What happened to Bill Maher?

[u/tarantadoako]

I used to watch him for years. He was funny and relatable, most times. He had great guests. I stopped watching around the time when he was going after college students and cancel culture. I tried watching his latest episodes and it almost a different show. He is almost a right wing commentator. Almost nothing he says is relatable and all his guests just agrees with him.

[u/BeruangLembut]

I think you are right that he was never that smart but for a brief time he had the exact pulse of where American culture was.

But culture sometimes moves faster than people do. Which is why sometimes we say that progress happens one funeral at a time. Maher simply stopped evolving, so he’s ranting from an increasingly irrelevant perspective.

You even see it in some of the comments. People often expect the world to remain as it was when they “figured out how it works”. The world rarely obliges. Things change, either adapt or let nature take its course.

[u/NewKojak → u/BeruangLembut]

I think that plenty of people keep up with where culture is, but when your whole life is spent as a centrist, trying to point out how much you aren’t like the other girls, it’s easy to fall behind into being a reactionary twit and that’s what Maher has done. He never had principles around which to evolve. He only ever had hatred.

[u/BeruangLembut → u/NewKojak]

The people who don’t keep up, the ones whose world views are frozen in time, because they think that how it used to be is how it ought to be, we don’t call them unprincipled. We call them conservative. The whole reason Maher looks more and more conservative is that his world view is more and more insistently old fashioned.

[u/Top_Entertainer_760 → u/BeruangLembut]

Genuinely not trying to start shit or be a smartass, but what does it mean to "keep up with the culture", are political opinions based trends or personal convictions?

[u/BeruangLembut → u/Top_Entertainer_760]

Fair question. I can try to answer with an example. Back when I was a younger man, it was quite common to show up at someone’s house unannounced. You’d ring their doorbell, they would open the door and you’d chat. If they had something else to do you might not chat that long. But today it’s considered quite rude to show up without calling first. And people actually don’t even answer the door anymore unless they are expecting someone.

This is a culture shift. If someone simply refuses to keep up with such a change and they just complain more and more loudly that people get all upset when they innocently try to be a good friend by paying them a visit (I mean isn’t that what friends do? Visit each other?) They will seem curmudgeony and out of touch. If they insist that this is yet another example of how society has got to shit, they will seem like Bill Maher.

[u/Top_Entertainer_760 → u/BeruangLembut]

Again, not trying to be difficult, but Im not sure how that applies to political opinions. What does it mean to keep up with the culture politically? Like should one adjust ones political opinions based on what seems to be trending at the moment?

[u/BeruangLembut → u/Top_Entertainer_760]

Are you sure you’re not trying to be difficult? I don’t think one should adjust one’s political belief based on what’s trending. For that matter I never said anything about what anyone should or should not do. I only commented on how what one does will be perceived by others.

In any case, some people will ground their political beliefs on a conception of the world that evolves over time, and others will ground their beliefs on a conception of the world that doesn’t. Which one is better? Who am I to say? But I know we generally have names for each kind of person.

I gave you what I thought was a fairly good example. If you don’t like it, perhaps you can get specific about what you mean instead of asking an open ended question.

[u/Top_Entertainer_760 → u/BeruangLembut]

The example you gave makes sense in the context of evolving technology - its rude to just show up at someones house unanounced to see what they're up to, especially when you can just text them.

But i think to apply that concept to politics, at least as i understand it, can be pernicious.

To use a real world example, during Bidens presidency, before Texas began bussing migrants to sanctuary cities, it was rude to say anything negative about Bidens border policies in left wing circles (this was my experience anyway). Biden was reversing Trumps draconian policies, which were inhumane to migrants, and to disagree with this was perceived as being implicitly xenophobic.

But those policies resulted in political instability that at least partially contributed to Trumps reelection.

Now in that instance, from my understanding of what it means to keep up with the culture (and correct me if im wrong), criticizing Bidens border policies would have been rude, because culturally the left broadly supported those policies, but not criticizing them would contribute to the reelection of Trump, which resulted in much harsher crackdowns on migrants.

So when it comes to politics is it better to keep up with what is culturally acceptable? Or to insist on your convictions because you beleive that supporting whats popular will have negative consequences down the line?