Bill Maher’s red-state hate will help get Trump re-elected
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Americans are as proud of the cities and towns we live in as we are of being American itself. We expect degrading attitudes toward our native lands to come from hostile countries, not from people within our own nation.
Yet that was exactly what happened last week when Bill Maher, host of the HBO show “Real Time,” went on a disparaging rant that picked at the scab that is the cultural and political divide of red state and blue state America.
Maher began by blaming Jeff Bezos for courting wealthy cities like New York for his next Amazon headquarters while ignoring states he said would benefit most from thousands of new jobs.
“That’s why red state voters are so pissed off,” he said. “They don’t hate us; they want to be us. They want to go the party. It’s like we’re the British royal family and they’re Meghan Markle’s dad.”
You might argue that is Maher being Maher and as an entertainer he’s just throwing red meat to satisfy his audience.
But two things are worth noting: The live audience applauded wildly at every insult he lobbed, and plenty of Americans think his jabs truly reflect how the blue-state cultural elite views people from red states.
Case in point: When the students from Covington Catholic got into an altercation with a progressive Native American activist, they were immediately judged guilty of heinous behavior before anyone had found out the facts. Why? Well, they were from Kentucky and had MAGA hats on. Jussie Smollett’s allegations of an attack by racist whites wearing MAGA hats was also immediately reported as true by the national press and celebrities, because they assumed that, of course, a Trump supporter would do that. Like Maher’s rant, they see Middle America as white, stupid, racist and filled with envy.
Many experts believe this attitude is what drove people to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. But many voters with red-state roots do not support Trump and take umbrage at Maher’s quip. They say his comments aren’t just a throwaway line from a comedian, but a real and growing problem for America — one that reinforces their distrust of the elite, continues to fuel the national divide, and has pushed them away from ever voting Democrat.
Ken Garner, a 56-year-old semi-retired attorney who lives in the very red state of Texas, says he enjoys the finer things in life: good food, museums, books, tasteful clothing, nice cars, high technology and classical music, “all the things that Maher claims only blue state people like.”
He says there is “not a shred of resentment as far as I can observe” from the people he meets across the Lone Star State towards those who live in blue states.
Garner doesn’t care much for the president, so much so that his Republican voting streak, which began in 1980, ended in the last presidential election when he decided not to cast a vote. But he’s also weary of the red-state bashing and says he gets why people who voted for Trump are also tired of it.
‘The reality is they love to look down on people who are not in their orbits.’
“I won’t vote for any Democrats,” he said.
Maher’s comments also ignore some startling facts. According to a recent Gallup poll, there are currently only six states where liberals outnumber conservatives: Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, Washington, New York and New Hampshire.
Even in California, conservatives and liberals are split 29 percent to 29 percent, and in every other state, conservatives lead. Nationally, they outnumber liberals by nine percentage points.
Even people in the so-called blue states — such as Maine, Oregon, New Jersey and Illinois — don’t mostly identify as liberals. Comments like Maher’s fail to realize that blue staters don’t actually think as one. And many are increasingly put off by the idea that they do.
Kevin Oliver lives and works in the belly of the blue beast, the Washington DC Beltway. The 48-year-old business consultant and military reservist grew up in Winder, Georgia, and came here at the age of 32. He says he still maintains his red-state values, is a “constitutionalist” politically and doesn’t care much for Trump, but still, he feels the attitudes of people like Maher are wrong-headed and dangerous.
“The current left in America talks a great game about all people being equal, but the reality is they love to look down on people who are not in their orbits,” he said. “The elitism is sickening.”
And, with the elite tilting ever more left-wards, 2020 is already shaping up to be yet another disastrous year for Democrats.
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