Tag: Talking to the Center

Bill Maher as a Barometer of the Center Left

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Bill Maher is a comedian who made his fortune with two talk shows, Politically Incorrect and Real Time with Bill Maher.  Maher calls himself a liberal but a realist.  He also claims to hate hypocrisy.  Well, I’ll let that go.  Suffice it to say that his favorite targets down through the decades have always been traditionalists and other conservatives.  He has made a very good living extolling Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and vilifying all Republicans and especially Donald Trump.  But for at least the last year or so Maher has been calling out the more insane actions of the Left.  In recent days he has highlighted the danger of assuming that young children should be allowed to decide they want to have surgeries and hormone therapies to change their sex.  He has derided the  homeless policies in California that have left the streets littered with human feces and deranged drug addicts and he has mocked the positivity campaign that tells heroin and methamphetamine addicts not to feel shame about their addictions.

So, is Bill Maher suddenly a champion of the Right?  No, he’s still the same liberal mush head he always was.  But what he’s noticed is that his audience, the Center-Left, feels alienated by what their politicians are letting the Woke do to the country.  This audience is all the people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and hate Donald Trump and voted for Joe Biden to “get things back to normal.”  But instead of normal, their homes in the cities are besieged by criminals and homeless drug addicts (if there is a difference) and their children are being encouraged to think they are “trans” and should have their sex organs amputated.  And just to top things off the cost of living is draining their life savings, minute by minute.

 

What this tells me is that the voting base of the Democrat party is scared and even if they can’t fire Dementia Joe this November, they can take away his Congress.  And that’s what they intend to do.  And they are certainly receptive to a message by someone who can convince them he has a plan to fix things.  The only problem is the one person they won’t listen to is Donald Trump.  If they were forced to vote for Trump their heads would explode.  Especially the women.  So, are we at an impasse?  No, I don’t think so.  All these people need to vote Republican is a VP candidate who isn’t Donald Trump to give them a narrative that what they’re really voting for is the future.  And I think that’s where Ron DeSantis comes in.

DeSantis is perceived as a smart, savvy leader who gets hard things done.  And he doesn’t have Trump’s baggage.  He doesn’t particularly irk women.  He isn’t as brash.  And he knows quite a bit about building a governing team.  So, what needs to happen is, earlier rather than later, Trump and DeSantis need to work out a strategy to let both of them work to their strengths and in that way hijack the whole center-left of the electorate in 2024.  Of course, it won’t be a permanent shift.  Liberals don’t belong in the Republican party.  As soon as the Woke have been disenfranchised and Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and have been packed off to nursing homes, some new Obama clone will be exciting the center-left with claims of fiscally responsible compassion or some such nonsense.  But if we can manage to win in 2024, we’ll have a shot at trying to bring back some semblance of lawful government.  But how we do that is a story for another day.

That’s quite a lot of tea leaves reading from just watching a few clips of the Bill Maher show.  Well, I’m not a pundit for nothing, you know.

Interacting in the Brave New World – Part 3

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In this third part of the essay I think I’ll consider how to talk to those in the middle.  We all have friends and relatives who act as if they think there aren’t any important issues separating the Left and Right.  In fact, they say they don’t see the sense in resisting the dictates of the Left because the freedom they would gain is nothing as compared to the benefits they lose if they cross the Left.  They get to be part of the intelligentsia and reap the benefits of living on Mt. Olympus.  All they have to do is say two plus two is five or three or whatever it equals today.

Well, I have seen a shift in these people.  Mostly it seems to happen when they have children.  Then they realize exactly what it entails to have to tell your children that two plus two equals five, or rather they have to deal with having their kids come home from school and tell it to them.  But they are still conflicted.  Typically, they challenge you to prove that what they themselves have a hard time believing can be challenged.  But really, they’re almost begging you to show them it’s possible to say no.

So, what you do is tell them what you know about the Left and where we are heading and tell them what you intend to do and how you’ll do it.  But most importantly do not stay silent when someone spouts one of the leftist platitudes.  I tell them what I really think and why I think it.  I don’t get excited or angry.  I say it all in a matter of fact way and I tell them that a lot of people feel exactly the same and that the people pushing this leftist nonsense aren’t our friends.

Of course, you have to know your audience.  You will find that a certain portion of your friends and family actually are hopelessly entangled through work or marriage with the Left.  I recommend bypassing them.  You won’t win and you’ll only cause needless strife.  Instead choose other more promising targets.  You’ll pretty easily tell where those willing to hear the truth are.  They’re probably already halfway there already.  The Trump Presidency and the madness associated with the Resistance have been pretty powerful catalysts for waking people up.

But one thing I will caution you about.  Proselytizing at work is very risky.  I recommend talking to work friends off-site and during a social occasion rather than a work function.  Many corporations are riddled with highly converged individuals that will take offense and possibly cause you trouble if your political leanings become known.

So that’s it.  Pick your targets and give them the straight stuff.  There are plenty of people who are waiting to join our side.  Just do it rationally and confidently.