Pointing out the obvious fact that Republicans are weird and have been very weird for a long time is having a moment. What I haven’t seen pointed out much is just how their responses are demonstrating how weird they are.
The MCU
So do you know someone with an obsession? The Marvel movies? The Marvel Cinematic universe. Now picture that person. They watch all the Marvel MCU movies. But that isn’t enough. They have to listen to podcasts discussing the MCU. They get into arguments in MCU online forums. It is almost impossible for them to get through a conversation without quote a Marvel hero or making a reference to a Marvel movie. Every outfit they wear-irregardless of the situation-has some Marvel logo. Every tee shirt has a movie quote. Sometimes they dislike a movie and they will tell you why. And sometimes they are happy with a movie and can’t keep themselves from hyping it.
Sometimes you have to calmly let that person know-hey-I get that you’re into the MCU and that’s fine. But; buddy, you got to tone it down of it will be off-putting to others.
The MAGA Cinematic universe.
It would be easy to suggest that for conservatives, Trump is their MCU. But that’s a mistake. As Bluegal wrote in 2016.
It isn’t Trumpism. It’s the Republican Party. And it has been for far longer than Donald Trump has been running for President
The MAGA Cinematic universe is a set of sexual anxieties which they gladly display when you call them weird. That’s their cinematic universe. It’s a broad cinematic universe. Some specialize in one part. Others enjoy all of it. And they insist it proves that you’re weird for not being obsessed over it.
Fertility
An obsession with woman’s fertility which manifests itself with both anger about abortion and anger about women not having children.
The abortion obsession leads them to fixate on the most outrageously bizarre scenarios. Abortion as birth control. Abortion after birth. Abortion as performance art. None of this is real. When you call one them out for being weird, expect to be called a baby killer.
I’ve previously written that I do not think they actually think fertilized eggs are people and it is exchanges like this that convince me.
This person believes that abortion is the murder of a human being and he is ok with the murder of the children of his political opponents if he thinks it will benefit him politically at some future point. And they proudly display this.
So this isn’t about a concern for life. This is a weird obsession about controlling women’s fertility. Let’s stop pretending the anti-abortion crowd is anything other than weird people who want to control others bodies.
Sexuality
An obsession with women’s sexuality when it is not expressed for male pleasure. Ben Shapiro is the dean of this school. His outrage over the song WAP spawned memes for a year. When you call these people out they will dig into their folder of slut shaming and unload examples.
Tucker Carlson was obsessed about the Green M&M in a similar weird way. They made the Green one less sexy and that gave him a sad.
Women are to be sexy in the right way for the right reasons. These guys have very strong opinions on this. They have images of ideal women and will share memes of Trad Ladies that fit their image of what women should be.
And this is where JD Vance’s cat lady obsession comes from. Women’s desires are supposed to lead to motherhood. Anything else and the system is broken. Call this one weird and you’ll hear them explain the that women having lots of sex and not enough babies are the weird ones. Expect incel memes about Chad.
LGBTQ Panic
An obsession with LGBTQ people. These guys will respond to be called weird by posting images trans people. They seem to spend a lot of time researching what trans people look like. In a totally non weird way.
Oh, you think I’m weird? Well we have disgusting stereotypes about trans people, check out to these grotesque memes of LGBTQ boogie persons that I have collected on my phone-you know-like a person who doesn’t have a weird sexual anxiety will do.
Well you sure showed me! You are certainly not the weird one here.
They will defend this by telling you that can always tell when someone is trans. It’s the very rare confirmation bias, survivorship bias combo. They do not see the trans people who pass and they are convinced that some cis people are trans.
My favorite Trans panic example is Mike Johnson. Because he can imagine being creepy to women and lacks any empathy, he can not imagine actual trans people existing. If I’m willing to go to extremes to peek at women, how could a real trans person exist?
Mike it’s you. You are the one with the weird sexual stuff going on. And this isn’t helping Mike. It isn’t making you normal.
White replacement
An obsession with white replacement. This is where sexual anxiety merges with racism. The language they use, of invasion, of conquest and of replacement are filled with undertones of sexual anxiety. They fear that the newcomers are more virile and will out reproduce them.
These are the people who will bring up immigrant crime with a fixation on sexual violence. Yes rape is bad. And yes, women get raped by migrants. And yes, we must believe women. But their concerns for women almost always start and end with the race and nation of origin of the attacker.
The extreme end of white replacement is an obsession with cucks. This is an extreme sexual fetish that people on the right have been bringing up for years now.
Some people hear “Press One For English” and think they are losing their country. And some people see Nazis in the street making that point and think they are losing their country. It’s the press one for english crowd that’s weird.
What is a woman
An obsession with maleness and womanliness. The same wierdos that will ask “what is a woman” like it’s a gotcha will insist that things can make men lesser men and woman too manly. Gender is immutable unless my anxieties kick in. These weirdos will fixate on women body builders and men wearing traditionally feminine clothing while insisting that you can not change your gender. So a trans women is a “man in a dress” and voting for Kamala makes a man into a women. Lifting weights make a women into a man but a trans man is just a confused victim of gender ideology. Expect to be have your man card questioned.
These people do in fact understand that biological sex and gender are not exactly the same. If you show them a Ken doll and a Barbie doll and ask them which is a man and which is a woman they will not ask to check the genitals or sex chromosomes. So they do understand. They are just choosing to be weird about it all.
This isn’t new. This obsession has been around almost forever.
The lotion in the basket
That Marvel Movie guy is pineapple on pizza weird. It’s an aesthetic thing. Maybe you like pineapple on pizza and maybe you have good taste. But it isn’t something that actually harms anyone. The GOP base is lotion in the basket weird. They have an obsession to control others driven by weird sexual anxieties and they display them all the time.
To close this out, know they hate this. While both Wes Anderson Characters and Buffalo Bill are weird, we know we celebrate the quirky Wes Anderson protagonists and they act like the creepy villains. Buffalo Bill from silence of the lambs is fitting here. They are driven to dehumanize and control others because of weird sexual obsessions.
This is upsetting them because they need to be the normal ones. They need to point to others and say that’s weird. To be called out for being way outside the norm is deeply upsetting. Its impossible for them to not be the silent majority. If they were to discover they are just a small sect of wierdos ruining life for the people who don’t share their anxieties, it’s crushing.
