Democratic politicians and pundits have just lately begun throwing this insult at Republican presidential contender Donald Trump and his operating mate, JD Vance: “bizarre.” As a scholar who has made my tutorial profession partially by celebrating weirdness, I object. Trump and Vance don’t deserve the praise.
The bizarre must be understood as no matter is strikingly opposite to the atypical, predictable and readily understandable. It’s a distinction with the traditional. Contemplate blades of grass. Though no two are precisely the identical, their variation retains to sure limits. However right here’s a blade that splits into three midway up, with every finger curling round in a loop. Why would it not do this? Now that’s a bizarre blade of grass!
Not too long ago, my household and I visited Hayao Miyazaki’s Ni-Tele Actually Large Clock in Tokyo. What a bizarre object: It looms from the aspect of a skyscraper, that includes mannequins and large fowl claws. When midday strikes, one claw opens to disclose a smiling solar, a fish tail bangs a gong and a bell-headed model enacts a goofy dance. Nature additionally provides loads of weirdness, such because the miraculously skinny, Seussian piles of stone in Utah’s Bryce Canyon, the surreal mineral-deposit terraces of Pamukkale in Turkey and gloriously weird fish and fungi world wide.
The Democrats are getting mileage from calling Trump and Vance “bizarre.” The phrase has been used sufficient by allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and her presidential marketing campaign to obtain substantial information protection as a political technique, even reward for its success. The resonance of this technique appears to mirror a widespread misunderstanding of who is basically bizarre. The time period ought to conjure the man who rides by means of Berkeley on a unicycle, sporting a high hat; the enterprise faculty standout who drops out to stay on an natural seed farm; the center faculty child who plasters their bed room with posters of squids and snails, ignoring popular culture in favor of a deep fascination with mollusk biology. Every is, in their very own method, a surprise of nature, and the world is richer for having them.
Trump’s and Vance’s conduct, however, displays one thing extra troubling. Their views towards girls and reproductive rights, for instance — demeaning the previous and opposing the latter — are inappropriate and deservedly within the minority. However these views, sadly, usually are not uncommon sufficient to be really bizarre. In actual fact, in modern America, Trump and Vance are regular, predictable and readily understood. They’re atypical, self-serving politicians, conforming to the calls for of those that have rewarded their conduct.
And even when these views have been extra uncommon, that will not be the supply of those politicians’ badness. Sure, some uncommon issues are unhealthy, equivalent to serial killings. And Trump does have his head-scratching moments — take into account the frequent references to fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter on the marketing campaign path. However issues and persons are not unhealthy as a result of they’re bizarre. It critically misrepresents the character of Trump’s and Vance’s departure from liberal values to deal with weirdness as their headline flaw.
What’s it to be liberal? It’s to tolerate, and even to have fun, others with completely different values and practices. Liberal mother and father allow their kids to make selections apart from their very own. Liberal societies are pluralistic and egalitarian, not requiring residents to stick to mainstream tradition and faith.
There are at all times some gardeners who would like to mow down the bizarre blade of grass, and a few persons are equally made uncomfortable by others they regard as bizarre. These are the folks for whom “bizarre” is the choicest insult. Within the conformist hellscape of center faculty (or not less than of some center colleges), bands of lookalike youngsters who prize their normality — much more, their being perceived as regular — taunt the children who don’t simply slot in, such because the mollusk lover. I used to be insulted as “bizarre” at school myself. However I grew to embrace my very own weirdness and weirdness normally. I spotted that to make use of “bizarre” as an insult is implicitly to just accept a conformist worldview — a worldview that devalues fairly than appreciates distinction and novelty.
Our Democratic politicians and pundits are, and must be, higher than that. The Democrats pleasure themselves on being the occasion of range, on accepting folks with a variety of worldviews, cultures, sexual orientations, life experiences and pursuits, on making room for nonconformists and people exterior the mainstream.
Utilizing “bizarre” as a time period of mockery, as if that’s one of the best descriptor of Trump and Vance, could also be politically advantageous proper now. But it surely denigrates the really bizarre. It’s extra correct to name Trump and Vance liars, authoritarians, conscienceless political shape-shifters and fallacious on coverage. These are ample, and extra applicable, causes to vote towards them.
Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside and writer of “The Weirdness of the World.”
