IMO, Bill Maher is spot-on here. If the Democrats (and their supporters) don't find the courage to speak out about these excesses of the Woke fringe of the political Left, they won't even be able to win the office of dog catcher next election--we just witnessed how badly Democrats were hurt in lower tier federal and state elections from coast to coast.

xv

In a year Democrats hoped to capture the Senate and bolster their House majority, the loss of so much ground in Congress has touched off an intense volley of finger-pointing, insults and plotting by each feuding faction to keep the other out of party leadership posts. The familiar ideological rift between the left and the center-left is intensifying after an election in which the message sent by voters was so muddled: embracing Joe Biden while spurning so many down-ballot Democrats.

Joe Biden would have lost in a truly massive landslide except that Trump was the worst candidate who has ever run for the office of President. Biden (for whom I voted) should have won by at least 90/10 over such an arrogant proudly-ignorant self-absorbed bully, yet almost half of our country voted against Biden. As it was, had merely 200,000 people in key states swapped their votes, Trump would have been reelected by a "landslide" the equivalent of the "landslide" Biden's supporters are currently proclaiming. We can't depend on the Republicans ever again choosing such a bad candidate. This bodes terribly for 2022 as indicated (in Maher's video) by Abigail Spanberger (U.S House of Rep-VA).

Here's an inconvenient fact: Many Republicans were voting against the Democrats, not for Trump, and not because "they are all racists."  If you don't believe this, it is because you have been unwilling to listen to real life Republicans who live and work in your community. It's time for all of us to do some serious soul searching. We need to confidently reassert evidence-based principles that have largely (though admittedly imperfectly) worked over time: It is a good thing to reward hard work and competence. It's critically important to set aside our feelings and self-critically get the facts correct before we discuss any political issue. It is absurd to loudly proclaim, contrary to strong evidence, that every "white" person is a "racist." It is unhinged to argue that police should be "abolished" or "defunded" in light the inevitable consequences of defunding, especially on poor communities (who largely want more police presence, not less). Here's a recent crime report from Minnesota, which actively defunded its police:

Homicides in Minneapolis are up 50 percent, with nearly 75 people killed across the city so far this year. More than 500 people have been shot, the highest number in more than a decade and twice as many as in 2019. And there have been more than 4,600 violent crimes — including hundreds of carjackings and robberies — a five-year high.

Do the Democrats really want to take back some seats in 2022?  If so, we need to have the courage to speak out against the sanctimonious left fringe, which excels at making cartoons out of complex individual people by jamming them into identity-silos and rigging public speech with dozens of hair-triggers.

Most of us recognize Wokeness to be a terrible foundation for collaborating with each other to run our country, but we are hesitant to speak out because we might be called names by the fringe left. It often feels uncomfortable to speak up because the Woke are so well embedded in many of America's primary sense-making institutions, including universities, media and political entities.  It will all be much easier if we encourage each other to start publicly saying what almost all of us are privately thinking.  It's time to get to work.