Weird, Weirder, Weirdest

There are lots of great things to say about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and why he will likely make a phenomenal running mate for Kamala Harris. In addition to all of that, however, he has the added distinction of apparently having popularized the weird meme as an all-purpose descriptor for the strange, dangerous, and wildly out-of-the-mainstream views being propounded particularly by his now opponent, GOP candidate JD Vance.

Vance is not the only candidate for the weirdness accolade, of course. For pure, unadulterated weirdness, there is, for example, the strange episode of RFK, Jr., and the bear cub, which has only recently come to light a decade after it all happened. Bobby and the Bear may well be the single weirdest candidate story this election year. But RFK, Jr.'s star-crossed campaign has never really been anything other than weird.

Vance, on the other hand, having journeyed from anti-Trump elite literary darling to total subservience to his party's Dear Leader and a voice for increasingly weird ultra-MAGA on-line malevolence, is a far more interestingly tragic case - as well as potentially more threatening to traditional constitutional and democratic governance. And, while Trump in many ways represents a somewhat post-religious extremism, Vance highlights the increasing significance of pseudo-religious anti-constitutional, anti-democratic extremism.

Which is not to say, of course, that problems like the contemporary obstacles to family formation are not important issues, worthy of serious attention. Rather, their invocation by weirdly out-of-the-mainstream integralist and integralist-adjacent ideologies and sheer personal malevolence just further forecloses the kind of rational deliberation and democratic debate such issues deserve.