Locke, everyone is normal to themself.* Those who embraced the Olympic mishmash of threesomes, the Last Supper, and Greek gods, and those who were critical of it are all weird to each other.
We are a nation of weirdos. Let us embrace and encourage our weirdness because in doing so we're also embracing pluralism. After all, what is the alternative? Sameness? No thanks.
AVC in The Washington Post!
AVC’s work was featured in The Washington Post yesterday along with some other people and organizations working to counter the authoritarian trends among MAGA-evangelicals.
Here is a snippet:
Leavitt is part of an increasingly organized national movement of mostly White evangelicals who, 50 years after the rise of the religious right, want a rebranding. They hope to overhaul a mix of religion and politics that many feel has been toxic and polarizing, and has led to a time when political scientists say the word “evangelical” often has meant “Republican.”
Yet a movement that exists in large part because of evangelicals’ embrace of Trump strikingly avoids focusing on him. Participants, even vociferous critics of the former president, say the whole goal is to disconnect evangelical political activism from partisanship of any kind. And with some expressing concerns about President Biden and Democrats, and many others lifelong Republicans, they say it makes strategic sense to veer around any particular candidate or party.
“Because [Trump] opened this can of worms, our mission will still be necessary no matter who wins in November,” said Napp Nazworth, an evangelical political scientist who leads one of the new groups working to combat religious extremism among fellow conservative Christians. He believes focusing on Trump right now would be counterproductive.
“This isn’t to downplay how deeply concerning another Trump presidency would be. I do think it’s a tremendous danger, and I’m worried about it. But this a generational project.”
Read the rest with this gift link.
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What Else We’re Reading
NYT Opinion: “Why Are There Neo-Nazis on the Streets of Nashville?”
I wish I could say I was shocked when neo-Nazis started parading around downtown Nashville last week, wearing shirts emblazoned with swastikas and the words “Pro-white.” I wish I could say I was shocked when they asked passers-by, “Are you a Jew?,” or when they terrified a child, or when they unfurled a hate-filled banner for interstate drivers to see, or when they threatened local businesses with violence. Even on Tuesday night, when they disrupted a meeting of the Metro Council, spouting “antisemitic, homophobic and racist diatribes,” according to the Nashville Scene’s Eli Motycka, I couldn’t say I was surprised.
Just a week earlier, a different group marched on our streets carrying Confederate flags, and in February white supremacists marched here to celebrate “the great white South.” As a blue city in a deep-red state, Nashville has become an appealing target for people who fear diversity. “Diversity means fewer white people,” read the fliers that last week’s marchers handed out. “Inclusion means exclusion of white people. Equity means stealing from white people.”
Fox News: “Riots erupt in UK after stabbing spree falsely blamed on asylum seeker”
Riots have broken out across the U.K. in recent days over false rumors spread online that an asylum seeker was responsible for a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event that left three girls dead and others wounded.
The suspect has been identified as 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Wales to Rwandan parents.
The Atlantic: “The Most Revealing Moment of a Trump Rally: A close reading of the prayers delivered before the former president speaks”
To understand the evolving psychology and beliefs of Trump’s religious supporters, I attempted to review every prayer offered at his campaign events since he announced in November 2022 that he would run again. Working with a researcher, I compiled 58 in total, the most recent from June 2024. The resulting document—at just over 17,000 words—makes for a strange, revealing religious text: benign in some places, blasphemous in others; contradictory and poignant and frightening and sad and, perhaps most of all, begging for exegesis.
The Dispatch: “Which Shepherds Are For Sale? A new book about evangelicalism is really about Donald Trump.”
Basham is right that many “shepherds” are, in fact, “for sale.” But the unintended irony—and fundamental flaw—of her book is that the corrupting money is not on the evangelical left, as she claims, but on the populist right. The rise of such organizations as Turning Point USA (and its subsidiary Turning Point Faith), the Epoch Times, and The Daily Wire itself—organizations that combined bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue—bear witness to the financial benefits of pandering to populists. Turning Point USA, for example, now hosts pastors conferences that feature evangelical MAGA apologists like Eric Metaxas, Sean Feucht, and Rob McCoy. A recent event in San Diego attracted 1,200 pastors. Turning Point USA’s annual revenue now tops $80 million.
If Basham is right that the evangelical movement is sick, she has misdiagnosed the true cause of the illness: departing from the Gospel to pursue ideology and political activism. The movement has moved well beyond the responsibilities of Christian citizenship in pursuit of realpolitik.
*Locke observed, “… everyone is orthodox to himself,” in “A Letter Concerning Toleration.”
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