New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country
New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.
Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.
And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.
I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.
Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.
Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."
People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"
And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.
And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.
And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.
Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.
Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"
Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," and will be joined on the show tonight by Arianna Huffington. "Real Time" airs fridays on HBO at 10:00PM Eastern Time.
Follow Bill Maher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmaher
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It's funny to me that our collective stupidity helped elect a damned socialist into office, but this idiot Maher can't connect the dots. He stands on the shoulders of giants with a huge smirk on his ugly mug deriding our "national intelligence", all the while failing to realize he represents the very worst we have to offer.
Hah hah. You think Obama is a socialist... which would be funny..if you didn't vote.
Hah hah. You think he isn't ... which would be funny if you didn't vote.
will help you (the uninformed) to understand.
Bill Maher is 100% correct. I have contended for years that the only way Republicans continue to be elected is because they manipulate the less educated by scaring them with lies. Think about it: Bush manipulated the Terror Level Indicator by raising it a few days before the election with Kerry. The Republicans rile the masses by stating Democrats will take away their guns. Now we see the "Death Panel" propaganda, creating untruths about health care reform, and proclaiming themselves the Party of God and family values. Their words do not match their actions! Yet, there is a large segment of our country unable to read and to think for themselves. They fall in behind the liars because they fear they will be labeled un-American. What have they really done for you??? They are profiting financially off your ignorance. READ, LISTEN TO WHAT THEY REALLY SAY,MEAN, and DO. Hopefully, the capital letters will help understand. You have been USED!
Now will someone admit that Republicans deliberately seek tax cuts because they use Education to 'balance' the budget' by dumbing down the people, by cutting funding for it?
Can we throw in that over the years, its been proven that Republicans(especially the 'Southern Democrats') are white power fanatics...and this is what has lead to the accusation of Neo-Nazism?
You mix those two together for awhile and you get a country eaten out from the inside.
(Which, I might add, is Sun Tzu's preferred form of warfare...take it over without destroying it)
And then there's that old saying: "Ignorance is bliss"
I heard Tony Bennett muse once on some chat show that the way to fix America once and for all would be to make education its absolute top priority. Because an educated population would really care about the environment, would take a stand against war and poverty and crime, would absolutely care about universal health care etc etc.
The American Government understand the power of ignorance in the majority of its populace the same way they encourage obesity. 'Let me have men about me who are fat' quoth Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play and it's as true today as it was 450 years ago when the bard wrote those lines. Ignorant, fat people are easier to placate, easier to control.
Give every kid in America the chance to graduate from college and that will be the end to most of problems in the world.
Pipe-dream? Yeah, probably.
I agree. Education needs a kick in the pants in the US. And the kids need a jump-start to actually care about school. All grades.
Why would educated people care any more about the environment than uneducated people?
They wouldn't inherently. BUT, they would have the ability to understand the consequences of their actions.
THAT might make them care more about the environment than uneducated people.
I enjoy watching a Liberal gloat. Since you believe that the election was more about Obama and less about the disgust with Bush, will you be gloating just as much when Obama turns into a 1 term President?
One term because the Anti-Bush voters have maid their point and giving President Ad Hoc another term just might land us in Prolonged Detention.
Questions for the "Smart" Liberal.
1. Is our form of Government a Democracy? What did the Founding Father Thomas Paine suggest about Democracies?
2. What President and Ruling party and it's constituent have listened to what President give speeches wherein he describes having excesses and waste of taxpayers money that he can use to cover a total of 2/3rds of the entire Health Care budget, and that ruling party stares glassy eyed at their leader and says "awe shucks, ain't he smart..."
Oh Bill, it's 25% is the total amount of waste most say about the Pentagon budget that just "vanishes" and now Obama can get 2/3rds of the 1 Trillion needed over the next 10 years for Health Care... I'm a nasty conservative, keep talking about the Republicans, we find it humerus.
you just proved his point, i believe the humerus you are referring to is not the bone in your upper arm.
the republican majority are in general far less educated, when compared to liberals (i don't need facts to back that up- just look at the red states)
Also, NeverGuessing, please make an attempt to Stop using Capital Letters in the middle of Sentences. For example 'What did the Founding Father Thomas Paine suggest about Democracies?' would be more correctly and more elegantly written as 'What did the founding father Thomas Paine suggest about democracies?'
(Blimey, you can't read the sense because of the rotten style)
Nice job Bill...I wonder how all the people got so stupid? Maybe it's all that GOVERNMENT EDUCATION we've been getting for the last 80 years or so? The longer the government has been involved in our education the dumber we get.
Case in point:
Wonkette snark-spanked a dimbulb smearmeister, who wrote to complain and upchucked this wow-just-wow mental hairball upon the editors at Wonkette:
"Do you really, truly, seriously think it is OK for a president to use a forged birth certificate? Do you actually believe it is appropriate for a man who was raised a Muslim to pretend he is a Christian and go to a church for 20 years with an anti-American preacher? Do you really want a president who was brainwashed by communists since he was a child, up through university, to hate America to be our president? Do you think that it is fine if a family member of the president defiles the White House with voodoo? Don’t you know what fate could befall our nation as a result of allowing Satanic forces to gather over the White House?
After 8 years of a president sent by God to lead the American people and rescue us from the horrors of 911 and Islamo-fascists, it now boils down to this? How incredibly tragic. You folks don’t really seem to understand the extreme peril that our nation confronts. Stop making fun of me. Take off your blinders! Wake up!"
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/take-my-first-ladys-mom-is-a-witch-expose-seriously-conservative-pleads/
______________
That's what we're up against.
thank you
You couldn't make it up.
Do you really, truly think it is okay for Sarah Palin to pretend she is smart and qualified?
And what on Earth makes you think GW Bush came from God? If he did, then God isn't very fond of the US.
Many people on this site may meed a kindergarten refresher course. I do not agree with your ideas, but respect your ability to share them with such passion.
Interplanetary mavericks... that one made me choke laughing!
Bill, keep it up. (And I'm not suggesting a double-dose of Cialis®.)
I don't go to church and I am not a religious person, but I know not to laugh at those who do. Do people laugh at you? Do you advocate for arrogance?
Are you saying that people who believe the sun revolves around the earth are religious ? Are you then suggesting that just because they are, it is ok that they remain ignorant about such basic scientific facts ?
I don't go to church, but I do consider myself religious because I try(but am not always successful at) following Christ.
However, I can't, for the life of me, understand where in the world you got religion from someone who thinks the earth revolves around the sun. Were you just listening to Elisabeth Hasselbeck or something?
I was sent here by a podcast called Smart Mouths, and I'm so glad I was. Thank you SO MUCH for saying everything I'm not allowed to. I just listened to episode 26 of SM Podcast, which was all about health care reform, and they mentioned both the Medicare stupidity and people being belligerently intolerant of taxes without knowing or caring where they go. People need to learn, if you don't know what you're talking about, shut the hell up! As my high school literature teacher said, an opinion without facts to support it is useless.
Indeed. And the just released poll that shows 39% of Americans say Govt Should "Stay Out Of Medicare" says the same about a population which is about as truly ignorant as a modern one can be.
And my Dad used to say "it's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt".
The abstract is not your forte. Do you take every statement literary?
The more i hear about how dumb so many people are, the more i believe that i and the friends i have at MENSA are smarter then 98% of the population...
See Fred Hahn's Profile
'Stupid' is not the correct word Bill. 'Ineducable' is a tad closer to the truth.
Nah, stupid works.
All ignorance is not equal. Ignorance of govt priorities is near fatal.
Waiting is Wrong and Govt Must Invest NOW.
The President's team wants him to wait until past stimulus and current sales and prices are sufficient to allow government spending to build foundations for economic, education, energy, health efficiency, etc., systems and markets, etc. He expects and wants this to happen within a federal debt and deficit structure that promises a future without the threat of hyperinflation that all of them know is possible.
The President and his team are aware of counter-inflationary systems of successful savings, price and wage controls, and even rationing, if necessary, that would allow immediate government spending and investment in quantities proved in World Wat II to be possible and necessary if our back was against the wall and the suffering to be prevented by strengthening democracy was kept in focus in the President's mind.
Alas, what is in focus in the President's mind is myths of spontaneous recovery and growth that Adam Smith planted in the human head long before today's unimagined technology and productivity.
Technology is prepared to end scarcity. Money is prepared to reduce debt to a constructive size. Functional Finance, Social Credit, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln's money systems, and common sense and logic, all scream for the President's attention. He will hear them and act. Or he will join with his timid predecessors to conclude a presidency with nothing at all to show for it.
By "constructive size", you mean bringing it down to '0" like Bill Clinton did?
Just asking.
It finally dawned on me where Sarah Palin got her shtick.....
Didn't she come of age in the "valley girl" era.?
When, like, you know, it was, like, so cool, you know, to not know (anything.)
Talk about college girls and their iced-teas. Back then, all you needed was a real short haircut and a Reagan bumper sticker to get any, well, you know, valley girl stuff.
Seriously, i feel pity for the people that are going through the embarrassment of living their entire lives with no concept of what reality is and/or was. There are no more Walter Cronkites to set the record straight , and that leaves the riff-raff and con-jobs an opening to swoop in and cash out(on stupidity) as we see so plainly occurring today. Bouncing around like a bowl of jello at the microphone is ok if you're making millions off of stupidity.
I'm a little nervous about the latest fad with the gun strappers, only because after one of them shoots themselves in the foot ( which will probably happened), I don't want a bullet ricocheting off and hitting some innocent bystander.
Mmmm. Valley girl 'stuff'.
Wahoo! Well stated...and I am surely one of the folks mentioned who could stand to learn more. On the other hand, how is it you get to decide what I need to know about this country like who my representatives are? Hum. Or what percentage of the budget goes to foreign aid? Thanks for stuff to ponder...keep it coming!
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