In Part I, I published Bill Maher’s surprising slap at Democrats and progressives for their unethical drift into anti-Semitism. It’s pretty good—for Bill. The 18 paragraphs are numbered so I don’t have to repeat them here, especially since WordPress nearly sent me to the woodchipper when I was trying to compose the first post. I’m sorry that you’ll have to jump back and forth, but so do I, to write this.
And away we go…
1. Everyone has a right to be anti-Semitic, just as everyone has a right to lie, or commit adultery. Advocating anti-Semitism, promoting it, and acting on it is still unethical. These ethical nuances, rights vs. law vs. ethics, are beyond Maher’s comprehension.
2. See? Bill immediately defaults to a Rationalization #22 defense of Israel. It isn’t the worst country! Wow. Talk about a back-handed compliment!
3. Not quite as bad as China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, and North Korea, eh? Way to make anti-Semites feel ashamed, Bill….
4. Ezra Klein is nothing to be proud of. He has been a leader of Axis bias for a decade.
5. A “They’re just as bad” (Rationalization #2) cheat by Maher, and he’s cherry-picking. Carlson has been excoriated by conservatives for his anti-Israel stance. He is not representative of the Right at all, and I, for one, never thought he was.
6. Bill managed not to mention the Times’ “dog rape” libel.
9. Maher likes the #22 rationalization so much he comes back to it. This is because Bill doesn’t get ethics. He also evokes “Everybody does it!” here, the hoariest rationalization of all. Jeez Bill…read a book.
10. The “new rule” is about Democratic Party anti-Semitism, but the candidate he writes the most about is an obscure anti-Semitic Republican. Huh.
11. Israel overwhelmingly has the “right-wingers” on its side, and it has the President of the United States on its side in particular. Maher never mentions President Trump at all. He’s only willing to infuriate his audience so much, apparently.
12. Trying to continue his false equivalence argument regarding anti-Semitism on”both sides,” Maher pairs two typical leftist academics with…Candace Owens? She is persona non grata among conservatives, a true embarrassment, and she is the opposite of an academic, as she is illiterate.
13. Again with the rogue Republican joke in a statement about Leftist anti-Semitism, and again, Bill is cherry-picking. There is a reason that Margery Taylor Greene isn’t in Congress any more. Representing her idiocy as mainstream Republicanism is despicable. Rep. Fine’s sharp quip after one of Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim minions derided dogs was, in my opinion, undiplomatic but defensible. No dogs in the U.S. have engaged in any mass shootings or terrorism.
14-18. Bill finishes very strong, almost making up for his rationalizations and weasel words on the way to his conclusion
Ethics Alarms 
I have some questions about our host’s application of rationalization #2 “They are just as bad”.
Let me given an example in the form of a story. A boy (let’s call him George) who talks in the classroom is disciplined by the teacher for not being silent when he should. (So far so good; it is a teacher’s prerogative to discipline students who do not follow instructions.) Well, there is a video of how this classroom operates. Brawls in the classroom. Chairs being thrown through the windows. Graffiti on the walls, and other damage. Teacher not being able to teach. None of that behavior is being punished. The mob rules the classroom. The teacher is afraid of the mob, and is very lax in meting out discipline. Only George, who is relatively well behaved, is subjected to discipline. Not only that, he is subjected to bullying by his classmates. Again, the teacher does not stop the bullying, but sends bot George and the bully to detention for fighting when George tries the bully who is choking him to get off him
There are a lot of things wrong in that classroom. George’s precociousness is the least of all the issues. The violence, vandalism and lawlessness are the issues. George would in my opinion is correct to be angry about a) the mayhem in the classroom b) the bullying of which he is a victim and which is not stopped by the school c) the unfairness of the discipline against him only and not the others.
You can probably apply this story to the situation of Israel, with Israel as George, the bullies as Iran and its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah), the other undisciplined students as all the rogue countries with major human rights violations (China, Russia, Myanmar, Iran, various African dictatorships) and the UN and the left as the teacher. The question is why the left always scourges Israel and never China or Iran or Hamas. The reason has to do with biases and hatreds against Western Civilization and against Jews.
The point of Bill Maher’s argument is to point out the inconsistency and the hypocrisy of the left, who always singles out Israel for abuse but never a country like China for their genocide of the Uyghurs or the slaughter of Christians by Muslims in Africa and Syria. Calling people out for their hypocrisy and bias is not the same as using rationalization #2.
It is fair to have criticism on the policies of Netanyahu and Trump, but what we have been experiencing after October 7th, 2023 is something else. Nick Kristof’s column for example, plus the mayhem in Jewish neighborhoods in NYC that immediately followed (Kristofnacht). I am glad that Bill Maher is calling this out.
#1. I took his point to be sarcastic criticism of hypocrisy and cowardice of not admitting to antisemitism by hiding behind accusations against Israel and Netenyahu, in addition to implicit condemnation of the racism in antisemitism. The implicit criticism seems to carry with it a shaming of the racism, not an actual advocacy for the right to be racist.
What role does our right hemisphere play in moderating or confounding the rile of the left hemisphere of our brains. The left favoring structure, definition and labels but the right more muuuuch more flowy without boundaries?
Bill Maher just can’t help but engage in bothsidesism. Dan Bilzerian? I doubt many people reading this even knew who he was without looking him up. He is basically a trust fund ‘influencer’ like Andrew Tate, but with gambling instead of digital pimping and a 4-year stint in the Navy. This is hardly the same as a politician of the status of Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tliab. This is hardly a person who is as consequential as the leadership of Columbia University. He isn’t even as mainstream a Republican as Brandon Herrera ‘The AKGuy’), who is actually the Republican candidate for Congress in his district. No one is endorsing Bilzerian. It isn’t like he has even testified before Congress, like Willie Nelson has.
The Islamophobia angle is laughable. What is an incident of ‘Islamophobia’? It is basically criticizing Islamic terrorist attacks. “Yes, the guy killed 4 people shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’, but think about how the other Muslims feel when people disapprove of it.
I’ll add one more:
He claims to be libertarian. He’s got a long list of grievances against the democrat party. He’s talked about their illiberal activities. About their hypocrisy. About how they’re the real danger to democracy. About how the republicans will meet with him and come on his show, but the people he votes for won’t meet with him and definitely won’t come on his show. About he admits how much of what they say about Trump are lies. This is just the latest grievance in a long list; Maher is a Jew, and he’s seeing how much the bulk of the democrat party hates Jews now. The party is a risk to his personal safety.
But we know that he is still going to campaign for and vote for democrats. He’ll still use dodgy arguments, dodgy ethics, and misleading “facts” to help the democrats and oppose republicans. Why? It’s what he’s always done.
Your term, Fick, fits Maher. Maher and I hold many parallel political views, but we couldn’t be more different in how we express it.
I hit reply, when I should have added more:
Look at Maher’s goal here. He’s only seeking to get the democrat party to move on this issue. He doesn’t seek to have the democrats get the drubbing they deserve.