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Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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i really hope they move past this "we need to use gentle soft language in our criticisms of rapist convicted felon con man trump" bullshit
Using hard language is seen by his supporters as an attack on them all and drives them into the defensive making Trump stronger. Calling him weird sidesteps that reaction and deflates Trump, especially if he launches a weird rambling speech as a response.
i see the point you're trying to make.. to think, all it took to beat trump this whole time was mollycoddling him and his followers....
like they've been doing for almost 10 years...
No, it's making fun of him. The trick that always worked on him and nobody has been using lately is simply making fun of him. Do you remember how defensive he got about all the talk about him having "small hands"? That shit drove him nuts. This bruises his ego, and the man is all ego...
It turns out that the schoolyard name-calling tactics are very effective on him, but Democrats mostly feel they're above that.
The previous approach was to focus on how he's a dangerous fascist, which his supporters were able to spin as strength. Focusing on how he's the kind of off-putting creep that you instinctively cover your drink as he walks by can't be spun that way.
i see that now, and it makes perfect sense in hindsight. if i had kids, they wouldn't be allowed anywhere near him
but also, fascism
Buddy, they think literally everything is an attack on them.
Or have you not seen the article about Christians getting upset about the Olympics because some drag version of The Last Supper (only it was actually based on a Dutch painting portraying Bacchanalia, but that would take knowing more than 3 famous paintings, so forget it).
It's time to stop making choices based on how this group of highly irrational people might react.
The hard core will never change their mind and be offended. The people that matter the most are the ones still capable of thinking by themselves, so I can understand not pushing them away.
And you have evidence that these people exist (in an amount that is not statistically insignificant)?
That is language that Trump detractors like but doesn't convince anyone new. If someone was supporting Trump, they aren't going to be convinced by you re-stating that he's a felon. Everybody knows that. If they support him at this point, they don't care or they think it is an unfair attack because the arrest was political in whatever way. "Weird" strikes to his character which is at least a value judgement that you can reassess, and also relative to who he is running against.
You went easy on the lying treasonous, traitorous coward.
i genuinely shake my head sometimes at democrats' strategy. "weird" is not a bad thing to many many people. it's a term that's ridiculously easy for someone to say "yea. i'm weird. so?"
and then what? "so, THERE!!!"?
recall also that one of the most D cities in a deep red state, austin, celebrates their weirdness.
ffs democrats. get your shit together
edit: i hope I'm wrong, and "he's weird" actually does something, and I'll be more than happy to eat crow if it catches on and has a positive effect
I'm one of those people, but fascists are REALLY not.
Seeing themselves as the only "normal" ones and declaring everything outside of the norm scary and evil is how they keep marginally functional in spite of enormous cognitive dissonance.
To a fascist, weird = abnormal = the OTHERS = evil
it's not cognitive dissonance, it's doublethink. there is no 'dissonance.' it seems insane, but they absolutely believe in 2 or more contradictory things with absolutly no qualms about it. they see no problem with bleating about "family values" while voting for a rapist adulterer with pornstar hush money problems.
It evolved from one to the other. It's like the brain developed their ability for double think as a response to the constant bombardment of cognitive dissonance. So instead of paying attention to that little ping of "hey, wait a second," and having to make a semi-consciuos choice to ignore it, their brains straight up skip that part in order to reduce psychic pain.
It's kind of insane just how on the money Orwell was.
I remember every time I'd read 1984 after the first, I would get to the part where he has that long, dry, treatise on the power of language as a means of control, and I used to dread it (skipped it usually after the first read through). It always seemed boring and just completely far-fetched. Yeah the whole world-building aspect of doublespeak and doublethink was great, but surely humans aren't that susceptible to being controlled through language...
Welp. About that...
it's not just words they're trying to eliminate, but also everything else that someone can use as a form of expression. ever notice how republicans generally dress the same, act the same, etc-- there's a strictly defined idealized image of the "true american man (or woman--nothing in between)" they adhere to, and anything that doesn't look like that is implied to be "other." one of THEM, not one of US.
republicans push for sameness, another concept used as a core feature of society from another dystopian book (The Giver).
Absolutely. Another Hallmark of fascism.
It's like they've been using Eco's Ur-Fascism as a guidebook and checklist rather than a warning/description.
Btw if anyone hasn't read the (very short, like 8 page PDF it's worth it trust me) essay "Ur-Fascism" by Umberto Eco, you really should. Hey look here's a PDF of it: https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Eco-urfascism.pdf
Only takes a few minutes, but just does an amazing job outlining what fascism is (with first hand accounts of growing up in fascist Italy), why it's a nebulous concept that is hard to pin down, then does the impossible by pinning it down using 14 "defining features" of fascism, and wow are they eye opening...
Things were different min 1995, and Eco believed that it wasn't possible to form a coherent government around all 14 because they can be at odds with one another at times. According to Eco, only one of said features is needed in order to consider a state (or person, etc.).
Again, as Eco could not have foreseen, turns out you can go for the high score of 14/14. Unfortunately. Then again, I'm not sure I would ever say that the fascism of maga is "coherent". But that's just another plus for them. But seriously, go read it
Anyway here's the link to the PDF again. It's a must-read: https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Eco-urfascism.pdf
Well duh, who could know better about family values than one who has had 3 official families and worked with beautiful women and girls so much? /s
The thing is, normalcy bias prevents people from listening when you call them rapists, fascists, totalitarians, and all those other things they actually are. But "weird"? Weird is obvious, and it cuts into the Republican brand to the bone.
Trump's whole appeal is based on a fiction of him representing the common man; the "blue collar billionaire". More than that, the Republican party has built their entire brand for decades on a sort of radical normalcy, on being the voice of the "silent majority", on being the representatives of "real America" against those latte liberal elites from the coasts. "Weird" takes all the wind out of those sails. They don't actually represent middle America; they're way too out there for that. And it's long past time somebody said so.
And I sincerely doubt Austinites are going to flock to Trump because of the "weird" thing. Austinites are the kind of weird that Republicans have been trying to suppress for decades, and they know it.
Yes, Austin, known for its republican base. /s
Agreed. But if this gets more young people or low information voters to the polls, so be it.
I'd like to see something to address his wannabe dictator tendencies
there are SO many things they could attack, and they choose "let's call him weird"
i get more annoyed the more i think about it
It does make a little sense, when you consider that one of the goals is to demotivate fascists from voting at all.
Straight facts don't dissuade fascists. They have every argument and deflection in their back pocket ready to go. Trump is a rapist/racist/traitor? Fake news, fake news, fake news.
But... Trump is weird? That hits them right in the ego. They're not a principled policy-based voting base, it's a cult of personality. Even if they want to say he's NOT weird, it's not a fact, it's an opinion. So all it takes is showing a bunch of really strange gaffes, irrelevant rants, and incoherent ramblings, and you just might get would-be Trump voters to feel too embarrassed to vote for him.
It's a long shot, but based on what I've been seeing, it appears to be effective so far. We'll have to wait and see.
My guess is Harris' polling of the younger demographic is showing they're fed up with the vicious rhetoric that's been bounced around. So words that don't cut most people - but would annoy the hell out of Trump - are used ... if for no other reason than it becomes this joke that can be laughed at vs. enraging people.
Maybe your annoyance (understandable) is part of the point? There are so many things to attack, so many legitimate concerns, that simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters, let alone the obvious shock to Trump's vanity.
It's not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it's harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.
Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with. It's uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird. I think they're on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.
I'm sorry, I just don't see it. If, 10+ years later you don't already fucking know this guy is "weird" (to say the least), then hearing (more) Democrats say it won't change your mind about anything.
Have you met these people? They embraced the term "deplorable" because they thought it was cute/clever.
10 years of telling my parents in various ways that this man is "weird" (among many other, much worse, things), and suddenly they're gonna give a shit because Kamala Harris said it? Nah.
This is weak shit from the Democrats. Disappointed but not at all surprised.
I get where you're coming from, and you make a point with "deplorable" being meme-ified into some twisted identity thing. But I also think the collective "basket of deplorables" doesn't apply here. Harris isn't calling Trump supporters weird; she's calling just him weird.
This does a few things: it keeps the focus on Trump, allowing supporters to distance themselves from the statement. The lack of attachment to any particular action, statements, belief, etc. lets a person think about it "nakedly." Why is he weird?
Yes, we both know why, but this flips the script from the last 10 years from "here are various reasons why Trump is horrifying and could also be considered weird" to "Trump is weird, I'll let you chew on that."
It's all in the delivery. Stating what he is without explaining why.
I think it's worth returning a bit of agency to people in general to assess how they feel about that statement and come to their own conclusions. Edit: Especially because many of these people have attached themselves to Trump because they feel they have no agency otherwise. Could this be a means to cracking through the brainwashed masses? Something akin to, "wait, why am I idolizing this guy again?" Wishful thinking, yes, but being"plain weird" is such a broadly sweeping generalization that something should organically pop up in trump supporters' brains, without our prompting.
I guess we'll just have to see, but these aren't people who "chew" on things in that way. If they were capable and willing to think critically and rationally about this, they wouldn't be there in the first place.
These people aren't just going to suddenly become rational overnight about their cult-like devotion to a man that they essentially worship as a demigod, because this time you said "weird" instead of "fascist."
Principled criticisms, accurate names like Fascist, Dictator, joke names like Don Poorleone and Orange man that we've used before work with Democrats but cause the Trump cult to turn their brains off.
Weird might be just the word that plants the seedling of doubt in a handful of Trump supporters' minds.
To be fair, they haven't stopped using hard language either. They released a statement after his "you won't have to vote ever again" rambling with very direct warnings about how dangerous he is and has been. "Weird" is just another line of attack, hoping to cut in a way that might resonate with some more than the (imo rightful) high stakes talk.
Fucking seriously... "He's just plain weird"? Fucking really?
Of all of the adjectives, "weird"??