Bill Maher was doing his concern troll schtick again last night, and I wish his guest panel, Jessica Yellin, and Peter Hamby, pushed back just a wee bit more. They were discussing one of Maher’s favorite topics, his belief that liberals are doing stupid things that will drive voters into the waiting arms of Trump. You can listen to the podcast, I haven’t seen a transcript yet. His tangent started at about the 38:00 mark, and led a little later to the following exchange:
Jessica Yellin: “the majority of the party, especially the black community is single-minded on doing what they can to get rid of Donald Trump, this conversation is the equivalent of focusing on looting, like it’s the sideshow, where the momentum is about focusing on November 3rd and getting rid of Trump. “
Bill Maher: “It may be a sideshow unless it’s your business that got wiped out, you know, if it is your business, then it is not a sideshow.”
I would like to ask him, just who is making it into a circus? Why is it, that when Trump visited a burned out camera store in Kenosha Wisconsin to use as a photo-op, the owner of the business refused to meet with him? Why did Trump have to get the previous owner of the business to pose with him as if it still belonged to them?
Here is the problem Bill – look back to some of the race riots in 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated. At that time, according to a documentary that I recently watched, there were riots in 76 different cities. In Washington D.C. alone, there were 900 businesses destroyed and 13 people killed. If America got through that, it can survive Trump’s faux hellscape. The infuriating thing is that during the present protests, the protesters get no credit from people like Maher for the fact that they are at the forefront of containing looting and doing everything they can to keep demonstrations totally peaceful. Why Bill do you go along with the total distortion of focusing on the small portion of just a few that aren’t? If I accept that you want Trump to lose, then what possible benefit is there in lending credibility to an obvious disingenuous ploy?
Maher also went on about the fact that somebody on the left wrote a book saying looting is justified, and how things like that are just terrible. And he also spent time talking about Jessica Krug, the college professor who claimed for decades to be black, and how this is an example of “white self loathing”. His other guest Peter Hamby pointed out that the last time this happened was five years ago with Rachel Dolezal. Then Maher responded with “haven’t you seen the video where the white people are washing the black people’s feet?” Of course, it doesn’t matter a whit that on the right they have militias, Proud Boys and Q Anon. This betrays a complete lack of perspective. It takes IOKIYAR to a whole new level — they don’t need our help.
I know the reasoning behind this. It is the same thing that fuels all of Michael Moore’s concern, the idea that Trump is consolidating all of the white male non-college educated vote with his appeal to racism and law and order. The people who we are all told endlessly feel neglected and trapped in a rapidly changing world, and are the ones who will still somehow allow Trump to impossibly triumph again.
Well, I have an idea that will put Maher’s and Moore’s minds at rest. It is the same idea that Rev. William Barber discussed, also on one of Maher’s episodes. It goes to Trump’s Achilles’ heel – which is his total reliance on creating ever more division. I think the Biden campaign certainly has the right team to push it. It is simply – let’s put an end to the zero-sum game. Increasing job opportunities for minorities does not mean that there have to be less for whites. For decades the oligarchs running our society have been pillaging the middle and lower classes by turning everyone against each other. Instead of lifting everybody up together, the message was – look at what the other guy is getting. So it ends up with nobody having anything. Working whites have an interest in uniting with minorities to fight for a higher minimum wage and better jobs. In areas such as repairing our infrastructure, a word that will no longer form part of a running joke if Biden and Harris are elected.
David von Drehle, a Republican columnist whose opinions I often disagree with, got it just right in today’s Washington Post with his piece “Trump must think autoworkers are stupid”. He does a mea culpa, saying that he was one of the ones against the auto-bailout that President Obama entrusted Joe Biden with leading. He admits that it produced hundreds of thousands of jobs, that it cost less than he feared (it actually turned out to be a great investment for the country), and succeeded better than he expected. He also talks about how Trump’s claim during his recent mini-rally in Michigan of “You better vote for me, I got you so many damn car plants,” is so much Trumpian fantasy. What Joe Biden accomplished in the case of the auto bailout, is also what he and Kamala Harris will do in the future, with working people who unite across races and cultures to make their cause stronger, rather than attack each other at the behest of Trump and the 1%.
I know many of you will consider this idea fantasy. Trump has his demographic locked down, and at this point we just need to overwhelm their vote. What better insurance could there be though than a forceful argument that things don’t have to always be this way?
