Minnesota Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz made waves in the American political world by deploying a new — and, by many metrics, effective — tactic against Kamala Harris’ opponents.
“I see Donald Trump talking about the wonderful Hannibal Lecter or whatever weird thing he is on tonight,” he said in a July interview with CNN. “That is weird behavior. I don’t think you call it anything else.”
That dismissive attitude is particularly effective against a Republican Party that wants so desperately to be taken seriously, and which has reveled in anxious (though usually verifiably true and rightly scathing) attacks for the past eight years about the dangers they pose to American society. In a way, the “democracy is on the line” shtick that President Joe Biden has been repeating since January 6, 2021, is a net positive for Republicans. It shows that they — their opinions, their policies, their style of governing — are being taken as a genuine threat.
Walz’s redirection of Democratic energy toward infantilizing, and thereby partially declawing, political rivals is not totally new in our political scene, even if this is the first time it’s been used so pointedly against Trump. It’s ironic that patronizing rhetoric is being turned on the very group who has used it for years to delegitimize others. But infantilizing the opposite side of the aisle has consequences that will live on once the election has been decided and the political dust settles. Indeed, leftists have been the target of ridicule in American media for years. As a result, we know that it works far too well in a culture that already imagines us as silly and insignificant.
Take, for example, the 2016 presidential election. The image that immediately pops into mind is one from Trump’s inauguration, in which a young person is screaming in anguish, no doubt over the enormous political and social upheaval Donald Trump represented. Despair over Trump’s election was felt even more potently than it is today, since Trump was still a new figure in a somewhat normal political scene. The picture spread like wildfire in online circles, where trolls took every possible opportunity to make fun of the protester for what they perceived as child-like behavior. One commenter on Twitter wrote that they “looked like a four year old who didn’t get Cheerios.”
College students protesting the United States’ role in the Gaza genocide, too, have been constantly ridiculed, always undersold, and endlessly overlooked as whining children who don’t really know what they want. Many think they must be protesting Israel’s actions because they don’t know what Zionism or genocide, or any number of terms, actually mean. For others, protesters are misled by an out-of-control wokeism, which makes mountains out of molehills in every international conflict. And for the especially condescending, like Hillary Clinton, those engaged in civil disruption to draw attention to Gaza’s plight “don’t know much” about Middle Eastern history. I guess she assumes if we studied the history of the region, we would be more sympathetic toward Israel. Then again, she may not be totally unbiased in that realm as the former Secretary of State to Israel’s closest and most powerful ally.
Beyond Gaza, leftists have been ridiculed over their stances on economics, social and environmental justice, and a whole host of other progressive ideas seen as idealistic to a fault. “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain,” goes the popular quote falsely attributed to Winston Churchill. That adage embodies the core of mainstream American reactions to progressivism. Leftist policies are bound to fail, we’re told, because they’re nonviable, because of insurmountable hurdles in our political system, or because they simply aren’t wanted. Because, when you look at things pragmatically, the status quo is best.
I do not want to convey the sense here that those who disagree with, or even despise, Trump and his ideology should feel sorry for the former President and the party he has taken over simply because they’re being made fun of. If anything, they need to be taken down a level. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance do not deserve to be taken seriously in American politics. Their policies are outdated, regressive, and deeply harmful, and taking away their most powerful weapon — fear — by painting them as laughable idiots, is a politically savvy move.
Still, however unlikely it might seem now, time will continue after this year’s election, and we will have to continue living in this country with those we disagree with. Tim Walz has made it clear that his “weird” comments were directed only at Trump and his political peers, not Americans who vote for them. But nuance in national politics is near-impossible. The label has come, for many, to describe all of the millions of people who vote Republican and subscribe to Trump’s rhetoric. That group may be wrong — I certainly believe they are — but to disregard them in such a way only reinforces the idea that it is acceptable to dismiss certain voices as immature, uninformed, and, yes, weird. I have been on the receiving end of that dismissal in my progressive activism. I do not want to see it proliferate.
