George Will is a POS. OK, let’s just get that part out of the way; this is the guy who said that being a rape victim is a “coveted status that confers privileges,” and that even though Cake Jesus had no right to break the law those mean, nasty gays should have just let him get away with violating their legal rights.
Will is, of course, another high-profile purported so-called “conservative intellectual” who made a big show of publicly declaring that he has “left” the Republican Party to become an “independent,” which feels just wonderful because in his words, “You don’t feel implicated” in the atrocities the GOP has committed and continues to commit under the leadership and influence of Grand Nagus Drumpf and the soulless anthropoid tube of malice that lords over the Senate.
How conveeeeeenient.
I’ve written over and over and over and over and over and over again about how these so-called never-Trumper conservatives who are now only belatedly coming around to the fact that (h/t driftglass) the Republican party is full of Republicans, supported by bigots and imbeciles, gun-strokers, religious quacks and neo-Nazis, and that the Drumpfenführer is the culmination and natural outgrowth of the last 30+ years of Republican politics, can’t get through an entire essay, interview or commentary without taking gratuitous potshots at Democrats and the left. No matter how depraved, faithless and malevolent the GOP is and becomes, it must always be noted that Both Sides® are Just As Bad™.
So, last night Bill Maher — who more and more these days seems to agree with and validate the foregoing slogan — had the redoubtable Mr. Will on Real Time, and the purported conservative intellectual wasted no time firing off a gratuitous Both Sides® bullet in his answers to each of the first three questions he was asked:
[Question 1]
MAHER: As I read [your new] book I’m like, Who is this for? Because, there are so few open minds anymore these days. I get it that you’re trying to convince people who might have an open mind, but does that bother you when you’re writing something?
WILL: No, I think books still matter … I’m quite convinced that there are a number of Americans who believe something’s badly wrong with our constitutional equilibrium, when you have presidents of both parties [who] make war without Congress, presidents of both parties who [have] a supine Congress [and are] empowered now to impose taxes and rewrite immigration law, all on their own.
[Question 2]
MAHER: You don’t mention Donald Trump.
WILL: I don’t mention Doris Day. This is a book about ideas.
MAHER: Yes … ideas and conservatives; would you say he has nothing to do with either one. But let me ask you this: Conservatism; you’re making your case as you have so eloquently for so long, but I can’t really picture a Democratic Donald Trump. If conservatism is so great, how did it give rise to Donald Trump?
WILL: Well, ideas have consequences, and so does the absence of ideas. The Republican Party became fixated on simply opposing Democrats, just as, I’m afraid, a lot of the Democrats are fixated on opposing Republicans. And, warning to the Democrats who are about to have, what, 23 or [2]4 on stage? There were 18 on stage with the Republicans, and the most lurid stood out.
[Question 3]
MAHER: But aren’t some of the Republican ideas of recent years dangerous? Anti-science, anti-intellectual, somewhat racist; they seem to have won some elections based on that. Why did that take root in the conservative party?
WILL: Because the conservative party became fixated on what I’d call “crybaby conservatism,” the victimology that they learned partly from the left; we’re victims of the media, the Hollywood, academia, etc.
One could positively choke on the bullshit and the false equivalence in just those first three answers. And it actually gets worse from there. In Question 4, Maher tries to make the point and the distinction that the “victims” for whom liberals typically and traditionally advocate actually have been victims of oppression and injustice; women, minorities, homosexuals, &c. Will brushes that aside and says “Sure, there’s some validity to that, but...” then completely changes the subject to some county in Iowa that swung 41 points from Obama 2012 to Trump 2016 and admonishing the Democrats to “spend a lot of time there.” Maher, sadly, doesn’t push Will back to the question, and the point that actually bears discussion, that Will abruptly, completely and, surely, deliberately avoided — real victims vs. pretend victims — dies on the vine.
Maher then goes on to ask why the “D” is so toxic in so many states, a question he’s asked before, viz., why people in red states who watch Fox News at home and in diners and keep their radios locked in to Rush Limbaugh while they’re on the road, just hate and despise and can’t stand Democrats so intensely that they’d rather be Russian. (My formulation, of course, not his.) He then, reading from Will, agrees that it’s OK to hate Democrats so intensely for wanting to allow prison inmates to vote, ban private health insurance, and pack the Supreme Court, but wonders whether abolishing the electoral college is such a bad idea.
In response, on that last point, Will again scolds Democrats for “spending all this time on something they Know. Will. Not. Happen.” I don’t know about anyone else, but if Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the 23 Democratic primary candidates have spent more than eight (8) seconds combined talking publicly about or taking legislative steps toward abolishing the EC, I’ve missed it. Will is doing exactly what the Grand Nagus does, stating what he wishes were true as if it is true. His approval and advocacy of the Electoral College and other such undemocratic institutions — and a crap-ton of pure, smug, standard-issue conservative rhetorical pablum about federalism, Limited Government™ and the wisdom of the Founders® — rounds out the interview, and is not worth recapping largely because it’s beside the point.
Maher did ask some good questions here, but as always I was left disappointed that he didn’t push back on some of the more egregious Both Sides bullshit that this non-implicated pompous hack was dropping all over the soundstage. That Maher himself agrees with a lot of it is becoming abundantly clear.