Bill Maher had some rather harsh words for the good ol’ U.S. of A. on Friday night’s “Real Time,” saying that China is overtaking our place on the world stage because Americans are busy obsessing over culture wars and not doing anything productive.
“You’re not going to win the battle for the 21st century if, you are a silly people, and Americans are a silly people,” Maher said, citing a quote from “Lawrence of Arabia” that as long as they stay a bunch of squabbling tribes, we will remain a silly people.
“Well, we’re the silly people now,” he said. “You know, who doesn’t care that there’s a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China. All 1.4 billion of them could give a crouching tiger, flying f— because they’re not a silly people. If anything, they are as serious as a prison fight.”
He went on: “Look, we all know China does bad stuff. They break promises about Hong Kong autonomy, they put Uighurs in camps and punish dissent. And we don’t want to be that. But there’s got to be something between authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do and a representative government that can’t do anything at all.”
“In two generations, China has built 500 entire cities from scratch, moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class and mostly cornered the market in 5g and pharmaceuticals,” he said. “In China alone, they have 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. America has… none. Our fastest train is the tram that goes around the zoo.”
Maher pointed out that the US has had “infrastructure week every week since 2009, but we never do anything.” Why? Because of the endless culture war.
“Half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a d— and the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they’re eating babies,” he said, referring to a QAnon conspiracy theory.
“Nothing ever moves in this impacted colon of a country!” he said. “We see a problem and we ignore it, lie about it, fight about it, endlessly litigate it, sunset clause it, kick it down the road and then write a bill where a half-assed solution doesn’t kick in for 10 years. China sees a problem and they fix it. They build a dam; we debate what to rename it.”
You can watch Maher’s entire “New Rules” segment above.
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