Friday's Fab-o Absurdities: Maher Almost Lurches Into Reality as Biden Seems to Break With Woke
Bill Maher gets things right occasionally, and when it happens it is worth noting.
JAKE TAPPER: “So you talk about the Democrats being so hemmed in by identity politics. The counterargument would be it’s always been identity politics, it’s just always been white people, so people like you and me didn’t notice. And now it’s just an effort at inclusion, which I’m sure theoretically you support.”
MAHER: “Yeah. I support it in fact. But, I mean, the Democrats sometimes can take it too far — or I would categorize liberal as different than woke. You know, woke, which started out as a good thing, alert to injustice, who could be against that? But it became sort of an eye roll, because they love diversity except of ideas. And that’s not really where we should be. I mean, they have a trail of very bad ideas, I would think, in wokeness.”
TAPPER: “How do you define wokeness? Because I hear people use the term all the time and it means something different to everybody.”
MAHER: “Again, I think it’s this collection of ideas that are not building on liberalism but very often undoing it. I mean, five years ago, Abraham Lincoln was not a controversial figure among liberals. We liked him. Now they take his name off schools and tear down his statues. Really? Lincoln isn’t good enough for you? You know, 5, 10 years ago, bedrock liberalism was we are striving to be a colorblind society where we don’t see race. Of course, we see it, but it doesn’t matter. That’s not what woke is. Woke is something very different. It’s identity — we see it all the time. It’s always the most important thing. I don’t think that’s liberalism. I mean, I could mention so many issues like that. I remember doing that show on HBO, comic relief for the homeless. And the idea then, again, among liberals, I thought, was for the sake of compassion, can we get these people off the streets so they have a roof over their heads? And now it’s like, ‘How dare you try to move the homeless? This is where they live!’ It’s like, again, you change the definitions and then you say I’m more conservative? I believe what I’ve always believed. You change these things and then you yell at me for it.”
[End]
Now, to the extent Maher is correct about what “woke” really is here, he’s equally wrong about the nature of liberalism as it has evolved in the past 70 years. Since the advent of Clintonism in the ‘90s, liberalism itself has been almost entirely about identity politics. Further, the entire foundation of the Democrat party itself has been tied up entirely around identity politics since its very founding.