Bill Maher Rants About the Dangers of Socialism in Latest Self-Own

Nobody is better at making Bill Maher look bad than Bill Maher.

On the most recent episode of HBO’s Real Time, the Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death star concluded his “New Rules” segment with an editorial that found him raging against Democratic Socialists like New York’s new Mayor-elect. 

“New rule: Democrats must recognize that Zohran Mamdanni is the future of the party,” Maher declared. “Unfortunately it’s the Republican party.” He went on to explain that, although Mamdani seems like a “nice guy,” he’s worried that other parts of the country will succumb to “socialism fever.”

Maher argued that Democrats’ future is in centrist politics, pointing out that even the “woke” New York Times suggested that “moving to the center is the way to win.” Wow, that must be true, since it’s coming from the same bastion of far left progressivism that recently questioned if women ruined the workplace.

Putting aside the fact that a centrist Democrat literally just lost the presidential election, Maher went on to further scaremonger about the evils of the S-word. “Socialism will fuck you. Because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn’t work and has never worked, like Kevin Federline,” Maher said, in what could easily rank as the harshest burn of 2005.

“If you think New York can somehow reinvent this wheel, you’re in for a rude awokening,” Maher stated, citing the economic decline of Venezuela (which, to be fair, was in a large part caused by plunging oil prices and the “international capitalist system”). He then compared Zohran Mamdani to Zoltar the wish-granting genie from Big, because Bill Maher is a racist hack.

Next, Maher blasted Vermont’s attempt to institute a single-payer healthcare system, which he joked “collapsed like that poor fuck in the Oval Office last week.” But even the article he screen-grabbed for Real Time, from Vox, completely undercut his point. 

Vermont’s single-payer health failed, not because of socialism, but because of capitalism, specifically the unchecked skyrocketing cost of healthcare in America. Vermont couldn't afford to cover all residents because, as the article points out, a 2011 study found that the average American doctor spends $82,975 “on dealing with insurance companies.” For comparison, in Ontario, Canada “doctors spend about a quarter of that amount – $22,205 per physician – interacting with the province’s single-payer agency.”

“The fact that America hasn’t taken serious steps to control health spending makes it particularly hard for the country to move to a single-payer system in the future,” Vox reported. The U.S. healthcare system costs $2.8 trillion annually, which is “way more than any single-payer system anywhere in the world costs.” And meaningful attempts to reform this broken system are aggressively fought by those who continue to profit off of it. But sure, blame Bernie Sanders, Bill.

As some pointed out on social media, just seven years ago, one of Maher’s editorials found him raging against the demonization of the word “socialism.”

“Socialism is the reason you don’t have to bring your own highway when you drive somewhere,” the Maher of 2018 said. “The U.S. Army does more socialism by 9 A.M. than Venezuela does all day… socialism, you’re soaking in it.”

“Why can’t democrats all get in a room and come out with a single answer to the ‘scary socialism’ charge?” Maher asked. “This is the attack on us, and Democrats’ response is – I would say crickets, but crickets make some noise.”

It seems that in the intervening years, Maher realized that it’s way easier to just be the guy doing the attacking.