The three witches in 'Macbeth' – also known as the 'weird,' or 'wyrd,' sisters – are prophetesses who often do the opposite of what's expected of them.
Republicans, as you’ve probably heard, are being called “weird.”
In a quip that launched a million memes, Minnesota governor-turned-VP candidate Tim Walz referred to his right-wing political opposition as “weird people” in a July 23, 2024, interview on MSNBC.
Since then, the barb has stuck, with leading Democratic party figures, from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to presidential nominee Kamala Harris, branding their Republican opposition with the moniker.
Of course, in a classic deployment of the “I know you are, but what am I?” retort, the Republicans have tried to flip the script.
“You know what’s really weird?” Donald Trump Jr. opined on X. “Soft on crime politicians like Kamala allowing illegal aliens out of prison so they can violently assault Americans.” And in an interview with conservative radio host Clay Travis, former President Donald Trump said of Democrats, “They’re the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.”
While I get why both sides are hurling weird bombs at each other, I’m nevertheless not on board with all the “weird shaming.” It isn’t just hypocritical for each party to claim to speak on behalf of the forgotten and marginalized while mockingly calling the other side weird. It’s also deeply regressive.
The weird, I would argue, deserve respect. As someone who has spent the past three decades researching, writing about and teaching topics including vampires, ghosts, monsters, cult films and what gets categorized as “weird fiction,” I should know.
‘Wyrd’ history
When politicians use the term weird, they’re trying to depict their opponents as odd or strange. However, the origins of the term are much more expansive and profound.
The Old English “wyrd,” from which the contemporary usage is derived, in fact was a noun corresponding to fate or destiny. “Wyrd” signified the forces directing the course of human affairs – an understanding reflected, for example, by Shakespeare’s three prophetic “weird sisters” in “Macbeth.” An individual’s “weird” was their fate, while use of the term weird as an adjective connoted the supernatural power to manipulate human destiny.
Despite the progressive generalization of the term to refer to all things strange, fantastic and unusual, resonances of the weird’s “wyrd” origins are retained by what has come to be called “weird fiction,” a subgenre of speculative fiction.
The weird tale, explained early 20th-century writer H.P. Lovecraft in his 1927 treatise “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” is one that challenges our taken-for-granted understandings of how the world works. It does this through – to use Lovecraft’s characteristic purple prose – a “malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguards against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”
Republicans, as you’ve probably heard, are being called “weird.”
In a quip that launched a million memes, Minnesota governor-turned-VP candidate Tim Walz referred to his right-wing political opposition as “weird people” in a July 23, 2024, interview on MSNBC.
Since then, the barb has stuck, with leading Democratic party figures, from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to presidential nominee Kamala Harris, branding their Republican opposition with the moniker.
Of course, in a classic deployment of the “I know you are, but what am I?” retort, the Republicans have tried to flip the script.
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