How to Solve America’s Problems in 1 Simple Step

If you had told anyone in 1998 that Bill Maher would be the advocate for putting the brakes on national conversation and social change, everyone would have thought you were crazy and yet, here we are. For the past year, Bill has been a vanguard of something very different than the reputation he has developed. On his popular, HBO show he has been critical of all the new changes within our culture wrought by Social Justice Warriors and other “woke” people. Two weeks ago he made this “New Rule” segment about what is going on between the Left and the Right in this country:

And this week he posted the video at the top of this article. His simple solution for our social solutions is pretty simple: just shut up. He advocates for stopping all these conversations about gender, race, sexuality etc. and just get used to “hanging out again.” This amounts to a similar quote from another day and time, “can’t we all just be friends?” No Bill, we can’t.

Halting social progress in the name of unity and trying to make other people who don’t agree happy isn’t the pathway forward that he thinks it is. It denies marginalized groups the chance to actually have their voices heard and it halts the progress we should always be making toward, “a more perfect union.” Bill just wants to hang out, smoke weed, install solar panels on his roof, and just be chill. This is not a time for chilling as witnessed by all the things he is talking about. He looks at how the Right is taking over the government and like many Democrats of the 1970s and 1980s, rather than right simply wants to wave the white flag of retreat. He advises us to give up on making positive social change in favor of just letting things settle out for awhile. Based on the feedback I’ve gotten, many folks aren’t waiting anymore.

I was recently on an Instagram live appearance and I argued with another activist who said, “I can’t wait any longer, we can’t wait any longer.” Social change takes time and I, myself, have advised that so much social change has happened in such a short period of time that most people simply can’t handle it. However, the solution to this problem is not to give up. It is not to raise the white flag and surrender. Now is the time to take a breather. Now is the time to regulate expectations on how much society will really change and how fast. There is no reason to give up the fight and Bill Maher’s complaining about it all isn’t helpful and it isn’t mindful of the millions who are suffering in our system. People are crying out for change but because it affects a comparatively few people, people like Maher want to give up the fight.

Bill Maher has simply lived long enough to become the very thing he once fought against. When he was running around doing “Politically Incorrect” and other edgy shows in the 1990s, he was pushing on the system from the bottom but now that he is on top and other people want yet more change he wants to slow down. He is living proof that, if you live long enough, you’ll become the thing you once hated.