The Meaning of "Weird"

One of the more ubiquitous lines in the political discourse in recent weeks has been the idea that former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen J. D. Vance, are "weird."

Many on the right have been scornful of this, insisting that the real "weird" is the policy agenda of the progressive wing of the Democrat party, a wing well-represented not only by Vice President Kamala Harris but also by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who first popularized this line of attack. To back this up, they'll mention a former Biden administration staffer like Sam Brinton, a biological man who identifies as queer and regularly dresses as a woman. This response from conservatives, however understandable, misses the point of why Walz's critique lands and has proven as effective as it seemingly has so far. Indeed, better understanding why Walz's critique lands so well (and lands so well coming from him specifically) may be enormously instructive for Christians in contemporary America.

To understand it, you need to get behind the question itself and ask how the idea of "normal" functions in American life. "Weird" is not being defined according to Christian moral ideas. That is the faulty assumption on the right amongst those protesting this line of attack.

Rather, "weird" in this usage means behaving in ways that are disruptive to a person's own autonomy and right to self-create. The absolute autonomy of the individual is the default assumption most Americans have about "freedom" and it is just as common on the right as the left—thus the ascent of "barstool conservatism." Just look at how Dave Portnoy, something of the archetype for that sort of right wing ideology talks about children and family:

The right to autonomy is the sacrosanct right in American life. Thus practicing that right in a way that doesn't harm anyone is not "weird"; what is "weird" is infringing on someone else's autonomy. So if a biologically male nuclear engineer wants to dress as a woman, the attitude of most Americans will be "hey, you do you." That isn't "weird" in their eyes. The latent point here is that there is a sharp conflict between how one quintessential American idea has come to be understood—individual freedom—and Christian ideas about the human person.

In the more specific context of the current political campaign, "weird" means something like "the loud, eccentric uncle who yelled at you last Thanksgiving over some political story you'd never heard of before and ruined your family's holiday." I suspect the reason it has stuck since the selection of Sen. Vance is because "weird" sticks even more to him than it does Trump.

Trump is sometimes genuinely funny, and he sometimes has a kind of dotty grandfatherly sense about him. Because of that, his rude, uncomfortable, or otherwise alienating moments sometimes can be made to seem less bad. "Funny socially awkward grandpa" is a thing most people can recognize, after all, and Trump can be framed in those terms for people.

Vance, however, is not funny. He is also relatively young and comes across as belligerent, aggressive, and rude in his speech. When Donald Trump says something inappropriate, it can be spun as basically the politician version of the old "s*** my dad says," Twitter account. When Vance does the same thing, it comes off as much more alienating precisely because he is younger and more energetic. What is funny when said by the harmless awkward grandpa is menacing when it comes from an energetic, capable young man who seems to mean it.

Vance is "weird" then for this reason: The unforgivable sin in America today is to make people uncomfortable in ways they can't ignore or avoid. When the vice presidential nominee speaks the way Vance does, that will both make many uncomfortable and it cannot be ignored. Because we believe that identity is largely a matter of individual choice, self-narration, and self-creation, we also believe that we should leave each other alone as we figure those questions out. Vance comes off as someone who will violate that right and is, therefore, "weird."

On a humane level, this value system that defines "weird" in that way is quite repugnant and horrifying. We aren't meant to figure out such hard and personal questions on our own. Walz's popular mantra "mind your own damn business," (itself a rather brilliant, if deeply dishonest, cooption of Reaganite concepts around meddling government) is often in practice quite a horrible way to live.

Certainly it is not, as a default posture, a recognizably Christian mode of life. Christians might leave one another alone in certain contexts precisely as an expression of love. But "mind your own business" as a value system is foreign to Christian habits of thought. The Good Samaritan parable is full of people who minded their own business, after all, but they were the villains. The one who loves is able to love precisely because he recognizes that "mankind is my business!" as Dickens would put it: "The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business."

Moreover, defining identity in this way tacitly suggests that people who struggle to engage in acts of self-creation have a life not wholly worth living. That is a vile thing to say, of course. But it is also a very obvious entailment of abortion protections passed in Minnesota by Gov. Walz, who encourages Minnesotans to mind their own business while his party clears the way for unwanted babies born alive to be abandoned and left to die. "Mind your own business," indeed.

Yet we should be honest here: Monstrous as the idea is, it is a core notion we have in this country, articulated most forcefully and clearly by retired SCOTUS Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy in his Casey opinion and it is one that many of our neighbors hold to almost instinctively. Walz is not saying anything that Justice Kennedy did not first encourage and endorse.

To return to the more general point, progressive policies, including quite robust support for the most extreme edges of the sexual revolution, do not look "weird" to a large portion of Americans because for the most part Americans don't struggle to take a live and let live attitude toward individual lifestyle choices. We are very good at minding our own business—what else could explain the rampant poverty and mental illness that racks our nation? This behavior comes quite naturally to Americans, who do not want others involving themselves in their business after all. It's the thread that unites a figure like Walz, at least Walz on the campaign stump, and a figure like Portnoy.

The choice presented to us this November is a choice between those who would argue for the freedom to destroy yourself (and, in some cases, destroy others) in the name of "minding your own business" and those who seek to dominate, with little to no account of a commonly shared good, little to no love for the neighbor who is unlike them, and little to no awareness of how fruitless and ineffective their style will ultimately be.

In such a context, we desperately need to rediscover a different kind of "weird" Christianity, the kind that will not quietly reconcile itself to America's twin evils of malignant neglect and hateful narrowness, the kind that is willing to stand with the Samaritan who did not mind his own damn business and for that reason reached out in love toward a person radically unlike himself. Should we fail in this, our nation of Marleys and Scrooges will continue to forge the ponderous chains that will weigh them down both now and in the life to come.