Category: Bill Maher

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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.

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I recently saw a film clip from last year of Bill Maher comparing the U.S and China. Here is the link: https://www.thewrap.com/bill-maher-china-dominating-us/ China, of course, comes out on top. Maher’s comparison was akin to the praise that European fans of Mussolini gave “At least the trains run on time.” You see, the Chinese are getting things done while the US is mired in trivial disputes. Well, yeah thats what happens when you have a democracy. Democracies are messy businesses because democracies care about their people and have to hear from them before making a move. In China some autocrat makes a decision. Nobody gets to disagree or question it. The Chinese just do what they are told.

Maher did suggest that there might be some middle way between our present chaotic and efficient democracy and the Chinese dictatorship. But what is that middle way? It would have been helpful if Maher had chosen a democracy that is getting things done instead of a dictatorship that is getting things done. With a democracy I could see if he had something to say and an idea of how to make things better. Instead he raves about China. Yes, China. The China that locks people into their apartment blocks, the China that uses Uyghurs as slave labor, the China that is shutting down democracy in Hong Kong, the China that is threatening democratic Taiwan, the China that builds cities where no one wants to live? That is, indeed, the China Maher is talking about.

What’s really frustrating is that I keep hearing the similar comments from a lot of smart people. Particularly, since the reason they are giving up is they believe that the other half of the country are numbskulls undeserving of democracy. They are not going to waste their time persuading idiots to change their minds. This willingness to forego democratic institutions for dictatorial edicts because I am right is troubling. It is as simple as that — I am right and they are wrong. Which is all good and well as long as the dictator agrees with you, but what if he doesn’t.

Another argument is that our democracy isn’t really a perfect democracy. A minority has taken hold of our institutions through antidemocratic processes ( the Electoral College, the Senate, gerrymandering, the filibuster) and that the only way to change them is through dictatorial edict. I agree that the present system is unfair but it is still the system. A system that is difficult to change. Next to impossible to change unless your party elects a President, controls the House, has a super-majority in the Senate, controls a super-majority of the individual states legislatures, and has a working majority on the Supreme Court. And then, and only then, can you think about making big changes to the rules. And even if you have control of all of these institutions, even then, it will be really difficult to get all the changes you want enacted.

So barring a revolution, there is no way a lot of these processes are going to change soon. I hear those mutterers who believe that maybe a revolution is in order here, at least until we can change to a fairer system. Revolutions are bloody and acrimonious and, given the divisions in this country, comes with very real difficulties that does real harm to good people on both sides of the divide. You may think you want a civil war but you really don’t and, unlike the last civil war, there will be two sides who could possess nuclear weapons. Think about it. Who gets the nuclear weapons in this divorce? It may depend on where those warheads are located.

So let’s stop talking about revolution and dictatorships and support democratic institutions because even unfair ones are better than dictatorships. A good example of the benefit of democratic institutions is the storming of the capital on January 6. The rebels thought they could stop the process and change the result of an election. Much to the dismay of the rebels, possessing the capital building, only delayed the process. Enough good people at various points did the right thing and saved us. Keep in the mind this wasn’t one person acting heroically. It was many different people seeing what the right thing to do was and behaving responsibly. A lot of people, with varying degrees of power, following the rule of law, made the decisions for us. This is the biggest strength of democracy. We all play a part and, if change comes, the matter has gone through a lot of duplicate, chaotic and often unnecessary processes but the people have had their say.

Can our democracy be better? Undoubtedly. If Maher has any suggestions on how to make these changes through democratic means, I am all ears. But China is neither a fair comparison nor particularly relevant. China is not a democracy and we can glean little from studying their processes. That they can put up a building overnight is neither something to value nor emulate if it came about from the whim of one person.

This leaves us with a difficult and a messy bunch of often unfair democratic institutions that we need to plow through in order to make changes. Democracy is extremely hard work and, if you are looking for quick changes, it is likely to meet with failure more often than not. Democracy is neither efficient nor particularly fast. It is certainly messy but in the end it is always better than a dictatorship. And I mean always.