Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #458: Evangelicals, Facebook, Cultural Suicide

Episode Date: April 28, 2018

Bill and his guests – Ronan Farrow, Ross Douthat, Ian Bremmer, Ana Marie Cox, and John Podhoretz answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 04/27/18) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series Real Time with Bill Maugh. On behalf of the band and myself, we thank you. Okay, Ross, what do you think of evangelicals who give Trump a mulligan for his behavior that is otherwise condemned?

I don't think... I don't think well of them. I mean, I think there are too... That's not your tribe. You don't have to answer to that. No, I mean, I think there are two evangelical styles There's sort of a kind of, there's an evangelical style that says, we always knew he was a bad guy. We were just voting for him because he wasn't Hillary, and we needed basically like a tough guy, a bodyguard because we lost the culture wars.

And that I can, right. And that, yeah, and that I can at least understand. But then there's the other style that's like, you know, Trump, he's like, you know, he's like King David. King David had a lot of wives, you know, and that's just sort of pure self-deception. But don't underestimate how important Jerusalem is in that. Well, that's right. I really believe that. A lot of the evangelicals believe that Jesus is coming back, many of them in their lifetime,

because he's going to want to meet them. He's going to want to meet you, too. He's a fictional character, but I'll be happy to meet him. That'll partly do the trick for you, I guess. That'll be the one thing. Well, this is a fictional character. Okay. All right.

So do you think the conviction of Bill Cosby, will lead to more celebrity trials. Celebrity trials, meaning like... Sure, why not? I do think what's really important about these cases, the Cosby case, and whatever is going on

in the subsequent investigation of Harvey Weinstein, is that we really do need to make a clear division, as Ronan said earlier in the show, between the fact that there are people who have committed serious, felonious offenses and should be taken in front not only the Court of Public Committee but the Court of Law, as opposed to

people whose behavior is disreputable but not illegal. And part of the problem in the early part of the Me Too movement, I think, was that there was a blending of the two. I would have one thing, which, no, after you. Yeah, and just speak up

for the ladies. I think one of the lessons of the whole movement is don't talk over the ladies. Thank you. Those people who have committed, you know, criminal offenses definitely should be treated to criminal court, and that's the only place you get due process.

All this other, like, screaming and yelling about whoever got, didn't get your due process, Matt Lauer didn't get due process, Matt Lauer didn't get due process, Mark Halperin didn't get due process. There's no due process for losing a job. Remember Mark Halprin? Unfortunately, yes. I remember I'm really, really well, actually.

Reporting can lead to criminal proceedings at times, and that's not the job of reporters, but it can have in tandem in that way. And I would just say in the Weinstein reporting, one thing that was really important about the Cosby precedent is in a world in which most women could never envision taking this risk, speaking out against a powerful guy,

and actually being heard, saying, hey, look at these women who came forward against Bill Cosby. Even though they were smeared, they were covered. Their stories were sort of kind of heard. That was a hugely important precedent to tell them about. I think we err on the side of listening to women, not believe all women. That's not a thing.

No one says that. But listening to women, letting women speak, and finding out if they're telling the truth, using reporting to find out more. I mean, that's what's got to happen. I must say, the way you like lumped there, Al-Frank and you, in the same sentence with Matt Lauer and somebody else,

and it just bugs me. Right, Mark Halperin. Yeah, because it just, I just don't think Mark Halperin and Al Franken are the same guy. I really don't. Well, they're not. And I don't...

But I'll tell you that they both of them is they lost their job, which is a bad thing, but it's not like a lifetime tragedy. Like, I've lost lots of jobs, quite frankly. Um, and I think... It's a pretty big tragedy for the Democratic Party to lose a leader like that.

At what cost you a leader like that? And I'm a constituent. I think it was an incredibly dumb play by the Democratic Party in this case... It's not about whether it's dumb or smart. It's like the right thing to do. I'm a constituent of Al Franken's. I voted for Al Franken. But I didn't know those things about him. If he runs... I still don't

know those things. I know what a few people said. You know, there's You know, as Al, I think, has said. Just that picture alone was enough for me to, like, reconsider my vote for me. The picture was just a joke. Really, that you can't get by the picture. You know, the one where he's doing that?

You know what? I can't get by it. Really? I can't. That's somebody should lose his Senate job for taking that. Especially lose a Senate job for that. We should hold those people to hire a account. But he was a comedian at the time.

It's just, it's a threat prank. But this is what? Really. Electing Trump certainly has. to make all this so much more raw, so much stronger. Because when the person who is in the highest office has obviously not only gotten away with all the stuff over the course of life, but also clearly treats women

as objects, as ornaments, it's horrifying to watch. And I think that that's one of the reasons why people have just gotten so incredibly angry in rightful backlash. Can I just say one of the most common things I hear from survivors of sexual violence when they hear debates like this, which are smart debates and very fair and all of that, the survivors, the people with the actual stories, get lost.

Because we have headline after headline about these men, and we're not listening to the women, and sometimes men as well, who actually endured the mistreatment. Focus the conversation there. We haven't for far too long. And we should remember that most of these things, most sexual assaults, most victims of sexual violence aren't famous, and the people that commit those acts aren't famous.

And those are the people that we really need be paying attention to. It's rampant in service industries. It's rampant, you know, in restaurant industry, in a hotel industry. And this is something that I'm glad we sort of transition from the Me Too to the Times Up movement. In a matter of fact, I kind of want to start using that more. That the time's up for everyone. And, yeah, I'm in too. Okay.

Ian Bremmer, the entire, you wrote, the entire business model of Facebook undermines liberal democracy. How can we stop that model? I think it's almost impossible to stop that model because it is... For me, the definition of dystopia is that citizens get their information about the world as determined by the world's largest advertising company. And I...

It's an interesting way to put it. I'm on it. The world's largest advertising company. Yeah. Right. And I think, when Mark Zuckerberg said, I had no idea that this was... going to happen. I actually believe him. I think he had no idea because he didn't want to look

into it because he was talking his book, which is, I've got a model, we need to build money, fiduciary responsibility, that's the way it's going to be. But it is very clear that of all the things that we've talked about that are ripping apart of the fabric of liberal democracy, nothing is doing it faster than technology. Every day. That's behind fake news. That's behind, you know, sort of us versus them. That's behind everything that makes us not want to have nationalism and common values, and there's nothing that makes me believe that we're moving away from that. But you don't want, I mean, I've read part of your book, and I think I agree with it generally. But I think one of the strengths of your book is that it's not just about sort of, I mean,

I think there's a tendency for people who are sort of associated with the establishment in the West to want to pin everything on Facebook and fake news and social media and so on, when the reality is that, you know, the reason people believe conspiracy theories and fake news and all the rest is that the people running the West, you know, the globalists to use your language, have had a really terrible track record over the last 15 years. And, I mean, the biggest threat to liberal democracy in certain ways is the fact that we had the Iraq War, a global financial crisis, you know, a sort of totally terribly designed Eurozone that led to all sorts of economic problems. that were totally foreseeable, but none of the people paid to foresee them, foresaw them, and so on. And I mean, in that sense, I think the strongest part of your argument is about the people in charge, not the people trawling for fake news. I really appreciate that, and obviously I agree with it, but I think the thing that is really... And my book.

But the thing that... Everyone's book. Everyone's book. Well, you're... But it goes without saying, Roman. The thing that's really been turned on its head is that 25 years when we started the internet, it was all about... On the internet, no one knows if you're a dog, right? It was empowering, like Tunisia, Egypt, those things happened in part.

Now everyone knows you're a dog on the internet. They do? It doesn't empower people. It's top down. I think the one thing is, we went from this ludicrous techno-optimism where this was going to liberate everybody and save civilization, and now it's destroying civilization, and we never went through the period in which it's like it's got good parts and it's got bad parts,

and maybe we can emphasize the good things and downgrade the bad things. I mean, 10 years ago. Stephen Pinker here was to make the case that he makes that, actually, we look at the bad part of it, but look at, for example, how many people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, probably a lot from globalism in the last 20, 30 years. How many? A billion. A billion. A billion people are out of poverty.

It's never happened before in the history of mankind. Am I the only one who's optimistic in terms of the global most macro view? It's a pretty good time to be alive in the world in general. Right, exactly. There's actually less violence. I mean... But the asterisk has to be... It's worse in the United States.

We have our life expectancy going down here for the first time. And income inequality is growing here. And life expectancy between the racists is it's been worse as well. But you said in the opening, bad time... You said in the opening that what's coming is supposed to the United States is increasingly China, a country that is authoritarian, that uses technology top-down, and much poor. Right? And as a consequence, I'm much more concerned about a world led by that than I am about a world.

that have been living. And we're eviscerating our capacity to go toe to toe with them. But that's reversible. So that's reversible. And all I'm saying is that... Only if we fund the State Department. Well, of course. But I'm saying it's reversible. It may not be reversible this month. First by the book. But this year. But first of that, the book will do it all.

John, you're going to get the last question. How would you stop the West from committing what you call cultural suicide? Well, first they should buy Ian's book and Ron's book. Ross's book. Read books.

And I have books out of print. Bill has a novel called True. Yes, that's right. Oh, that's right. Buy my book. Fuck all those other books. Get the host book. I have four books that are long out of print.

No one reads books anymore. And yet we're all selling books. That's stupid. That's right. People reading books. But I actually quickly have an answer. No, that's because you're in your answer there and buy our books. That's all that's it.

Okay. Okay. But I would say Warren's right that part of it is that we don't tell ourselves. We don't tell ourselves, the West, that we are inheritors of a great patrimony, that we have a wonderful, great liberal tradition. All we do is most elites and most of the public discussion is about everything that's wrong. It's important to highlight things that are wrong so that they can be changed, but we have

no cultural conversation about the fact that we live in a time of extraordinary growth and extraordinary opportunity. And, you know, China is a danger. and a threat. China also is a country that has no ideological hold on anybody. It can't preach. It's got nothing to preach. It's just a different mob.

And it can't breathe. And it can't breathe. What good is a gigantic Social Security problem in the next 10 years with like 350 million people meeting aid and relief and there's no money for it? And so I think if we think more positively

I mean it sounds like it sounds a name. It sounds a name. It sounds a name. I would say that's all true, except that I just think the environmental iceberg is what's melting. And that's what's going to get us. Good night, everybody. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.