On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher slammed the “progressophobia” on the left on issues of race, gender, and sexuality and said that the refusal to acknowledge progress is harmful because “progress, and hope that we can achieve it, is the product we’re selling, and having a warped view of reality leads to policies that are warped.”
After playing a clip of President Joe Biden talking about ads featuring mixed-race couples Maher said, “Uncle Joe is pointing liberals towards something they need to be more aware of: They have a bad case of progressophobia. That’s the phrase coined by Steven Pinker to describe a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress. It’s like situational blindness, only what you can’t see is that your dorm in 2021 is better than the South before the Civil War. If you think America is more racist now than ever, more sexist than before women could vote, and more homophobic than when blowjobs were a felony, you have progressophobia and should adjust your mask, because it’s covering your eyes.”
He later added, “[A]cknowledging progress isn’t saying we’re done, or we don’t need more. And being gloomier doesn’t make you a better person.”
Maher further stated, “And yet there is a recurrent theme on the far left that things have never been worse. Kevin Hart expressed a view many hold when he told The New York Times, ‘You’re witnessing white power and white privilege at an all-time high.’ This is one of the big problems with wokeness, that what you say doesn’t have to make sense or jive with the facts or ever be challenged, lest the challenge itself be conflated with racism. But saying white power and privilege is at an all-time high is just ridiculous. Higher than a century ago, the year of the Tulsa race massacre? Higher than the years when the KKK rode unchecked and Jim Crow went unchallenged? Higher than the 1960s when The Supremes and Willie Mays still couldn’t stay in the same hotel as the white people they were working with? Higher than during slavery?”
Maher continued, “Racism is still unfortunately still with us. We have the footage. In policing, housing, job discrimination, segregated schools, wealth inequality, the legacy of injustice sadly lives on and demands remedial action. I understand, as best I can, how racism singes a person’s soul so much that they might see it everywhere. But seeing clearly is necessary for actually fixing problems, and clearly, racism is simply no longer everywhere.”
He concluded, “[T]his progressive allergy to acknowledging societal advances is self-defeating. Because progress, and hope that we can achieve it, is the product we’re selling, and having a warped view of reality leads to policies that are warped.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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