“One way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy, so please bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or lose your democracy.”
—-HBO’s Bill Maher, on his show “Real Time”…as his audience applauded, as usual.
Did any conservative, Republican or pundit root for the nation’s failure under Obama? The closest would be Rush Limbaugh’s infamous declaration that he wanted the new President to fail, which was more unpatriotic than I could tolerate, but even Rush didn’t go so far as to wish for the nation itself to be thrown into crisis. Maher is a repulsive individual, but he is not alone. We already discussed here how many members of the media appear to be rooting for the North Korean talks to fail. Other progressives openly wish for the President’s death: I could name some right here who have told me that in person. Lawyers. Professionals. Wishing for the death of not just another human being, but the President of the United States.
The attendant hysteria, fear-mongering, monomania and values distortion that have spawned the “resistance” have also apparently created a human mutation with lethal potential. Never before have there been mainstream American citizens who not only wished ill on the nation and neighbors, but who got cheered for it. The mutants are a threat to society and to sanity. Do not pretend they aren’t.
They may not be traitors, but they think like traitors.
Let’s first dispense with the fantasy that Maher was acting as a comedian when he uttered this disgraceful sentiment. It’s not a joke. He’s not kidding. Maher is, like the funnier, less vile (though equally biased) Jon Stewart, half commentator half comic, usually clear when he wants to be taken seriously.
Now let’s consider the statement. Maher is filthy rich: he knows that he won’t be hurt in a recession, just those normal, middle class people who lose their jobs, retirement savings and reserves when the economy goes bad. What does he care? A lot of them voted for Trump anyway, so eff ’em. And “save the democracy”? The only threat to democracy I’ve seen in the last ten years has been the behavior of the Obama administration and the Left’s efforts to overturn the 2016 election, criminalize politics, capture the news media, weaken the First Amendment and eliminate the Second.
Oh, I agree that Trump is a terrible influence on the political culture and a chaotic leader, and he certainly says a lot of alarming, irresponsible things. But right now, the sad state of affairs is that he appears to be a vital bulwark against the totalitarian leftism that half the public seems to be falling for. What Maher calls “the democracy” means the only democracy progressives will tolerate: one that places them in charge, with their boots on the necks of the deplorables who support sovereignty, rule of law, individual responsibility, a truly free and objective press, due process, and the Constitution.
You know, I am very uncomfortable with pronouncing members of the “resistance” as terrible human beings. This is the tone, after all, that has characterized progressives under Obama, the damaging and divisive attitude that anyone who doesn’t swallow the Left’s version of reality is racist,sexist, and xenophobic–you know: bad. I don’t want to think of people I disagree with politically as bad. That’s a dangerous path for a democracy.
Just as I don’t call women I disagree with—not even Hillary Clinton—cunts, so also I don’t defriend associates whose political rants make me gag on Facebook. I never rooted against Obama, or the nation while he was leading it. I thought Obama would probably be a disaster, but I certainly hoped he wouldn’t be. I surely wanted him to be transparent, as he promised to be, though he wasn’t. I hoped that he would be a unifying leader, though he was cynically and devastatingly divisive instead. I wanted him to be a reasonably strong President, because incompetent leaders in America usually spark backlashes, and we end up with, well, not Presidents like Donald Trump, exactly, but extreme types that are unpredictable. No luck there, either.
I would have liked his economic policies to work: they didn’t. I would have loved to see him reduce the debt, as he said he would do: he exploded it. Even though I knew that a successful Obama Presidency would probably give us a corrupt successor in Hillary, there was not one second in which I wished for the nation itself to fail, because good, fair, patriotic citizens don’t do that.
Members of the “resistance,” however, do. Bill Maher does. The people who cheer for him do.
It’s signature significance. Nobody who isn’t a terrible human being thinks like that. Not even once.
Ethics Alarms 
In my local paper was a story about a tree a man planted above the grave of his wife that he tragically lost to cancer too soon and too young. He received permission from the town sexton to plant the tree, and kept it trimmed and within the regulation height and width. The tree was a dwarf Japanese maple, about four feet tall, and three feet wide.
After a few years, the sexton was replaced by a group of volunteers appointed by the town board of selectman. The volunteers set a policy of no plantings near burial plots, but grandfathered in existing ones. They also created a policy to inform relatives of violations, so that the family could correct an issue before they had to intervene.
One day earlier this spring, the volunteers were cleaning up winter debris. We had a rough winter, and the trees did not come back to life until the first week of May. It was a pretty bleak spring over all. One volunteer saw that the tree over the wife’s grave had no leaves, so he pruned it to “promote growth”. The tree was not in violation, so the husband was not informed prior. The volunteer trimmed it down to the trunk.
In order to save the tree, they killed the tree.
What that they’ve done would not have been approved by Vladimir Putin?
Look at the bright side; at least he didn’t call the President, or the economy, a cunt.
“One way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy, so please bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or lose your democracy.” Bill Maher
1. It’s too bad that pompous ass hypocrites like Maher can’t see the seditious and subversive totalitarian staring back at themself when they look in the mirror. Maher is a piece of shit who should be stripped of his soapbox.
2. It’s too bad that double standard wielding anti-Trump resistance can’t see that people like Maher are seditious and subversive totalitarian hacks literally in the process of destroying democracy.
They’d just say he was exercising his First Amendment rights to try to help this country not fall into totalitarianism. It’s not worth trying to explain things to someone who won’t listen.
My fear for the political future of the USA is that this the ends justifies the means kind of seditious and subversive totalitarian rhetoric continuing to remain unchecked by Progressives, the anti-Trump media, and social justice warriors is in the process of rewriting what is acceptable in politics and setting an ever lower bar for anti-rhetoric towards future Presidents.
Remember; it doesn’t matter what propaganda smears are spewed forth by the anti-Trump resistance any retraction or correction of said smears will never, ever equal or overcome the direct and indirect effects of the initial propaganda smear. The negative emotional effects of the smears will linger and the retraction will fade away, this is exactly what Progressives and the anti-Trump resistance is depending on.
Your fear is being realized, Z. Progressives have cleared the field of those with morals or ethics.
Those left will play by progressive rules.
And “save the democracy”? What Maher calls “the democracy” means the only democracy progressives will tolerate: one that places them in charge, with their boots on the necks of the deplorables who support sovereignty, rule of law, individual responsibility, a truly free and objective press, due process, and the Constitution.
Exactamundo.
This “democracy is in peril” thing seems to have sprung immediately following the election. Clearly a talking point and not descriptive of any actual events. Pure alarmism.
I’m absolutely thrilled with all of Trump’s policy efforts.
Am I allowed to say that? Shhh.
HR would like to see you 1st thing in the morning OB; please bring your playbook, parking pass, & executive washroom key…
…and do NOT fly a small plane to your appointment. HR needs you to die AFTER you are fired.
Ah yes, the luxuriousness of having been self employed and now, for the past eighteen years, retired.
Addendum: please refrain from operating a weight-lifting bench, avoid happening upon a robbery-in-progress, or stepping in front of speeding bullets.
Try not to get killed in a home invasion robbery (where nothing is taken)
Socialists generally prefer disaster, misery and discontent. Gotta have something to rebel AGAINST to foment a rebellion.
”Socialists generally prefer disaster, misery and discontent.”
You don’t say?
A possible theme-song:
In a pinch accusations of counterrevolution will do: “I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel [Castro] locking up people they see as dangerous,” self-proclaimed “radical human rights attorney” Lynne Stewart told Monthly Review’s Susie Day in a November 2002 interview. “Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.”
These are the kind of people the left would want to put in power. Of course Stewart is now dead, but I can’t grasp how she was ok defending a system that would see her stuffed into a burqa and silenced.
” ‘locking up people they see as dangerous,’ ”
What could possibly go wrong?
“ ‘Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.’ ”
That is some seriously fucked up shit!!
Lynne Stewart was a seriously fucked-up person with a sick, twisted worldview, who not only defended the mastermind of the first WTC bombing, but abused her status as his attorney to pass his decrees on to his followers in the outside world. Even Bill Kuntsler’s former partner Ron Kuby said he couldn’t defend people like that, who stood for an ideology in which he would be put against a wall and shot and his wife and daughter stuffed into burqas.
Progressives all think they will be in the Elite class, and only the peons, the deplorables, will have to obey the new rules.
The sad fact, Jack, is that the time has probably passed to START calling the left terrible human beings. The soon to be departed Charles Krauthammer said it best when he said that conservatives might think liberals are stupid, but liberals think conservatives are evil. That’s a recipe for destruction, as Matthew 12:25 tells us: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” A nation can’t stand when one half hates the other half. The problem is that up till now the right has taken the high road, when it’s past time to stand and fight, its time to counterattack.
Maybe it’s time we did start to use our own arsenal of brutal insults on the other side. Maybe it’s time you called Lisa the vicious feminist a cum-catcher, or Hamid the apologist for all things Islamic a Muzzie terrorist, or Jose the open borders jerk a wetback. Those insults have powerful shock value, power to rally those who hate those already hate you anyway, and power to show well-deserved contempt for the other side. As for defriending associates who won’t shut up, remember, your social media space is the same as your phone or your living room. You don’t have to allow anyone in that you don’t want to, and if someone is going to do nothing but say things you don’t agree with, you are under no obligation to keep that connection. Block them and think no more of it, your feed will be easier to read when you drink your coffee.
Let’s not forget, the left isn’t composed of “good, fair, patriotic citizens.” It’s composed of the violent (Black Lives Matter, the Weathermen), the disloyal (the Berrigan and Einhorn types), the idealistic (Sanders, Krugman), and the lazy (those getting welfare checks), held together with a leavening of power-grubbers. To expect people like that, who are only interested in this nation as it can help them further their vision of the way things ought to be, which is what they are really loyal to, is expecting too much.
I disagree. Assassination insults are preferable to brutal insults. You ask someone to describe their plan in detail, and then once you make them articulate all the key flaws, you express concern about them in ways that should be obvious to them. The key phrase here is, “well, when you put it that way, it just sounds stupid.”
However, it may take multiple passes to get them to understand, so at no point should you sound triumphant, lest cognitive dissonance lead them to believe you’re not a credible sources of criticism. Plus, if you happen to not be completely right, then you would lose the chance to learn something as well. The successful result is introducing an unshakable self-doubt to them that mere insults would only steel them against. They’ll then be more open to other perspectives, or at least not fight so hard for their own ill-considered one.
Tried that approach for decades. It did not work. They are the enlightened ones, whose virtue is unquestioned, and you are not. You were never a ‘credible source of criticism,’ only a deplorable they were deigning to educate.
The new right no longer believes in the high road. And they will be better at the Alinsky game than progressives are, as they have had is used against them for decades.
It takes practice. The trick is identifying exactly the right path to lead their thoughts down so that they come to the conclusion that they’re missing something important. Done right, at no point does it rely on them trusting that you’re an expert in anything. It actually works better when I’m an outsider they’re deigning to educate, because they never see it coming. I’m almost always able to signal that I’m not a deplorable, though, just because I’m so darn respectful.
I spent several years as a hazard to the sanity of those around me, deconstructing people if they got on my nerves. In the process of becoming less harmful, I became even more skilled. I have the utmost confidence that I can pry open even the most closed mind if I can access a crack (and it’s probably severely cracked). However, it does tend to work better in person, because then I can use my facial expressions and voice modulation to evoke emotions, and they can’t simply walk away from the keyboard and pretend I don’t exist.
As an example, see Chris Kelly.
https://www.facebook.com/chris.kelly.7315720
Maher jumped the shark a long time ago. Give him the hook.