Recently, two Facebook friends, from opposite ends of the political divide posted the same Bill Maher video showing how dumb Americans are. It is standard gotcha video. Someone asks bystanders trivia questions and, when they fail to answer correctly, mock them. It’s all good fun right except that Bill Maher believes it shows how dumb Americans are. That two people with widely different opinions posted the same video is even more troubling because Maher’s conclusion is maybe Americans aren’t smart enough for democracy.

There is a lot wrong with Maher’s thinking. Failing to answer trivia questions proves absolutely nothing. Most people, when taking geography and history classes, memorized the information for the test and then, quite reasonably, promptly forgot it. How important is it really to know the biggest city in the world? Or where Queen Elizabeth is from? If you exclude television game shows like Jeopardy or quiz night at your local bar, knowing trivia is a pretty useless talent and, more importantly, says nothing about a person’s intelligence. Why would anyone clutter their mind with such useless information? If people need it, they could look it up. But they don’t. I am 65 years old and I have never needed to know the biggest city in the world outside of my childhood education.

Then reaching a startling conclusion like Americans are too dumb for democracy based on the inability of few people to answer questions correctly is unfair. How many people were asked that got it right? This doesn’t seem to be of any interest to our video makers. There might have been dozens of people who got the right answers but we don’t see that. That isn’t funny, you can’t mock people who get the answers correct. If you are making a case for the stupidity of the American people then knowing how many people were correct is relevant to the discussion.

Even if every person did make mistakes, quizzing 50 people ( I am being generous here because I am pretty sure it is a much lower than that) on the streets is not a representative sampling of Americans. It is 50 people picked on the same street in the same town with broadly the same interests. Picked, it is fair to say, by someone with a vested interested in portraying them as stupid. To extrapolate from this small sample of people that your fellow countrymen are too dim for self government seems more than a bit unfair.

Educated people are not always good rulers. The great minds of early 20th century stumbled into World War I. These educated men sent millions of people to their deaths and continued the fighting long after the senselessness of the war became obvious. The Viet Nam war was started by the best and the brightest of their time. I am sure these great minds all knew the biggest city in the world and still managed to make horrible mistakes which largely affected people who may have not known what the biggest city in the world was.

Maher’s complaints are surprisingly anti-democratic. Even more worrisome is that people the left and from the right are posting his doubts about viability of democracy with such dumb people as voters. What, then, are our options? Dictatorship? Oligarchy? Monarchy? None of those options sound better to me. Does Maher think he will have any say in these other styles of government? And really who is Maher to pass judgement on his fellow citizens? Someone who knows the biggest city in the world? Well, whoop de do. Personally, I would much rather take my chances with the average American voter, even if it includes a percentage of dumb people, rather than a condescending smug asshole like Bill Maher.