Bill Maher:
Well, I mean, I guess the general term would be wokeness that we didn't have before. I guess the term was there. And its original meaning is certainly good. Alert to injustice is certainly something everybody should be for, but it migrated to something very different.
So there's a host of really bad ideas, I think, that the left has embraced, the far left. I don't think its the normal Democratic voter. But that didn't exist in 2010. I mean, President Obama was terrible for comedy, which was great for the country. But he didn't do anything crazy. And the Democrats basically didn't.
I quote him in the introduction, where he says something like, Americans don't think we should remake the whole system. They just want to not see crazy stuff.
And I sort of present that as the dilemma that were facing. The Republicans, definitely, who no longer seem to believe in democracy, are the greater threat. But how do you balance that against the crazy doctrine theory? Lots of people see there's a lot of crazy stuff, ideas about race and gender and children and free speech, that they just think is crazy.
And so, as one guy said to me, what you don't get about Trump is, we don't like him either, but we will vote for him.
Bill Maher:
I mean, some of it is just insanity. I truly believe he's insane, in the sense that people talk about the malignant narcissism as if its some sort of quirk. It's more than a quirk. It's a real thing.
But as a friend of mine always says, insanity photographs. You can't you can't take your eyes off it. There is a certain charisma quality to that, when somebody is just nuts,. And he is. He doesn't really ever think about what he's going to say. People give him credit for plotting this. He doesn't plot.
Everything is just as it comes out of his mouth. One of the great advantages he has as a political candidate is that no one takes him seriously on policy pronouncements, because he just says anything and always has and always will. So, it's like, well, we can't really take it seriously. When he gets into office, hell probably do the right thing. We like him. He's our kind of guy.
So, that's actually kind of a great advantage when you are a politician.
Bill Maher:
Yes.
I don't know. People have been asking me to write it for a long time. They say — for years, they have been saying, you should collect these editorials at the end. I think it's a good — I think the timing is right, because the theme of it is kind of I'm tired of the hate.
There's a lot for both sides to like in this book. I mean, if you just want to read half of it and ignore the half that attacks your side, you can have a great time. I think most people are in the middle. I think — I call them the normies. I didn't coin that phrase, but I have heard it, and I like it, just normal people who are not part of this extremism of either side, and they don't like it.
And I don't like it. I don't want to hate half the country, and I don't hate half the country. The last chapter is — it's called "Divorce," and its just about how a lot of people talk these days about maybe America should split up, you know, civil war. Let's do this thing.
Yes, it sounds fun. I don't want to. And it's never going to work, because half the country, even if they lose an election, they're not going anywhere. They're not self-deporting. They're here and they're going to stay here, and you're going to have to learn to live with them.
We have to learn to live with, sit with, mingle with people who don't think like you. They're not raised like you. They weren't from a part of the country that you're from. And that's OK.
It's not false. It's a fact.
Bill Maher:
Well, I tell the truth as I see it, and I don't pull punches. That's always been the bond with my audience. People are hypersensitive, and I mean, I could go down that list. I don't think we have time. And I don't think you really want to get into every one of them.
But they're all not true. I mean, I like all people. But there are things that have to be said about Islam. There are things that have to be said about health in America. There are things that have to be said about gender and what we're teaching children about it that are valid.
And I think this is what the normies appreciate in me, is that most people just shy away from even going near those issues because they're third rails. As I say in the book, one of the problems we have is, nobody ever gets canceled for being too woke.
