Maher: America Isn't Some Abstract Thing; "If You Want It To Stop Being So Terrible, Stop Being Terrible People"
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/10/03/maher_america_isnt_some_abstract_thing_if_you_want_it_to_stop_being_so_terrible_stop_being_terrible_people.html

In his "Real Time" monologue on Friday, HBO host Bill Maher blames America's growing culture of surveillance and public shaming for making people increasingly afraid of being themselves.

BILL MAHER, HBO: New Rule. Kids, let me help. I think I know why you have so much anxiety, so much loneliness. It's because you live in a surveillance state.

We all do. We're all being watched and filmed, possibly screenshotted, all the time. Who wouldn't be paranoid, petrified of making a wrong move that lives on forever?

You know, for generations, nothing could kill dance clubs. Not AIDS, not the Macarena. Not even Disco Duck.

But now, according to the Wall Street Journal, everyone is scared to dance at concerts and clubs. And who would know more about dance clubs than the Wall Street Journal?

[Speaker 2]
But...

[Speaker 1]
But I take them at their word, because as one TikToker said, if you go to the club and dance for more than three seconds, a circle of strangers will form around you. Dance like no one's watching? How quaint to think you could still do that.

Everyone has a GPS-enabled computer in their pocket, a tracking device in your car, a ring camera at the door. Cybertrucks have nine cameras. Waymos have 29.

The more likely a vehicle is to make you want to give them the finger, the more cameras there are to catch you doing it. There's private security cameras, cameras on the street, cameras in the stores. I know women who won't sunbathe naked by my pool because they think there might be a drone overhead.

See, I'm a victim, too. I have reason to believe people are watching me right now. Turns out the only person in America with any privacy is Taylor Swift, who can somehow have a wedding in Madison Square Garden on the Fourth of July and nobody sees it.

And now META, META is making having a camera in your eyeglasses a thing. AI wearables, they call them. I call them fucking creepy.

It took about two seconds for them to earn the nickname pervert glasses. Leave it to Zuckerberg to find another innovative way to make the world even e-douchier. And have you met the flockers?

Flock cameras? Yeah, flock cameras that read your license plate and track your car wherever it goes. Everybody hates them.

Everybody. Red and blue America finally agree on something. Fuck flock cameras.

Okay, sure. Okay, but the people who complain about surveillance do a lot of it themselves. Gen Z is now Gen TMZ.

And the targets don't have to be a celebrity. One of the biggest viral stories this year was the two lawyers making out in Central Park. It's okay, they're married.

Well, he is. He is. But look, people...

People cheating is a long and cherished human right. It may not be noble, but whatever happened to ain't nobody's business if I do? Andy Warhol famously predicted that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, one of the most prescient things anyone's ever said.

What he didn't foresee is it would be against your will. Because now everyone is the celebrity who thought they could get away with running into Target without any makeup. Everyone now is sad Ben Affleck who can't have a cigarette without it going online.

It's disturbing how much Americans now enjoy watching other people be less than perfect. The influencer who filmed the Central Park couple narrates the video by saying, get a room, there's kids around. Oh, thank you, morality police.

You're right, the park is no place for adultery. That place is a Coldplay concert. By the way, the Coldplay couple were separated from their spouses at that time.