On a recent episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher” featuring attorney Sarah Isgur and journalist John Heilman, I was once again taken aback by Bill Maher’s comments and criticisms about the left. As the show progressed, Sarah made a comment that resonated with me further. She asserted that politics was the new religion in America. I went down the rabbit hole of X, or what the left refers to as a cesspool of “magats” and Trumpers. As we saw after President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the left almost as a whole, collectively lost their minds. Meltdowns were public, leftist media pundits openly showed their disdain, and it was funny at the time. Fast forward to 2024 post-election, and it’s gotten worse.
One thing I hate about the left that needs to change. pic.twitter.com/xZADLTWmIv
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) November 12, 2024
Video after video of people taking time out of their days to record themselves having full-blown screaming meltdowns or videos promising to leave the country and disturbingly promising to cut people out of their lives if they voted for Trump. X was further filled with insanely toxic posts of men and women alike, publicly bragging about removing their children from their wills, promising to let their elderly parents die, alone and broke, all for the crime of supporting and/or voting for Trump.
Never before had I seen such a display of hostility and hatred for someone based on their political beliefs. As Sarah Isgur alluded to, Americans have replaced religion with politics. The only difference here is political beliefs are not a protected class like religion. You can discriminate all you want against someone for being liberal or conservative, libertarian or socialist. Liberals are talking about people the same way that KKK members and Nazis talk about Black and Jewish Americans or the same way that the Nation of Islam talks about White Americans, the same way that radial Muslims talk about anyone that is not a practicing Muslim in good standing. I have seen public posts on X wishing death and despair on Trump supporters, Republicans, Conservatives, and more.
There were so many people on the left who repeatedly said that America was not divided after President Joe Biden was elected in 2020. They said there were tensions, but now we could repair those tensions. It was all a lie. I lost friends AND family members when Trump was elected in 2016, people that I truly respected and admired, with whom I disagreed on politics but agreed with on so much more. Aunts and uncles unfriended me and some of my siblings on social media, but not before sending messages saying how we were horrible people. Family gatherings were nothing short of toxic.
For me, I didn’t care really; I knew I was loved and appreciated by so many others, and frankly, I just did not have time to try to chase down and attempt to change the minds of these people. If they wanted to hate me, then fine. But the hate didn’t stop there; no, it got even worse. I had death threats sent to my house, my emails, all sent anonymously of course, with no way to track them. One of them said they were going to beat me up, hog-tie me and hold me down so that I could be forced to watch them forcibly rape my wife. All because I was a conservative and wanted to support and defend myself and everyone else’s children while they were in school. Lovely people indeed, right?
Over the past ten or so years, our society has broken down along political lines, the same exact way we broke down on religious lines. The only difference is that religion predominantly wasn’t used as an excuse or reason to hate. Our nation prides itself on not allowing people to attack or persecute others because of their religion. Now politics is the linchpin the left needs to hate and discriminate against others, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it, short of adding political beliefs to the federal civil rights protection list.
No side is innocent in this, I firmly believe that. However, I also firmly believe that the left is the predominant perpetrator of this discrimination. Gloating or rubbing victories and losses into people’s faces is done equally by both sides. Hell, I have done exactly that on several occasions, and while I completely agree that it may be childish or immature, it is harmless, unless you have skin with the thickness and strength of tissue paper. I have thick skin; I have to, not just as a man, but as an adult. My time in the Marines, especially in combat, during my time as a Deputy Sheriff, and my time as a functional adult have made my skin incredibly strong and thick. However, the people on the left who are on display today are the most fragile and weak I have ever seen.
A great friend of mine, Dave Goss, founded a dating website back in 2016 called Trump Singles. The site was exactly what it was named, a dating website for people who supported Donald Trump and fellow, like-minded conservatives. Goss started the sight because he, like so many other Americans, saw how divided the country was politically and was trying to bring some of them back together. Now the left immediately mocked him for it, articles written about him made casual references to him in casual terms, calling him a “guy” instead of a “man.” It didn’t bother him at all, but it highlighted where the nation was going.
Fast forward to today, the left has gone full tilt, with scores of women publicly and proudly posting to social media with their intentions of going on a “sex strike,” refusing to have sex with men because of Trump’s victory. Women are saying they’re going to have their tubes tied, or no longer have children, shave their heads, pronounce that dating conservative men is unacceptable to them, and even having conservative friends is strictly off limits.
How far we have come as a nation that we simply cannot tolerate people’s political choices? When one is not allowed, or worse, is strictly forbidden from merely associating with people who do not share their political beliefs, we are lost as a society, let alone a nation. I warn my conservative friends and family members all the time that it is unhealthy to live in a vacuum, or echo chamber, where all you hear is people agreeing with you and offering no constructive criticism. Living in a constant state of confirmation bias or living our daily lives interacting only with like-minded people is simply not healthy. When I mentioned Bill Maher and his show earlier, I referenced it because Maher may be a liberal, but he doesn’t live in a vacuum. He, like many other liberals has said that they haven’t left the Democrat Party, the party left them and went too far to the left. While I disagree with many of Maher’s critiques of the right, because I think he is wrong on many issues, he levels the same critiques about the left.
If we do not become tolerant of other people’s views and politics, we will doom ourselves to failure. We all need to be reminded that it is perfectly acceptable to hold opposite opinions and views and be friends. It is perfectly acceptable, and it used to be taught as a core principle, to be accepting of differences in opinions and beliefs. We were taught as children by our parents and teachers to be stewards of kindness and acceptance.
Nations and empires alike, both have failed when their people have torn themselves asunder by attacking each other for a simple difference of opinion. Need I remind us about the millions of Jews murdered during the Holocaust because a group of people decided they were the cause of all their problems? How many thousands of people in the past decade or so have been killed, all because of a lack of tolerance and acceptance? It is time for everyone to just take a minute and think about the damage being done to ourselves and the fabric of our great Republic. If we do not change course, we will guarantee our place in the dustbins of history, where they scatter the ashes of fallen empires and nations.
