Americans are broadly worried about the state of our democracy, according to a new poll released from the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
A plurality of 45% of respondents say it's either not working "too well" or not working "well at all," according to the poll, while just 16% of Americans believe democracy is working "well" or "extremely well." Another 38% are somewhere in between, saying it's working "somewhat well."
On a slightly brighter side, a majority of Americans (54%) are optimistic that the country has a bright future and its best days are yet to come, while 45% say the country's best days are behind it. Those numbers have remained roughly stable since last fall, when the outlet asked the same question in October 2020.
Two-thirds of respondents also said Joe Biden was legitimately elected while 33% said he wasn't; 61% also approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president.
Meanwhile, respondents widely shared the belief that the following principles are essential to the identity of the U.S.:
A separate poll from the ABC News/Ipsos found that 56% of Americans say Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again, and 43% say he should not be. The finding comes on the eve of Trump’s impeachment trial and figures worse for him than polling from just before his last impeachment trial, when an ABC/Washington Post poll found 47% of Americans said the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office while 49% said he should not be removed from office.
During Friday’s episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher blamed Christianity for the Capitol riots last month.
Maher, 65, claimed that a belief in Christianity is comparable to a belief in conspiracies like QAnon, and he said this led in part to supporters of former President Donald Trump storming the Capitol last month.
“As long as we’re going to go to the trouble of another impeachment trial, we might as well be honest about what it’s really about: The events of Jan. 6 were a faith-based initiative,” he said.
Not stopping there, Maher alleged that Trump supporters who believe in a “Christian nationalist movement” are firm in their beliefs that God “literally sent [Trump] from heaven to save them.”
He cited comments made by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who once said that God personally chose Trump for president of the United States of America.
“There’s a lot of talk now in liberal corners about how Republicans should tell their base who still believe the election was rigged that they need to grow up and move on and stop asking the rest of us to respect their mass delusion,” Maher said.
“And, of course, it is a mass delusion. But the inconvenient truth here is that, if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you’ve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad,” the HBO host continued.
He then directly compared Christianity and QAnon.
“It’s fun to laugh at QAnon, with the baby-eating lizard people and the pedophile pizza parlors, but have you ever read the book of [Revelation]? That’s the Bible,” he said. “That’s your holy book, Christians. And they’ve got seven-headed dragons and locusts that have the face of men and teeth of lions and other stuff you see after the guy in the park sells you bad mushrooms.”
Maher went on to say that “magical religious thinking,” such as faith in Jesus’ resurrection, is not dissimilar to a “current mutation” of the QAnon “virus.”
“All the armies of the world will gather and Jesus will come down on a flying horse, shooting swords out of his mouth, and have a thousand-year cosmic-boss battle with Satan, the Beast, and the antichrist. … It’s like 10 ‘Avenger’ movies plus 10 ‘Hobbit’ movies plus a night out with Johnny Depp,” Maher said.
Related: Bill Maher Hits Biden Campaign For Blaming 254,000 U.S. Coronavirus Deaths On Trump
“Please, magical religious thinking is a virus and QAnon is just its current mutation,” he insisted. “That’s why megachurches play QAnon videos. It’s the same basic plot. ‘Q’ is the prophet and Trump is the messiah. There’s an apocalyptic event looming, ‘The Storm.’ There’s a titanic struggle of good versus evil, and if you want good to win, just keep those checks coming in.
“We need to stop pretending there’s no way we’ll understand why the Trump mob believes in him. It’s because they’re religious! They’ve already made space in their heads for s**t that doesn’t make sense,” Maher concluded. “When you’re a QAnon fanatic, you’re also a fundamentalist Christian. They just go together like macaroni and cheese.”
This piece was written by James Samson on February 8, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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