Thursday, February 2, 2017

Lesser Evil, Be Thou My Good!

Some right-wing frother (the brother of a friendly co-worker, as it happens) has been posting anti-Muslim propaganda on Facebook in support of Trump's highly selective Muslim ban.  (If Muslims are really so uniformly violent, why is Trump willing to let in Saudi, UAE, Bahraini, Egyptian, etc. Muslims?)  Today he posted a video clip of Bill Maher denouncing the supposed cluelessness of liberals about "radical Islam."   I knew I had seen some objections by Maher to the ban, so I did a little digging and found this one to toss at him, with a reminder that Maher is also vocally anti-Christian.  But how funny:
Is Maher really as stupid as this tweet makes him seem?  Well, yes, probably, but leave that aside for the moment.  To say that Clinton was the lesser of two evils means that she wouldn't have done as many bad things as Trump is doing.  It also means that the person calling her a lesser evil intended to vote for her, and probably did.  It's hard to know what Maher and liberals mean when they throw tantrums over the term, but it appears that they think it means "exactly the same" or "far worse", and that is not what "lesser evil" means.  Democratic loyalists will even use the lesser-evil claim to try to persuade reluctant voters, perhaps chiding them for demanding perfection from a candidate, until a voter actually says the word "lesser evil," and then they stamp their feet and cry "The Devil told you that!"

Maher isn't the brightest pencil in the box anyway, and it's mildly entertaining (though also thoroughly depressing) to watch both the far Right and the near Right citing his foolishness to support their views.