This weekend, I was flipping through the channels and happened to catch Bill Maher's show "Real Time" on HBO. The most heated part of the show came when British television host Piers Morgan got into it with Maher and Australian comedian Jim Jeffries.
The most contentious part came when Morgan - who said he disagrees with the President's travel restrictions - pointed out that 87% of Muslims are unaffected by the EO and thus calling it a Muslim ban is inaccurate.
In my most recent post, I called for civility and sanity from everybody. I guess Jim Jeffries didn't read that post, though I wish he would.
Jeffries retorted that it is a Muslim ban, told Morgan to "F- Off" and then extended his middle finger toward him. In both of these cases, love him or hate him, Morgan was factually correct, yet the audience went crazy on him and so did social media.
All over the internet, people were talking about how Jeffries "Owned" Morgan. I'll admit, I'm a 60-year-old man, and maybe I'm not as in touch with the internet crowd as others who are younger than I am.
However, I must say, I'm not sure I understand how Piers Morgan got "Owned." He stated a fact - that you can hate the policy and think it is wrong, but if 87% of Muslims can still enter the country, then it cannot be called a Muslim ban - and in response, Jeffries cursed at him and flipped him off.
Jeffries didn't even attempt to make a coherent point, he simply resorted to name-calling. Yet, somehow, people on Twitter counted that as winning the argument.
If you haven't seen the exchange yet and think I'm making this up, you can watch it here. And if you have seen it, then you know that Jeffries didn't "Own" anybody. He simply made a nasty statement towards a person whom the audience did not like about a President they truly hate.
The fact that any rational person mistakes that for winning an argument is mind-boggling.
By the way, Jeffries also later responded to Morgan's assertion that people have become unhinged and need to stop comparing President Trump to Hitler by telling Morgan that we need to give it time, because Hitler didn't kill all the Jews on the first day.
I don't care what your politics are, that comment is disgusting and Jeffries should be ashamed of himself. As a Jewish man, the fact that anybody could compare a man who was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of 6 million Jews and 11 million people overall to anything President Trump has said or done is beyond sick.
As Morgan correctly pointed out, what Jim Jeffries and many others are doing in equating President Trump to Hitler is incredibly scary. Once you go all the way down that road, there's no coming back.
Because when you're convinced somebody isn't just wrong, they are evil, then it is easy to talk yourself into doing literally ANYTHING to stop them. I mean, after all, what wouldn't you do to stop Hitler, right?
That's how you convince yourself that hurting people like Milo Yiannopoulis and Gavin McInness for simply having views you deem hateful is ok. Or that bombing buildings is justified in the name of the greater good.
If you want to know where this leads, I suggest you read about the Weather Underground and Timothy McVeigh, two sides of a very dangerous coin. I don't care how much you hate President Trump, this has to stop right now.
And God help us all if it doesn't.