“‘觉醒’（‘woke’）这一概念已经流行了一段时间，但‘怪异’（‘weird’）这个词汇又重新回到了人们的讨论中。”
“Woke” is out — but “weird” is back in. In 2024, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz helped Democrats land on a clear message: President Donald Trump and his allies were “weird” Two years later, facing steep midterms odds, Republicans are giving Democrats a taste of their own medicine.
2024年，明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹（Tim Walz）帮助民主党人明确了自己的政治立场：唐纳德·特朗普总统及其盟友是“怪异”的。两年后，面对严峻的中期选举挑战，共和党人开始用同样的方式回击民主党人。
Some of the GOP’s standard-bearers keep trying to make “weird” great again.
一些共和党的代表人物仍在试图让“怪异”这个词汇重新变得“有吸引力”（即让它在政治话语中继续被使用）。
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., needed less than 10 minutes at the Republican convention in Dallas earlier this month to call Democrats“dangerous, radical, and weird” three times, singling out Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
本月早些时候，在达拉斯举行的共和党全国代表大会上，南卡罗来纳州共和党参议员蒂姆·斯科特（Tim Scott）仅用了不到10分钟的时间，就三次称民主党人为“危险、激进且怪异”，并特别指出了民主党参议院候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德（Abdul El-Sayed）。副总统杰德·万斯（JD Vance）也在埃尔-赛义德提到万斯的妻子后，称他为“邪恶”和“怪异”。
Vice President JD Vance also called El-Sayed“evil” and “weird” after the Michigan Democrat mentioned Vance’s wife.
就连唐纳德·特朗普本人也加入了这一行列，他多次称德克萨斯州民主党参议院候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科（James Talarico）为“怪异”——理由包括塔拉里科过去关于性别认同、基督教以及跨性别儿童的言论，以及他被指控是素食主义者（而塔拉里科本人否认这一点）。周五，特朗普的支持组织MAGA, Inc.发布了一则30秒的广告，开头就称塔拉里科“非常怪异”。
Even President Donald Trump has joined in, repeatedly calling Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico “weird” for his past remarks on gender identity, Christianity, transgender children and for allegedly being a vegan (Talarico says he is not ). On Friday, the president’s super PAC, MAGA, Inc., released a 30-second ad that opens by calling Talarico “weird — very weird.”
共和党人之所以重新使用这种带有贬义的言辞，是因为他们在中期选举中面临着巨大的阻力：特朗普的民意支持率持续低迷，消费者信心不断下滑，通货膨胀问题依然严重（汽油价格仍高达每加仑4美元以上），而伊朗战争已经持续了七个多月。
The GOP’s turn to the schoolyard taunt comes as Republicans face stiff headwinds in the midterms. Trump is historically unpopular consumer confidence continues sliding inflation persists and gas is still above $4 a gallon with the war in Iran raging more than seven months after it began.
“当你无法谈论自己在经济方面的成就时，就会做出诸如称别人为‘怪异’这样的荒谬举动，”长期从事共和党战略研究的迈克·马德里（Mike Madrid）对MS NOW电视台表示。
“When you can’t talk about your successful record on the economy, you do ridiculous things like calling people ‘weird,’” Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, told MS NOW.
马德里方面表示，当民主党在2024年使用这种策略时，这种做法“充满了绝望的意味”；而如今这种行为更加令人绝望，因为这种策略本身就毫无新意——不过是对绝望情绪的简单复制罢了。
Madrid said the tactic “reeked of desperation” when Democrats used it in 2024, “and it’s even more desperate now because it’s not even original — it’s a photocopy of desperation.”
这个术语在2024年7月开始流行起来：当时沃尔兹在接受MS NOW电视台《Morning Joe》节目采访时，将特朗普及其盟友称为“怪异的人”。两周后，时任副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯宣布沃尔兹为自己的竞选搭档。沃尔兹后来在接受《60 Minutes》节目采访时称，他批评的是共和党的行为，包括“对人们的私生活以及他们的生育权利过度干涉”，以及“编造关于某些人在美国合法地吃猫狗的荒谬谣言”。沃尔兹的办公室没有回应任何评论请求。
The term took off in July 2024, when Walz called Trump and his allies “weird” during an interview on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe”two weeks before then-Vice President Kamala Harris named him her running mate Walz later told “60 Minutes” he was describing Republicans’ “behaviors,” including “being obsessed with people’s personal lives in their bedrooms and their reproductive rights, [and] making up stories about folks legally here eating cats and dogs” Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The “weird” label quickly became a cornerstone of Democrats’ otherwise muddled messaging in the frantic run-up to the 2024 election.
“怪异”这一标签迅速成为了民主党在2024年大选前夕混乱不堪的竞选宣传中的核心工具。民主党用这个词来回应共和党关于他们立场（尤其是在堕胎、跨性别者权利和教育等问题上的立场）“偏离主流”的指责。
It seemed to work as a rejoinder to Republicans’ insistence that Democrats’ stances on issues like abortion, transgender rights and education were outside the mainstream.
西华盛顿大学心理学助理教授麦迪·贾尔伯特指出，这种策略之所以有效，部分原因在于它利用了人们渴望归属感的心理，以及人们不愿支持被认为“怪异”的候选人的心理。
贾尔伯特说：“当你将这些极端、有害的观点称为‘怪异’时，实际上是在表明这些观点缺乏社会共识。”
Part of its appeal was that it played on people’s innate desire to belong, and on the assumption they wouldn’t want to support a candidate considered “weird,” according to Maddy Jalbert, an assistant professor of psychology at Western Washington University who wrote about the Democrats’ use of the term in 2024.
在2024年发表的一篇论文中，贾尔伯特和她的同事将这种策略称为“‘怪异’标签的滥用”。他们认为，在后真相时代，这种做法可能会产生与传统事实核查截然不同的效果——因为这种批评方式并不需要深入探究事实的真相。
“These more extreme, harmful ideas, when you call them ‘weird,’ it communicates that they don’t have social consensus,” Jalbert said. In a 2024 essay, Jalbert and a colleague called the tactic “weird-checking.”They argued that in a post-truth era, it could land in a way that fact-checking just doesn’t.
贾尔伯特对MS NOW电视台表示：“这种批评方式无需真正去探究观点背后的真相，就能直接将某些观点视为‘怪异’或‘有害的’。”
“This is a way to call out opinions and ideas that doesn’t require that you actually dig at all into the facts behind things,” Jalbert told MS NOW.
然而，最终来看，“怪异”这个标签并没有成为民主党赢得选举的有效工具。
But ultimately, “weird” wasn’t a winning message.
“选民在2024年想知道，现在也想知道，谁会让他们的生活变得更好或更糟，‘古怪’并不能真正触及这一点，”哈特研究公司总裁杰夫·加林说道，该民调公司曾与哈里斯竞选团队合作。他告诉MS NOW，“古怪”这一攻击在内部民调中表现不佳。（民主党全国委员会发言人拒绝分享具体数据。）一位民主党操盘手告诉MS NOW，共和党依赖“古怪”一词表明他们“处于恐慌模式”。不过，共和党似乎毫不在意。
“Voters wanted to know in 2024, and want to know now, who will make their lives better or worse, and ‘weird’ does not really get to that,” said Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research, a polling firm that worked with the Harris campaign. He told MS NOW the “weird” attack did not poll well internally. (A Democratic National Committee spokesperson declined to share specific data.) A Democratic operative told MS NOW that Republicans’ reliance on “weird” suggests they are “in panic mode.”Republicans, though, seem undeterred.
当被问及共和党本周期使用该词汇的评论时，全国共和党参议员委员会全国新闻秘书伯纳黛特·布雷斯林态度强硬。“缅因州一位民主党人与其表亲生育子女，阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德将跨性别手术等同于割礼，玛丽·佩尔托拉要求员工喂养她的宠物变色龙，”她说。“‘古怪’还是轻描淡写了，与民主党不同，我们的理由基于事实。”
（提到的“缅因州民主党人”指特洛伊·杰克逊，其长期伴侣是其表亲娜塔莉·巴尔达萨雷，共和党全国委员会全国新闻秘书，驳回了关于共和党在部署该词前是否曾在焦点小组中测试过的问题。
Asked for comment about Republicans’ use of the term this cycle, Bernadette Breslin, national press secretary of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was unapologetic. “A Democrat in Maine procreated with his cousin, Abdul El-Sayed equated transgender surgeries to circumcision and Mary Peltola required staff to feed her pet chameleon” she said. “Weird is an understatement, and unlike Democrats, our reasons are based on facts.” (The “Democrat in Maine” is a reference to Troy Jackson, whose longtime partner is his second cousin Natalie Baldassarre, national press secretary for the Republican National Committee, dismissed a question about whether Republicans floated the term in focus groups before deploying it.
“毋须研究便能看出，一位痴迷于跨性别儿童的37岁未婚男子，或一位制作尴尬社交媒体视频的暴躁小个子男人，确实都‘古怪’，”她分别指塔拉里科和埃尔-赛义德说道。
“No studying is needed to see that an unmarried 37-year-old man who’s obsessed with trans kids or a very angry little man who makes cringey social media videos are both, in fact, weird,” she said, referring to Talarico and El-Sayed, respectively.
应MS NOW置评请求，埃尔-赛义德竞选团队发言人科尔·沃兹尼亚克表示，该候选人“不关心华盛顿传来的声响——他将继续奔走密歇根与选民交流，谈论他的计划：让金钱退出政治、把钱装进你的口袋、推行全民医保。”截至发稿时，塔拉里科竞选团队发言人未回应MS NOW的置评请求。
In response to a request for comment from MS NOW, Cole Wozniak, a spokesperson for the El-Sayed campaign, said the candidate is “not concerned about the sounds coming from Washington — he’s going to continue to crisscross Michigan talking to voters about his plans to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for All.”A spokesperson for the Talarico campaign did not respond to a request for comment from MS NOW by publication time.
这并非共和党首次挪用民主党曾使用的语言。他们曾著名地将“觉醒”一词，从一个真诚的进步口号，转变为对“炫耀美德”的嘲讽式简写。
This is not the first time that Republicans have co-opted language previously used by Democrats. They famously turned “woke” from an earnest progressive watchword into a derisive shorthand for virtue-signaling.
但据心理学教授、资深政治策略师德鲁·韦斯顿称，“怪异”缺乏“觉醒”的冲击力。他说，“觉醒”捕捉到了“公众跨越党派界限的普遍感受”，即对言论和身份认同的管控。“怪异”不具备同样的力量——尤其是当它被用来攻击民主党最具魅力的演讲者，如塔拉里科或埃尔-赛义德时。
But “weird” lacks the punch of “woke,” according to Drew Westen, a psychology professor and longtime political strategist. He said “woke” captured “a pervasive feeling among the public, across party lines,” about policing speech and identity. “Weird” doesn’t wield the same power — especially when it’s deployed against some of the Democrats’ most magnetic speakers, like Talarico or El-Sayed.
“他们试图将极具魅力的候选人描绘成‘怪异’，”《政治大脑：情绪如何决定国家命运》作者韦斯顿说。“我认为共和党正在盲目尝试各种策略，因为他们深受公众厌恶。”马德里表示，选民似乎更担心钱包而非“怪异”，因此这一策略恐将让共和党碰壁，正如它曾让民主党失败一样。
“They’re trying to turn charismatic candidates into ‘weirdness,’” said Westen, author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”“I think Republicans are throwing spaghetti against the wall because they’re so disliked by the public.”With voters seemingly more worried about their wallets than “weirdness,” Madrid said the strategy is likely to fall flat for Republicans, just as it failed for Democrats.
“如果是在选一个‘怪异’的人，还是推高汽油价格之间做选择，”他说，“我们现在到了这样一个地步：普通的年长白人共和党人会说，‘给我那个怪人吧。’”这篇帖子‘觉醒’已死。‘怪异’回归。MS NOW
“If it’s the difference between putting in somebody who’s ‘weird’ and driving up the price of gas,” he said, “we’re at the point now where the average old white Republican is going to say, ‘Give me the weird guy.’”The post‘Woke’ is dead. ‘Weird’ is back. MS NOW