Taking issue with Bill Maher

I love Bill Maher. He’s like the ACLU; even when I don’t agree with him, I applaud his courage for saying some of the crazy shit he does.

But he posited a critically flawed question this week on his HBO show and for what it’s worth, I’d like to correct his error.

He asked genius/whack-job director Oliver Stone, “What’s wrong with America? Why do we seem to need an enemy?” Then he went on to cite all the cultural boogeymen of recent history, from the USSR on.

Half of his assertion is correct. People do need an enemy to coalesce around. Whether it’s opposition to the sports franchise from the next state over, or a couple of kids conspiring to keep some mischief secret from their parents, nothing unites people like a common enemy.

But Maher is incorrect when he ascribes this attribute solely to Americans. It’s human nature, Bill, like all your other well-known hedonistic indulgences. Although I’m not arguing that “everybody does it” is an acceptable excuse, it kind of is when everybody does it because it’s hard-wired into our nature.

The world over, people segregate themselves into smaller and smaller sub-sets with the specific agenda of opposing people with whom they disagree. Singling Americans out is small-minded and unfair.

If he had asked, “Why aren’t Americans better than that?” at least it would been an arguable premise. (The answer is: because Americans are people, too.)

But he didn’t ask that and I think it points to an innate prejudice on his part: He deep-down believes that America ought to be better than that, and that preface to his question was meant to be inferred. Which is charming and quaint, especially coming from as well known a cynic as Maher.

But throwing it out there and leaving it hanging invites false discourse at a time when America—and the world—needs to pull together on crises of real substance. Realize the common enemy we’re fighting is ourselves and turn that energy and our resources to fighting something worthwhile, like climate change or global poverty.

I mean, seriously, how much ambition do you have is famine and global warming aren’t enough to challenge you to put aside petty differences and work together to resist them?