The loathing presently separating the Left from the Right is generally attributed by the mainstream media to the ignorance of the sort of people who voted for Donald Trump. As I have stated in previous blogs, Bill Maher’s contribution to this debate is priceless inasmuch as he is a liberal who is actually willing to admit the failings of the contemporary Left.
In one of the many videos available on line featuring Maher, he says: “What a shocker that the people who see everything through the lens of race and sex, see their election loss as a result of racism and sexism.” He is, ironically, calling out the superficiality of the very ideology to which he has always been committed.
“Let’s get this straight.” he says, ” It’s not me who’s changed, it’s the Left which is now made up of a small contingent who’ve gone mental and a large contingent who refuse to call them out for it.”
Significantly, he is admitting that it is not merely the Radical Left which has gone insane, but a significant portion of its Mainstream proponents! Evidence of this truth is sadly verified by the fact that I cannot have any sort of civil conversation with my many “progressive” friends, most of whom are well-educated but insist on continuing to support the Left with an almost religious fervor. Rational arguments have no effect on them. Suggest one of Trump’s initiatives actually makes sense, and they simply shake their heads in scorn!
In one of Maher’s dissertations he says quite frankly that the vast majority of those who voted for Trump were neither racists or homophobes but decent Americans governed by simple common sense. A response posted by one of those decent Americans says it all perfectly: “I was a Democrat from 1957 to 2026, when I switched to Republican, not because I love the Republican Party, but because there’s nowhere else to go. The Communist takeover of the Democratic Party drove me out!” While this is certainly not a glowing tribute to the Rational Conservatism I endorse, it does suggest the absurdity of the media pundits and academics who continue to support a perspective which has lost all touch with Classical Liberalism! Mr. Trump, admittedly, hardly epitomizes the values implicit in that world-view. But a host of “conservative” pundits, from Jordan Peterson to Clarence Thomas, espouse values and criticisms utterly consistent with those of Mr. Maher. Why, Bill, not admit that the political Left has lost its mind, and that you are now in fact a Conservative?