Hella Weird and Hella Fascist

Democrats are running with Gov. Walz's use of "weird" to describe MAGA and Trump, but the attack is incomplete. They have to remind voters that they're also fascists who are a threat to democracy.

I’m from the Bay Area. Specifically, the East Bay. Most of us coastal dudes diss you with a laidback combination of sarcasm and bluntness that makes it perfectly clear we dislike you and your existence. We often add a “hella” to give it a Nor Cal punctuation. But this is a big country with many cultures who have their own passive aggressive ways of dressing down villains, jerks, and assholes. In the South, the sweetest, church-going aunty can hit you with a “bless your heart” while wearing a dress, a smile, and eyes filled with venom. You go up north and you’ll confront snow and Midwestern Nice where you won’t even realize you were mocked until the next day as you’re putting on your gloves and jacket. 

The 2024 election has apparently created a superhero teamup of the Bay and the Midwest thanks to Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota who casually gave Democrats an accessible and memorable attack on Donald Trump and Republicans: “Weird.”

Touring the cable news circuit to audition for the VP slot, Gov. Walz called out MAGA proposals as “weird ideas.” When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on how he landed on the catchy phrase, Walz, a former school teacher, said it was simply based on what he observed. As an example, he used Trump’s rants on Hannibal Lecter, sharks, and his inability to laugh. Well, “weird” has taken off. As of today, #weird, #WeirdAF, and #WeirdTrump was trending. 

Folks, there’s a lot of content. People shared photos of MAGA’s cult-like adoration of their criminal, twice impeached Emperor King. There are grown men and women with giant bandages on their ears at the RNC. Another photo shows Trump supporters proudly wearing a gold diaper with a red shirt that says “Real Men Wear Diapers.” There’s a picture of a man prostrating before a golden statue of Trump. Then there’s all the absurd and obscene comments that JD Vance has made about women, including calling them miserable cat ladies. Today we learned his alleged sexual fetishes include socks in addition to dolphins and couches. There’s also MAGA’s adulation of violent insurrectionists, which includes their embrace of the QAnon Shaman, and their pro-death worship of guns and AR-15 weapons which they wear as pins to Congress.

Every Democrat online and on television is now using the “weird” line to describe Trump and MAGA, and it’s working as an easily digestible and accessible way of undermining their ideology and political agenda. However, it’s still incomplete. We have to include that MAGA is hella weird and hella dangerous. This is a right-wing authoritarian movement that is openly advocating political violence to achieve a Trump dictatorship. I know a lot of weird people, but most aren’t traitors who want to demolish our democracy for a white Christian nationalist utopia. They haven’t overturned Roe and seek to take back women’s rights to the 19th century. They don’t believe that climate change is a “hoax” created by China. They didn’t stack the Supreme Court with Federalist-groomed extremists who want to deregulate corrupt industries but regulate women’s bodies. 

There’s a lot more at stake than just fending off hella weird people who have hella weird ideas about M&Ms and Disney cartoons. Democrats are beating “weird” to death and if it works with voters then so be it. But in addition to the weird, people have to inform voters that Trump didn’t back down from his recents comments about Christians not having to vote in four years if he’s elected. What does that mean? We don’t have to guess, because he’s the same man who promised to be a dictator for a day, and he praised the violent insurrectionists. He hasn’t accepted the 2020 election results. 

Governor Walz gets it. At the Harris rally, he added the all-important but rarely said F word out loud: Fascism. “The fascists depend on us going back, but we’re not afraid of weird people, " he said. “We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.” Since Harris and Democrats have followed his Midwestern Nice lead with “weird,” why not continue and add fascism to their repertoire.

After all, it’s the most accurate description of the MAGA threat we have to defeat in three months.