Weird

Kamala Harris and other democrats are recently referring to comments made by J. D. Vance as weird. Apparently, Vance thinks that families with children should have more civic rights than those without. Strange. Scary. Weird. Back in Shakespeare’s day, weird meant fate. (From Old English wyrd, destiny.) In Macbeth, the Weird Sisters were the Three Fates. The mythological Three Fates controlled the destiny of all humanity, spinning out our lives from birth through life and then death. From Macbeth we now think of weird as frightening and other worldly. I’m not sure it is wise to characterize the republicans with the weird label. It is a kind of otherizing of the opponent. I know there are a lot of people who do believe that families and children, lots of them, are some sort of mandate from God. The fate of humanity. My 12th grade “Religion and Family” teacher did. He was an Oblate Priest who blathered on about the evils of birth control and sex before marriage. Shortly after graduation, Father Sanctity shucked his cassock and married one of the girls in class. Over the years those two added eight children to the Catholic ranks.