LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Ahead of his visit to the David Copperfield Theater at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas Friday and Saturday, Bill Maher spoke on his opinions about the current state of the United States and its culture.

The comedian said his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, broadcast on HBO, is often misunderstood. He said people tend to confuse his attempts to look at current issues in a different way than what he described as the modern media “bubble” with investigative reporting.

“I feel like so many people in this country are such sheep,” he said. “The media is always in their own silos. There’s very little fresh air let into any room in the media.”

Maher blames media bias for the metaphorical “temperature” in the societal room.

“The fact that people only hear whether it’s on their phone, when they’re checking their news feed, or whether they’re watching Fox News or MSNBC, they only have to see someone who is telling them ‘You’re perfect, what you already think is true. Don’t worry about any other voices,'” Maher said.

The problem, Maher said, doesn’t lie with the media alone. He said everyday people on both sides of the political aisle have become unsustainably polarized.

“Somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she’s not alone, says things like, ‘We need a national divorce.'” Maher said. “We don’t. This is a big country with lots of people who don’t think like you — get over yourself. You’re going to have to learn to live with people who you don’t like.”

He said he chooses to approach issues that some are either completely unaware of or ignore completely.

“This stuff is really going on,” Maher said. “The identity politics and the oversensitivity and the victim culture and the hostility to free speech and cancel culture and — you know — forcing ideas about gender and race on small children who were too young to understand it and pointless white self-loathing […] all this stuff.”

Maher, who described himself as an “old-school liberal,” said his views have not necessarily changed.

“What I hate about Republicans, I still hate about Republicans,” he said. “I’m not some sort of convert to Republican-ism because I noticed the craziness on the left.”

Climate change, racism denial, and fiscal hypocrisy are parts, he said, of the right-wing philosophy that he abhors.

Maher cited what he calls the “one true opinion,” an opinion that he said, determines whether one is perceived as a good or bad person by a certain subsection of people. It’s a concept he said he has been battling against since his original show “Politically Incorrect” debuted in 1993.

“This was […] at least a decade or two before wokeness came along, which, in its original form, was something we all can admire, which is, I would say […] alert to injustice,” Maher said. “But it morphed into a kind of a political correctness on steroids, a kind of […] strangulating, ugly authoritarianism that we often see now in places. […] It went the wrong way.”

Maher said the country’s diversity of opinion used to be considered a strength and that it still could be. However, Maher said he doesn’t believe the country has passed a point of no return, citing the US economy as one of the contributing factors, although, he admits, his current home state of California is overregulated to the extent of “strangling business.”

“That’s why people like Elon Musk, and many others have left the state,” Maher said. “We need us we know real strong colonic and a kick in the ###.”

Although Maher says there are many things terrible about modern America, the country is a place where its people can aspire to be more.

“What it still is is a place where people from all over the world, and the people who, of course, were born here, can think, ‘Oh, you know what, I can reinvent myself. I can get up tomorrow and be somebody new,'” he said.

Maher will perform at the David Copperfield Theater at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino on Friday, Sept. 15 and Saturday, Sept. 16. Tickets are available for purchase on Ticketmaster.