It’s a fixation because it definitely seems to be working, at least so far. And in my personal opinion it’s working for three reasons:
It makes the average voter actually stop and think. The problem is that at this point most of the real, meaningful criticisms you can make of Trump sound overblown, or like old news. Calling him a fascist and would-be dictator is true, but it sounds alarmist. They treat it as hyperbole, not something to take seriously. Calling him a rapist just gets treated as “Throw it on the pile.” Like, at this point, what powerful male figures aren’t? There were a whole bunch of sexual assault allegations that came up against Joe Biden in 2020, for example. Corrupt? “Every politician is corrupt” they’ll say.
But weird? Weird cuts through all that, because they can judge it for themselves. People have a usable metric for weird. And weird is contagious. If you vote for a corrupt politician that doesn’t make you corrupt, it just reflects the broken nature of the system. But if you vote for a weird politician, doesn’t that mean you’re weird too? Weird gives people pause. They step back, actually look at the behaviour they’re seeing, and for at least some people (remember, elections are won and lost on very small margins; you’re looking for hit rates of a few percent on any attack) they have that little lightbulb moment, like “Yeah, this is weird isn’t it?” It’s an appeal to the deeply puritan deeply conformist sensibilities that the average American has grown up firmly rooted in. That stuff has a powerful hold on people.
It really, really upsets right wingers, because their entire worldview is built around bullying, attacking, and ultimately destroying anything that deviates from their idea of “Normal”. To us, being weird is whatever. Maybe it’s even cool. To them, it’s an existential threat. If they’re not the norm, then everything about their worldview crumbles.
This, in turn, creates a feedback loop. The more they get upset about it, the more weird they act, and the more the average person sees that behavior and thinks “Really? These guys want to run the country?” Trump being a total freak about Kamala’s racial identity is a great example of this. It’ll play well with hardcore racists, but to a lot of people it’s more likely to come across as desperately out of touch. Like, what the fuck does it matter to the price of gas if Kamala is Black or Indian? What does that have to do with my healthcare bills, or my job security?
Being “gentle” is exactly why it’s so effective. There’s a perceived dignity in standing strong in the face of a relentless assault. Weathering a storm of vicious attacks makes you look powerful. But when Republicans absolutely fall apart at this most gentle of insults, it has exactly the opposite effect. It shows how pathetically fragile they are. They’ve called us weirdos and freaks for decades, and we wore it with pride. But they are utterly incapable of doing the same. It’s the best parts of the high road and the low road all in one.
Is it really, really stupid that this is what works? Yes, absolutely. But you fight the war you’re in, not the one you want to be in.
Weathering a storm of vicious attacks makes you look powerful. But when Republicans absolutely fall apart at this most gentle of insults, it has exactly the opposite effect. It shows how pathetically fragile they are.
Republicans are the biggest snowflakes there ever was.
It’s a fixation because it definitely seems to be working, at least so far. And in my personal opinion it’s working for three reasons:
But weird? Weird cuts through all that, because they can judge it for themselves. People have a usable metric for weird. And weird is contagious. If you vote for a corrupt politician that doesn’t make you corrupt, it just reflects the broken nature of the system. But if you vote for a weird politician, doesn’t that mean you’re weird too? Weird gives people pause. They step back, actually look at the behaviour they’re seeing, and for at least some people (remember, elections are won and lost on very small margins; you’re looking for hit rates of a few percent on any attack) they have that little lightbulb moment, like “Yeah, this is weird isn’t it?” It’s an appeal to the deeply puritan deeply conformist sensibilities that the average American has grown up firmly rooted in. That stuff has a powerful hold on people.
This, in turn, creates a feedback loop. The more they get upset about it, the more weird they act, and the more the average person sees that behavior and thinks “Really? These guys want to run the country?” Trump being a total freak about Kamala’s racial identity is a great example of this. It’ll play well with hardcore racists, but to a lot of people it’s more likely to come across as desperately out of touch. Like, what the fuck does it matter to the price of gas if Kamala is Black or Indian? What does that have to do with my healthcare bills, or my job security?
Is it really, really stupid that this is what works? Yes, absolutely. But you fight the war you’re in, not the one you want to be in.
Republicans are the biggest snowflakes there ever was.