Marc Maron has spent plenty of time thinking about the Democratic party in the United States and the relationship between the ideological right and left. In the Sunday, Aug. 24 episode of “Pod Save America,” Maron elaborated on a joke from his new HBO special “Panicked” that the left has “annoyed people into fascism” — a claim that is funny, but also borders on ringing true.
“Well, one of the things you say in the special is that liberals annoyed average Americans into fascism and that we have a buzzkill problem,” host Jon Lovett asked on this week’s “Pod Save America” podcast. “Now, a lot of the buzzkills listening to this are going to take issue with that. But what is the buzzkill problem?”
“Annoyed the average American into fascism, that’s a joke. But it resonates for a reason because I’ve also lately been exploring the difference between anger and hate,” Maron explained. “Anger as a tone in all its spectrum is not always entertaining. And, you know, self-righteous anger is the most intolerable anger. And even if you believe what the person is saying, you want them to shut the f–k up.”
While Maron said the sentiment was largely a joke he said that he was being serious about Democrats having trouble connecting with people. “We do have a problem of being buzzkills, Americans do have a very dim view of Democrats. Americans do find Democrats annoying.”
Maron said that he realized his audiences tended to be liberal so he “made a decision” to “speak directly” to people who are “sitting at home alone on the phone” because he’s feeling the same level of anger and hopelessness about the state of the world that many others are.
“We’re all in the same boat. We all have flaws. There’s funny things about us,” he explained. “I don’t have any answers for you. But I can give you that kind of relief of taking pokes at who we are.”
The comedian said that coming up with a solution to the political split between Americans will require “some sort of amazing vulnerability and empathy in the face of a completely unsympathetic and terrifying force to … make it not annoying,” he continued.
Democrats also need to contend with another problem in the party: “There is no unifying policy, there is no unifying community,” Maron said. “So when you have all that fragmentation, what becomes annoying is people’s commitment to their specific cause as righteous as it may be. It doesn’t fit into the umbrella of the community necessarily. It does not have that much significance on its own.”
Maron concluded his point by highlighting the powerful right-wing messaging the GOP has come to rely on, and why in that department, the Democrats have a whole other issue. “The left messaging is never going to be as efficient because we don’t have an army of frustrated teenage boys who have been taught over the last 20 years that this is all some sort of game and that trolling is a pastime,” he said. “They just are in it for the the game.”
Watch the “Pod Save America” interview in the video above.
