The lesson of 2024? Don’t be weird

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A lot of you people sound nuts.

So, it is unsurprising that a Donald Trump campaign ad featuring the tagline “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you” was effective in the 2024 presidential campaign. Indeed, a pro-Kamala Harris PAC says the spot, which featured a clip of Harris endorsing state-funded sex-change operations for prisoners, “shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor after viewers watched it.”

Now, one suspects most normies aren’t only turned off by “they/them” because it’s grammatically mystifying or scientifically dubious. For many, “they/them” represents the 14,000 confused children who have been mutilated by “gender-affirming care.” For others, “they/them” represents thousands of girls and women who are forced to compete with boys and men on the field.

For most, though, “they/them” is probably just a microcosm of all the weird cultural fads the Left has been trying to normalize and force-feed society. Normies tend to reject social science quackery. 

Americans are generally happy to make accommodations for alternative lifestyles. That doesn’t make this stuff less bizarre or extreme. And the speed at which the Left has demanded everyone treat these unhinged notions as the norm is mind-blowing.

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The other day, President-elect Donald Trump announced the incoming administration would “ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.” Twenty years ago, maybe even 10, most people wouldn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about. Today, a CNN talking head will melt down on national TV when Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) points out that men and women are physically different — an incontrovertible fact that everyone on Earth agreed on until about five minutes ago.

When Trump tapped Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) to be his running mate, Democrats engaged in a concerted effort to portray the Ohio senator as some kind of oddball. Tell me, what’s weirder: making a joke about cat ladies on a podcast or supporting laws that put tampons in the boy’s bathrooms at schools? Because the latter was the work of flannel-shirt-wearing Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who had once signed a bill empowering courts to strip parents who refused to give “gender-affirming healthcare” of custody.

Of course, there are probably bigger factors to explain why Democrats lost in 2024. The economy is usually the most pressing issue for voters, and Democrats blew a slam-dunk recovery by cramming through a massive crony spending bill just as inflation was rising. That was just self-destructive behavior. Trying to convince us that dropping trillions into the economy would ease inflation was also weird.

But that doesn’t mean cultural forces aren’t nudging virtually every demographic and ethnic group away from Democrats. One of the reasons is that you people sound nuts.

Your lingo is disconcertingly weird. Latinx is weird. Earnestly using phrases such as “birthing person” or “pregnant people” is so dumb. Marching around in a pussyhat makes you look like an unhinged hysteric. And no one believes you think The Handmaid’s Tale is a good or prophetic book.

It’s weird that you think everyone who disagrees with you is Hitler. And it’s weird that you act like a joke about Puerto Rico heralds the coming fascist state. Normies aren’t crazy about language and decorum policing. And you sound like a bunch of nags and prigs.

Perhaps you’ve become this way because your leaders and activists hail from sprawling urban areas where people hold lots of exotic views on sex, life, and culture. Or maybe it’s because many of them have been trained in elite institutions where pseudoscience and cultural Marxism are all the rage. In the past, these types of people were the butt of jokes. Today, they’re directing White House policy positions.

Recall that one of Joe Biden’s first decisions as president was compelling educational institutions that rely on federal funding to accept biological male athletes in women’s sports. Does anyone believe this was a pressing concern of our octogenarian president?

Remember when the White House was draped in rainbow flags and when the administration argued it was imperative to stock elementary school libraries with books about oral sex and gender dysphoria? Creating a political movement based on your sexual preferences is incredibly weird. Pushing sexuality on children is nefarious.

It’s weird that Harris would appear on a sex podcast but not speak to Joe Rogan, the exemplar of the normie id. It’s not that normies are prudes. It’s that normies keep their sex lives off the streets.

You know what else is weird? The Left’s antagonism toward traditional religion and faith.

Churchgoers may be on the decline, but there are lots of people in America who still pray. And millions more who respect tradition. When someone yells, “Jesus is Lord,” your response shouldn’t be, “You’re at the wrong rally.” Harris’s defenders claim she probably misheard the heckler. It’s difficult to give the benefit of the doubt to a woman who treats orthodox Catholic judicial nominees and the Knights of Columbus members as fifth columnists. If you respect religious people, you wouldn’t support the “Equality Act,” which would compel religious hospitals to perform gender-transition surgeries and shut down religious foster care organizations, among other things.

It’s also weird to keep making everything about race.

Most people don’t walk around contemplating their skin color all day. They certainly aren’t obsessed with the racial crimes of the 17th and 18th centuries. It’s weird that Harris is open to “reparations,” which punishes people for the sins, real and imagined, of their ancestors.

Even now, you can watch talking heads across cable news dissenting election results in racial terms. “Black women” did the right thing, but “white women” and “white men” and “black men” had let down America.

There are, of course, cultural forces that animate voters for all kinds of reasons, but the idea that melatonin levels predetermine your political positions is a bizarre, identitarian way to treat politics and people. 

Most people don’t like pro-Hamas cosplayers and rioters. It’s weird that you need to placate them. Every sentient person knows these spoiled moral ignoramuses detest the United States as well. Yet only one Democrat in the Senate, uber-normie John Fetterman, unequivocally criticized them. Harris and Biden have praised their cause. I never thought Democrats could lose the Jewish vote, but this kind of moral equivalency might just do the trick.

The Financial Times recently offered voters statements they could agree or disagree with. One was, “America is the greatest country in the world.” Around 90% of “white conservatives” agreed, and around 70% of Hispanics and around 60% of black voters. But only 30% of “white progressives.” On every question, the white progressive had sour views of the nation. It is weird to detest a nation and system that brought you so much.

Hide it as they may, progressivism has shoved the Democratic Party left. The consensus of the media, as always, is that Republicans have become increasingly right-wing. In reality, one of the most underappreciated aspects of Trump’s success is his policy moderation. By virtually any measure, the president-elect’s views are centrist. In many ways, more normie than conservative. Trump could have run as a Democrat in the 1990s. Perhaps even in the 2000s. Yearning for a government that upholds law and order is a normal inclination for any citizen. Attacking people who demand the law be followed, whether on the border or in our cities, is abnormal.

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It is the contemporary Left that has become unrecognizable. 

And very weird. 

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