The Democrats Are Playing High-School Games | Opinion

The unofficial motto of Austin, Texas, is “Keep Austin Weird.” In my experience, the unofficial motto of the average high school is “Get him, he’s different!” I prefer the first slogan.
The Democratic Party has thrown down on a campaign of accusing Republicans of being “weird,” “creepy,” and the opposite of “team normal.” Vice President Kamala Harris chose the originator of this theme—Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota—as her running mate. Why has weirdness become a political slogan?
The weirdness campaign is an open attempt to enforce the psychology of teenage conformity. “He’s weird? Wait, will people think I’m weird? I can’t be weird!” It is a transparent ploy to leverage the fear of being ridiculed and excluded, one of the deepest concerns of the young. For a presidential campaign, it is sad and unserious.
The accusation is empty, but that is its hook. If it had any content, it could be refuted. But weirdness is just a feeling. It can’t be identified and can’t be argued against. In that sense it has a certain political genius. Watching it succeed reminds me of grade school when I wondered how bullies cowed people you wouldn’t think they could, but somehow it worked.
In the new narrative, Republicans are not only weird but also “creepy.” That has a sexual connotation—they are a bit odd, with embarrassing predilections. Again, nothing specific, nothing that can be refuted. Just jokes about couches or suggestions that conservatives are too interested in what kids are doing. Any discussion of the accusation merely adds to the awkwardness.
Creepy is also a manifestation of the nameless fears of our young generation. Many things are creepy to them. A surprising number of situations make them feel anxious, uncomfortable, or unsettled. Many of their teachers have normalized the belief that ideas or speech alone can be harmful to others, amplifying the voice in their head warning them to conform.
The last thing the young want to be associated with is the weird or the creepy, whether it is fictional or not. To exploit that fear to elect a president is a low point in our manipulative politics, but to recognize the ploy is also to inoculate us against it. In Left Is Not Woke, an important book on the distinctions between the liberal and the woke, Susan Neiman writes that “the fear of embarrassment should itself be embarrassing, the sort of thing that haunted your adolescence but ought to be left behind.”
Beyond high school it becomes clear that the heart of education is walking one’s own path rather than bending the knee in conformity. I want my students to embrace being weird. I hope they allow themselves to stand separate from the herd, distinct, perhaps even authentic. Especially when the normal is demonstrably bad. Universities have normalized believing that your demographics are your destiny. That it is virtuous to claim oppression. That the West is bad, and America is inherently racist. That the founders of our nation were too sinful to be listened to now. That sex is easily malleable, race is absolutely fixed by public perceptions, and morality is mostly relative.
If those beliefs are normal, I have no interest in normality. As Bari Weiss of The Free Press phrased it, this is the time to “be comfortable about being unpopular.” American exceptionalism used to be a starting point of our national identity—that our nation was founded in rebellion, believes in the dignity of the individual, and upholds the liberty to choose a personal vision. Too many Americans now reject any distinction which might make us weird or allow others to accuse us of being dangerously different. Let’s make America weird again.
Morgan Marietta is dean of the Center for Economics, Politics & History at the University of Austin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.