Indirect, But Real

When Bill Maher recently was interviewed by CNN's Chris Cuomo, the host of Real Time maintained that it is Representative Liz Cheney's

job to go after Biden. That's what Republicans do. They go after the - I mean, we did that forever. Republicans and Democrats were cats and dogs, and they fought. But also, Tip O'Neill and Reagan could have a drink, after work. They could work together.

I don't know how we are ever going to work together. How do you - we have how many QAnon members of Congress now? QAnon!

As seen in the video below, The Yong Turks' Cenk Uygur didn't play that excerpt, but instead others in which Maher lamented the contemporary practice of liberals of obsessing about race and gender, which Maher has been sufficiently indelicate to observe has been politically harmful for Democrats.  Maher, who has been warning of a "slow-moving, right-wing coup" by Donald Trump and allies since before the election of 2016, had told Cuomo "I think everyone recognizes, everyone right- thinking, in my view, that still a lot of work needs to be done. Remedial efforts need to be taken still. Racism is part of America." Yet, an incensed Uygur charged (at 9:44) "I think Bill Maher is worse than a right-winger."

Hyperbolic, fact-deficient claims aside, however, Uygur maintained (beginning at 10:04)

"Remember we all agree the left is wrong and he right wing is right." So he says absurd lies like "they're teaching all across the country that groups are- that the kids should be lined up as the oppressed and the oppressor." Show me one example, Bill, show me all across the country. That's not a thing. You just made it up. You just made it up. Because you probably read right-wing trash and think it's real because "all my friends are right-wing, right."

There is no such thing. If they lined up kids and said "you are the oppressors," I'd hate that. I'd be 100% opposed to that. It's not what they do. You liar. You liar.

Oops. In assessing the election of Republican Glenn Youngkin to the governorship of Virginia, Yascha Mounk of the Council on Foreign Relations, Johns Hopkins University, and The Atlantic linked to examples while explaining

The idea that critical race theory is an academic concept that is taught only at colleges or law schools might be technically accurate, but the reality on the ground is a good deal more complicated. Few middle or high schoolers are poring over academic articles written by Richard Delgado or Kimberlé Crenshaw. But across the nation, many teachers have, over the past years, begun to adopt a pedagogical program that owes its inspiration to ideas that are very fashionable on the academic left, and that go well beyond telling students about America’s copious historical sins.

In some elementary and middle schools, students are now being asked to place themselves on a scale of privilege based on such attributes as their skin color. History lessons in some high schools teach that racism is not just a persistent reality but the defining feature of America. And some school systems have even embraced ideas that spread pernicious prejudices about nonwhite people, as when a presentation to principals of New York City public schools denounced virtues such as “perfectionism” or the “worship of the written word” as elements of “white-supremacy culture.”

Mounk argues "It is impossible to win elections by telling voters that their concerns are imaginary. If Democrats keep doing so, they will keep losing." It exists; it's happening. And if liberals and progressives such as Uygur pretend that it isn't, thus failing to heed the warnings the likes of Mounk and Maher, it won't be voters only in Virginia who send the Democratic Party an unpleasant message.

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