I stopped watching Maher awhile back. He was funny when I was younger, but then as the years dragged on it became clear he was another entitled narcissist. I watched a clip of Maher recently and it became clear to me the man should just quit his show and retire. I honestly don’t know what happened with him, but he sounds no different than a lot of right wing hacks nowadays.
In his Oct. 22nd show he made the argument that we as a country need to de-escalate. That our country is on the brink of collapse and Civil War. This seems a bit hyperbolic, but alright, he’s in it for the ratings. His recipe for de-escalation, from pulling the country from the brink of Civil War? Liberals need to chill out. To Maher, Liberals are the problem. When Shatner flies into space, don’t talk about wealth inequality or climate change, just enjoy Shatner going into space. If you don’t, you’ll just make the Right angry.
Excuse me?
We literally had the bombshell come out that sitting members of Congress had a hand in an insurrection where many of their own colleagues could have been killed. You have the right spewing conspiracy theories, filling people’s minds with nonsense about vaccines while people are literally dying in hospitals. We just had a White supremacist tried and convicted for a terrorist attack on a synagogue where 11 people died and six were wounded.
Maher of course trots out the ridiculous conservative trope that Liberals don’t own weapons or won’t defend themselves. His logic therefore goes, that we’d automatically lose in a war against the Right. So it’s up to use to ignore their violent rhetoric, to ignore the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, to ignore the millionaires and billionaires who fund literal mobs to assault and terrorize school boards, anti-maskers attacking doctors and nurses in hospitals, and the litany of propaganda and ignorance spewing from conservative anti-intellectuals like Shapiro.
I will not remain silent on climate change, on the importance of vaccines, on white supremacy, separation of church and state, on equality and freedom in the United States. If that makes some right wing keyboard warrior unhappy, that’s not my problem nor is it my fault. I will never shut up about it, no matter what twisted thoughts Maher has floating in his head. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Boebert are responsible for themselves. They spew hatred and division, and I’m not the one responsible for the escalation, THEY ARE.
It’s not my fault the Right posts divisive, ignorant memes on Facebook and actually BELIEVES them. We’ve all been reading Kos’ anti-vax chronicles and how invariably each story contains people who can’t tell reality from fiction. It’s not my fault Facebook execs made it a point to include Breitbart knowing it was garbage, just so they could pad their profit margin.
The Right would start a conflict that could mean the deaths of millions of innocent people. The elderly, the disabled, the sick and infirm. Children. They threaten the peace and security of the United States because it makes them money, because it gets them clicks, and because it gives them notoriety. But no, me simply pointing out the fact that our planet’s ecosystem might collapse upsets Ben Shapiro or another clueless right wing lunatic, and I’m the one at fault for such a catastrophic event? Maher has lost his mind.
I do thank Maher for one thing. I will be much more vigilant. I will make sure if the time comes where I have to defend myself or my family, I will. Make no mistake about it, I will.