New Rule: Losing to China | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

[Applause] and finally new rule you're not going to win the battle for the 21st century if you are a silly people and americans are a silly people 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 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 [Applause] because they're not a silly people if anything 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 uyghurs in camps and punish dissent and we don't want to be that but it'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 oh when they bought africa 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 if you want to go anywhere in the world these days you better have a yen for travel for travel oh stop it 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 california wanted to build high-speed rail connecting the entire state but alas could not we're six billion in the hole just trying to finish the track connecting the vital hubs of bakersfield and merced one small step for nobody one giant leap if you're a raisin [Applause] on a national level we've been having infrastructure week every week since 2009 but we never do anything half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether mr potato head has a dick and the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they're eating babies we are a silly people even when we all agree on something like getting rid of the penny no the inertia the ass covering the graft the lawyers the cowardice nothing ever moves in this impacted colon of a country we see a problem and we ignore it lie about it fight about it endlessly litigate it sunset closet kick it down the road and then write a bill where a half-assed solution doesn't kick in for 10 years china china sees a problem and they fix it they build a dam we debate what to rename it that's why their airports look like this and ours look like this in san francisco it took 10 years just to get two bus lines through environmental review the big dig a tunnel in boston took 16 years and don't get me started on my solar hookup china once put up a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days they demolished and rebuilt the san yuan bridge in beijing in 43 hours we binge watch they binge build when kovet hit wuhan the city built a quarantine center with 4 000 rooms in 10 days and they barely had to use it because they quickly arrested the spread of the disease they were back to throwing raves in swimming pools well we were stuck at home surfing the dark web for black market charming we're not losing to china we lost the returns just haven't all come in yet they made robots that check a kid's temperature and got their asses back in school most of our kids are still pretending to take zoom classes while they watch tick-tock and their brain cells slowly commit ritual suicide as george bush once said is our children learning there's a progressive trend now to sacrifice merit for equity colleges are chucking the s.a.t and a.c.t 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 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 they'll they'll be hungry again you

Channel: Real Time with Bill Maher

Views: 5,879,032

Keywords: Annabelle Gurwitch, New York Times, author, You’re Leaving When, Adventures in Downward Mobility, podcast, Tiny Victories, Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern, Post Corona, From Crisis to Opportunity, Larry Wilmore, HBO, Insecure, Netflix, Docuseries, Amend, The Fight for America, Black on the Air

Id: 2DH4v6FnbvM

Length: 6min 13sec (373 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Soberskate9696]

Well I guess this is the end

hits crackpipe

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/Swisskies]

Nothing to do with outsourcing your entire manufacturing industry to China, or letting the financial sector bloat out of control, or having a significant percentage of your economy dedicated to reach-around defence contracting.

No sir, it's conspiracy theorists and pink haired instagram posters.

Edit: Why do all the posts I type out mindlessly while taking a shit end up with a bajillion replies?

[u/Johnny__bananas]

If you really want to see why we are "losing" to China you can look no further than people like mitch mcconnell. Check out his wife and father in law, big Chinese business family.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/g12048045/elaine-chao-facts/

[u/agentzero2020]

I believe it’s a spontaneous and natural cycle. Once a civilization reaches the limits of its develop, it starts to do as bill maher puts it, silly stuff, because they have time to do so. You think China has time to worry about woke stuff? They don’t. They either work and study so they starve. America and much of western society has the luxury of time to do and worry about silly things. Once China reaches that point, they too will start to do silly things because that’s the natural progression of human civilization.

[u/[deleted]]

Bill isn’t attributing causality to SJW’s and the downfall of our country (a lot of you are implying this).

This bit was intended to contrast the fastest developing country in the world with a country (USA) that had once been in that position. If you apes were listening you’d have heard him briefly critique China and it’s human rights violations so that he could qualify his statement.

His intention is to show the contrast in potential of what is possible- how far we have fallen from our potential as an industrialized, (semi)educated society. Ultimately I think he is speaking to how our government is incapable of producing real change, for better or worse (I think it is good that some/most policies are not able to be changed quickly. Redundancy in democracy seem to ensure that there is not rapid change in law/actualized policy)

China has the ability to adapt. The USA seems to have lost the ability to do so.

[u/bored_and_scrolling]

Shut the fuck up with this bullshit. I don't give a fuck about China. Just give me healthcare and shorten the work week.

[u/gandalfsbastard]

This is a very simple take on China, it’s not really* China versus the US, it’s investor versus laborer.

Sure China’s upper class is the size of our whole country but their labor class is still 600 million strong. So you do get whole cities of Rodeo drive and extravagance (built by slaves) but the moment you drive out of the manicured cities it’s a third world leprosy colony that looks like the cities were just carpet bombed.

China only lets you see what they want you to see. I know I have been there and seen the difference between Hong Kong, Shenzhen and the countryside.

[u/RastapopolousEy]

Not from US or China but here is my thoughts on this

US losing to China is such a weird statement, especially coming from a nation which has shouted it's freedoms for centuries. Not gonna lie, China's growing power is scary considering their current political values. But it's also much easier to operate and make radical decisions when the country is controlled by totalitarian regime.

If you are worried about minority oppression, mask mandate, or leftist controlling the narrative... You wouldn't probably like if your government applied CCP type efficiency. Are you ready to value government interests over your own?