Television talk show host Bill Maher on Friday said the United States is being dominated by China because Americans are overly focused on a “never-ending woke competition.”
“[Y]ou’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 during HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“That’s the classic phrase from ‘Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence tells his Bedouin allies that as long as they stay a bunch of squabbling tribes, they will remain a silly people. Well, we’re the silly people now,” he continued. “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—k.”
“They are not a silly people,” he added. “They are as serious as a prison fight.”
“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,” Maher said. “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.”
Maher went on to argue that, in two generations, China has built 500 cities and moved most of their population from poverty to the middle class, as well as “cornered the market in 5G and pharmaceuticals.”
“Oh, and they bought Africa,” he continued. “Their New Silk Road initiative is the biggest infrastructure project in history, indebting not just that continent, but large parts of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to the people who built their roads, bridges, and ports.”
The late night host argued that China is overshadowing the United States globally with little pushback from Americans because “half the country’s having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a d–k while others believe in conspiracy theories.”
Maher also argued that the United States isn’t united, nor can it.
“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,” Maher said. “China sees a problem and they fix it. They build a dam — we debate what to rename it.”
The comedian said China handled the COVID-19 pandemic quickly and efficiently, allowing Chinese citizens to get “back to throwing raves in swimming pools while we were stuck at home surfing the dark web for black market Charmin [toilet paper].”
“We’re not losing to China – we lost,” Maher said.
China is also leading the United States in education, Maher argued, due to a “progressive trend to sacrifice merit for equity.”
“…colleges are chucking the SAT and ACT test and in New York Mayor de Blasio announced merit would no longer decide who gets into the schools for advanced learners, but rather a lottery system,” he continued. “You think China’s doing that? Letting political correctness get in the way of nurturing their best and brightest? You think Chinese colleges are offering courses in the philosophy of ‘Star Trek,’ the sociology of ‘Seinfeld,’ and Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse? Those are real, and so is China and they are eating our lunch. And believe me in an hour, though, they’ll be hungry again.”
