That's the last line of a post I wrote on May 23, 2023 — "DeSantis uses Warren G. Harding's word, 'normalcy': 'We must return normalcy to our communities.'"
That was back when DeSantis was endeavoring to replace Trump by being essentially Trump minus the weirdness. Yes, there was talk of weird-versus-normal just like there is today. I said:I myself am hungry for normality, but I don't trust people who keep saying "normal." I always think of Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in "Lolita" — "It's great to see a normal face, 'cause I'm a normal guy. Be great for two normal guys to get together and talk about world events, in a normal way...."
That old post cited an older post, from June 2010, "Barack spent so much time by himself that it was like he was raised by wolves." That older one quoted Maureen Dowd: "Of the many exciting things about Barack Obama’s election, one was the anticipation of a bracing dose of normality in the White House."
In May 2023, I was intrigued to encounter that 2010 quote and said:
That was back when the abnormality was George W. Bush. The idea of a President as weird as Donald Trump was nowhere in sight. It's hard even to remember what was supposedly so un-normal about Bush. Remember when his brother Jeb stood on the debate stage next to Trump and pathetically relied on the assumption that we'd have to pick him over that unacceptably weird guy Trump? It didn't work, though it worked when Joe Biden stood on the debate stage next to Trump and argued, essentially, you'll have to take me over Trump because I'm the only thing here that approaches normality? That did work though.
Are we just alternating between weird and normal — perceptions of weird and normal? If so, then 2024 is Trump's turn again.
I encountered all that this morning because — here in real life — we were talking about the discourse of weird and normal and the word "normalcy" came up and made me want to find it in the archive. I thought you'd be amused (or horrified) by that line by the final prophesy: 2024 is Trump's turn again.
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62 comments:
Good gravy. You want normal but are offended by the word?
Progressives smile. They've won.
I before E except after C, dis-proven by weird science.
"Weird is the new evil." -- Russel Brand
I'm not sure a conversation from Lolita is what the normies are hankering for. But the goons tried to kill President Trump and the regime is losing its collective mind, all while empowering a talentless jez.
Take a page from Hunter S. Thompson. "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
That clip from "Lolita" is the only scene in the movie I really liked.
DeSantis would be Hitler #___________________
Any R is the new Hitler.
Normal is accepting our decline via big smiley face Hollywood erase her past - Kamala.
"That clip from "Lolita" is the only scene in the movie I really liked."
It's a great movie. Every minute of it.
Weird = serving voters and putting Americans first.
Normalcy = serving the chamber of commerce and the people who gave you record amounts of cash in a gubernatorial campaign to try to take out Trump.
That’s a great quote although I hear him doing it in Chauncey Gardiner’s voice. I think it’s how Progressives imagine conservatives, say Turning Point USA for example, talk amongst each other.
Tcrosse is always pithy and witty. Nice work!
It is amusing that today's Democrats call the normals "weird." And today, now that the "J6 Committee" is gone, the FBI can go back to school board meetings where the real "domestic terrorists" are.
Normal, to a woman, means people paying attention to her feelings and their evaluations.
Normal, to a man, means not doing things with obvious perverse consequences.
Accepteed as Normal:
BREAKING🚨: Pelosi is back and buying more Nvidia $NVDA
She just bought another $1.3M of $NVDA
She's now bought ~$2.5M of Nvidia this month alone
In the filing she also sold $2.2M of Microsoft $MSFT
If someone were up to great evil, "BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL" would be his mantra.
It's like the way they say "It's the quiet ones you've got to look out for."
Why would someone act "weird" when he was pulling a fast one?
Trump is so casually weird it makes him seem innocent. Maybe that's next level.
"If someone were up to great evil, "BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL" would be his mantra."
I always thought Google's "Don't be evil" motto was creepy. If you're hiring people who need to be told that, you're hiring the wrong people.
Normal... It's creepy!
If you have symmetrical features and dress a bit towards the conservative side, it's not that hard to pull off a normal look. Many people consider me normal.....Taylor Swift, all things considered, looks more normal than say, Lady Gaga or, certainly, Madonna. I think Doris Day was more normal than Taylor Swift, however. I like the normal look. It's reassuring to be on the subway with people who don't look like serial killers.... One of the advantages of having most people look normal is that the weird people don't have to try all that hard to be weird. They can get away with just one or two unorthodox style choices and look weird. Remember beatnik days? Those guys only had to wear a goatee or a beret to look weird. Now you need multiple piercings and tattoos to look committed to being weird.
Left-right symmetry is favored over front-back or top-bottom. Or spherical for that matter.
“Trump is so casually weird it makes him seem innocent.”
Except to those who are paying attention.
“Maybe that's next level.”
Indeed it is. If Trump hasn’t made one’s red flags fly and sirens go off yet, it isn’t too late.
I don't think of Trump as weird or normal...he is just Trump. He is authentically him. No one else on the political scene comes close to being authentic.
Inga - tell us about how Trump is a Russian asset or a Russian Spy. Do Explain in vivid detail.
"Because says so" - won't cut it.
Perhaps you can check the Mueller report. They KNEW! Trump was guilty - but just couldn't find any actual evidence. shucks.
compared to this peanut gallery, he's ward cleaver,
even Hunter Thompson,would be hard pressed to make sense of these matters,
Kamala normal, that's a tough bet even in a Multiverse plain, lets leave out her husbands extracurriculars, but his ties to Hamas enabling Qatar, also handmaid to the Taliban, that has gotten 239 billion from us,
Well, if war is normal at least we have Lady Lindsay working on it.
Last week he introduced a resolution for authorization of use of force against Iran.
And it's one two three what we fighting for?
Don't know and don't give a damn
Next stop is Iran
Hey Moms and Dads! Here's an exciting opportunity. Be the first ones on your block to have your boy come home in a box.
Your words ring down through the years Country Joe . Same shit, different country.
https://youtu.be/eRl6-bHlz-4?si=isI8Fetcv6x6i7BH
Thank God my older grandson is not yet 16.
John Henry
"It's a great movie. Every minute of it."
I have never understood the whole Lolita phenomenon. I recall, as a teenager, being assured that Nabakov was a "great writer", and Lolita was his masterpiece. And then I started reading it, and it slowly dawned on me that it was about a guy who was travelling around with a little girl he had basically kidnapped, fucking her. Now, I could have understood that, if it was like, five pages, to prepare for the scene where the good guys take him out with a flamethrower, but it became increasingly clear that was not going to happen, and really, neither was anything else. I was supposed to be interested in this perverted freak and his sickening ruminations. Like, Nabakov was trying to improve my mind by telling me his sordid and revolting fantasy.
I didn't realize they had made a movie out of it. Or, I guess I did, I recall a poster with a girl in sunglasses. But I had just assumed it was porn. I wasn't wrong, either.
But hey, baby-rapers deserve full acceptance within human diversity, right Althouse?
If we do go to war with Iran I personally blame Jimmy Carter.
He may be working behind the scenes to recover his title of worst president ever from Brandon. It is a fierce competition.
The Shah might have been a son of a bitch but he was our SOB.
John Henry
Weird is a powerful word not because it has a specific meaning but because of absence of semantic specificity. It has a higher level of abstraction and it can bring to mind a host of issues and magnify a collection of things that you find objectionable or offensive about Trump. So it is brilliant!!!
It induces a sense of cognitive unease — and encapsulates now nearly nine years of Trump’s abnormal behavior that some parts of America fell in love with but most were horrified. Trump certainly contributed to social chaos — mostly by reigniting racism and sexism. Trump was the president of “insecure white men” whose identity, in their minds, was being obliterated by “those others” (Mexicans, Muslims, Blacks. Etc). His behavior at the helm was not mature or professional — but his dog whistles, racism, sexual promiscuity, recklessness and anti-intellectualism had a strange appeal for certain groups. For those communities he was the bartender in Roadhouse who kept the “others” out and fun going in their bar they called America. That Roadhouse bar culture voted for him and will still vote for him. So all those personas you can think of who came to that bar in Patrick Swayze’s movie Roadhouse (including the villains and the doctor girl) are your Trump voters. It was the formation of that ingroup.
Trump’s period was the time of high social anxiety and chaos. And the word “weird” can bring to mind all those things. It seems unlikely that Trump will be able to overcome the momentum by Harris. She doesn’t have to go after the bar as they will not change. She just has to make sure that all others who feel turning the US into a Wild West brothel is not a smart idea can find the motivation and reason to counter Trump’s ideology. His grandfather did run a brothel. And that chauvinism shows in his “strong muscular white men-dominant” convention. Women were nonexistent there. Minorities absent. Intellectualism lacking. It was “weird”.
If we go to war with Iran, I personally blame Jimmy Carter. I think he may be disturbed that Brandon is taking his place as worst president ever.
The Shah might have been an SOB but he was our SOB.
John Henry
Trump is weird? If the stars align. Is he queer? I would say he us more gay in his inimical style.
Trump has absorbed an amalgam of pop culture and politics and entertainment.
He’s the Wizard of Odd.
12 million illegals from every country on earth, every gang, every terrorist group you could imagine, an evil pagan flag flying on Easter Sunday.
It's okay to be normal but not to talk about it. That's weird.
Competence as determined by results trumps self-serving definitions of "normalcy and weirdness". Biden deserved to be laughed off the stage in 2020 but COVID saved him- had the FDA and Pfizer/Moderna not conspired to bury the m-RNA vaccine trial results in late October of 2020, Trump would have likely won anyway ceteris paribus.
Trump has a weird personality for a President given our history but a dementia patient is also a weird thing to have as a President. Having an certified air-head as President is also going to be fucking weird and we might not survive it.
over the white house, virtual silence against mobs of terrorists threatening university students, store fronts, cities collapsing into ruin, as businesses are boarded up and flee cities,
Indeed it is. If Trump hasn’t made one’s red flags fly and sirens go off yet, it isn’t too late.
Not if you are a lefty dullard who gets her news from the DNC.
What Yancey said.
At least THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN!!!! finally.
Right Inga?
John Henry
then you have the Vegan obsessed mayor who might as well be auditioning for a remake of CHUD,
as the kabuki selected governor, sends a passel of tick tok guardsmen into the subways with no effect,
W & Obama & Clinton are weirder than Trump.
Reagan was weirder than Trump. He was Hollyweird.
Althouse said...If someone were up to great evil, "If someone were up to great evil, "BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL" would be his mantra." would be his mantra.
I can see this all goes back to the post about the slide shown to Charlie Kirk's voter canvassers which said "BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL".
Here at the Althouse Blog WE ARE THE WEIRD ONES. Most folks don't engage politics like we do. If the average voter tried reading this blog, and the comment section they would think we're nuts.
Sane red communities (like Waukesha County) don't get face to face vote canvassers at their door, or ballot harvesters. It takes a certain level of enthusiasm to volunteer. "BE NORMAL" means "keep your enthusiasm to a dull roar or we will push way the people we are trying to engage."
If I were trying to canvas liberal votes in Madison, WI in place of a "BE NORMAL" training slide, it would use "BE NAKED."
thats just in one locality, of course the airhead let the criminals out to roam, while governor brylcream preens before Xi,
we're just observing the clown show, really,
Reagan's california, is gone forever I fear, between the amnesty, the collapse of the aerospace sector, the collapse of the GOp as an actual functioning entity, now it's whatever
overseas province of China,
Mason G. (12:44pm):
I always thought Google's "Don't be evil" motto was slyly ambiguous. The emphasis is on the "be", and it means "It's not enough to sit around being evil, you have to get out there and do evil every day of the week."
Rich shows up to remind us of his white leftist progressive hivemind talking points.
Weird is the topic? I missed this quote by Brit Hume in 20220...
Before the first debate in 2020 between Donald Trump and Biden, Brit had this to say: "Elderly people experiencing memory loss and other problems associated with age can go for periods, for hours at a time and be just fine.” He added, “I don’t think there’s any doubt Biden’s senile, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to show up tonight.”
America missed it too! That's weird.
Rich--your interpretation of Patrick Swayze's Roadhouse is weird. It's not a complicated movie. You should probably watch it before trying to use it as an analogy. There's a scene in which a monster truck wrecks a car dealership. Maybe you can make an analogy out of that.
Because people who repost QAnon tweets/“truths” like Trump and his cultists and repeat the stupid WWG1WGA like Michael Flynn and his followers are super normal.
Inga,
What weird outcomes for the U.S. do you blame on Trump? Just curious.
'its time to be nice, until it's time not to be nice' thats when he goes to town on Ben Gazzara, if memory serves,
yes the people who tried to deny the Assasination attempt tell us about strange tell me more,
I think Google IS evil which is why I avoide it as much as I can. No Chrome (Dragon for when I need a Chrome browser that doesn't phone home to Google) no Google search.
I suspect that the US Govt is one of the biggest chrome and Google search users in the US.
I would love to see, come January, President Trump issue an order, banning the use of Chrome and Google search on any govt computers. There are plenty of alternatives from mainstream like MS Edge/Bing to offbeat like the Brave browser and search engine. and others in between.
Perhaps a good whack on the snout with a 2X4, like this, would get Google's attention. Perhaps they would stop being evil. Or if not, at least they would not have as much power to be evil with.
Reps and Senators who object to Google policies could easily implement a no Google no Chrome policy in their offices. Much better than whinging about it on the floor.
John Henry
Last week, discussing Google, we talked about Brave search.
I have not used Google as my default search engine since the 90s. I originally used Privatlee then when that stopped working I started using Duck Duck Go. When I occasionally use Edge on my laptop, Bing is the default and seems to work fine.
I still use Google search occasionally, a few times a week. I find DDG every bit as good as Google at finding what I want.
I had looked at Brave search a few years ago. For whatever reason, I went back to DDG.
After our discussion here I made it the default on my desktop to try it.
It seems to be a fine search engine. I had forgotten I was even using it.
I tried the Brave browser but had problems with bookmarks. Not sure if it is me or Brave and have not had a chance to figure it out. Other than the bookmarks, it seemed fine.
Currently using Firefox as default browser on desk and laptop. I've been using it since about 2005 when it came out. I used Netscape before that. Never used MS explorer other than on a few sites that required it. Tried Chrome for a few weeks when it came out, went back to Firefox.
John Henry
Garbage: Queer
The queerest of the queer
The strangest of the strange
Lolita was Nabokov's most famous book, but it wasn't his best. Critics appreciated that the was writing about the "Big Subject" of "America." Arguably, he wasn't his best subject or his best treatment of a subject and he wasn't the best person to write about the subject.
Trump has a lot of popularity among African-American and Latino men. His percentage among insecure White men went down from 2016 to 2020, so maybe the pop psychology analysis of the man and his supporters is flawed. You don't get to be a TV star if your only appeal is to one demographic.
"A Wild West brothel?" I wouldn't use that expression, but in some ways, it does fit today's America. Consider Hunter Biden's selling access to pay for hookers and blow. Consider Joe Biden's career and his favor trading with the banking industry (and there are those things people like to say about Kamala Harris and her husband). The cliche is that Republicans are for wide-open uncontrolled markets. We'll see if that applies to Trump. I don't think it did during his first term. The "brothel" language may better apply to the Democrats' crony capitalism.
"Weirdness"? Is there really that much to talk about there? It's an empty term that they're trying to pin on Trump and Vance.
Any chance we can actually talk about the Democrat's policy/positions/future plans?
Or would that be weird?
@Althouse, has it ever crossed your mind that perhaps it's your view of what's weird and what's normal that is ... weird.
Listening to Kamala Harris answer softball questions from the press makes me think of a famous quote from the movie "Billy Madison":
"... what you have just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it."
Inga said...
Because people who repost QAnon tweets/“truths” like Trump and his cultists and repeat the stupid WWG1WGA like Michael Flynn and his followers are super normal.
Inga supports Open Borders.
Inga supports using Ukraine to fight a proxy war with Russia.
Inga supports war with Iran.
Inga supports persecuting and jailing political opponents.
Inga supports censorship of political opponents.
Inga supports policies leading to obvious hyperinflation.
Inga supports defunding the police and the resulting crime.
Inga supports the FBI/CIA making up fake Russian Collusion narratives to Impeach political opponents.
Inga supports the FBI/CIA making up bald faced lies about Hunter's laptop being Russian disinformation.
Inga supports the democrat party oligarchs blatantly disenfranchising democrat primary voters.
This is an abbreviated off the top of my head list of the lies and the evil that Inga supports.
Super normal? Like a dad showering with his daughter? That sort of normal?
I liked both the book and the first movie. But maybe I'm weird.
"Lolita" isn't among the top Kubrick movies on my personal list (I have seen them all at least twice except for Eyes Wide Shut) but I liked it quite a bit as even his worse movies are very good movies.
Dree your weird. Accept your destiny. Any other meaning of the word is weak, ambiguous use of language meant to influence without informing.
When I think of “weird,” I think of HP Lovecraft and eldritch loathsomeness slipping down from the stars and sometimes wearing human faces. He has a great essay on writing “weird.”
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