Bill Maher Is Clueless About Chicago, Guns, and Poverty – The Daily Beast

On Fridays Real Time with Bill Maher, the host argued with his guest Daniel Bessner about race, crime, and poverty. Bessner is an International Studies professor at the University of Washington and a Contributing Editor at the socialist magazine Jacobin. (Full disclosure: Hes also a friend and occasional collaborator of mine.)

Maher said that most murders in Chicago are committed by young Black men killing other young Black men, and asked why Black celebrities arent speaking out about it. Maher and another guest, conservative-leaning economist Glenn Loury, insisted that Chicagos Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson isnt showing moral leadership by speaking out strongly enough about crime.

When Bessner argued that the key to a solution is a more equal distribution of material resources, Maher scoffed. Hasnt the United States already spent lots of money on the war on poverty over the decades? Throwing more money at the problem surely wont solve anything!

Maher has no idea what hes talking about.

The first topic Maher threw to the panel was about gun violence. He mentioned several incidents, including some in Chicago. Bessner suggested that, while some of the other incidents Maher mentioned might have other causes, trends in Chicagoa city thats been particularly afflicted by gang violencewere more linked to social conditions, socioeconomic conditions, the disbelief that there is anywhere to go in terms of improving your lot in society.

Maher immediately dismissed this. You sounds like the Mayor-Elect. Johnson, who recently won Chicagos Mayoral election, is a Chicago Teachers Union activist well to the left of outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot or his runoff opponent Paul Vallas. During the election, Johnson was constantly accused by conservatives and centrists of wanting to defund the police.

Its true that he made a few comments in 2020 that seemed to indicate support for a moderate interpretation of that sloganredirecting some funds currently spent on policing and incarceration to other public services such as community health services that could reduce crimes linked to mental illness.

In more recent years, hes shifted to a both/and perspective, touting both a plan to address the root causes of crime and violence by increasing funding for youth employment programs and expanding mental health services across the city, and a pledge to solve more crimes by adding 200 detectives to the Chicago police department.

The fact that he currently doesnt advocate any sort of budget cuts to the CPDquite the oppositedidnt stop either Lightfoot or Vallas of accusing Johnson of being soft on crime, and Maher repeated that accusation on Friday.

Maher brought up a recent speech where Johnson said that, while he didnt condone violence, he didnt think it was constructive to demonize youth who have been starved of opportunities in their own communities. Maher said that sounded to many people like the Mayor-Elect was making excuses for horrific behavior and Loury interjected that it sounded like that because thats exactly what he was doing.

Cook County commissioner and mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson campaigns a day ahead of the runoff election in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. April 3, 2023.

REUTERS/Jim Vondruska

This led to Maher and Loury agreeing that violent crime is fundamentally a question of moral values. Bessner said that he of course agreed that violence is morally wrong, but if youre going to approach it on the level of policy, you need to attack it at the level of socioeconomics, not culture.

Maher and Loury would have none of this. Instead, they suggested Johnson needs to show moral leadership by condemning the violence more strongly. Most confusingly, Maher also seemed to want moral leadership from random celebrities who share the skin color of the perpetrators and victims, arguing that since most murders in Chicago are a matter of young Black men killing other young Black men, Black celebrities should speak out more to condemn that violence. (I wonder if Maher thinks that somewhere in Chicago, theres a gang member who would stop shooting people tomorrow if only he knew that Chris Rock thinks that shooting people is wrong.)

Both Maher and Loury seemed to think that as things stand law enforcement in Chicagoand perhaps in the country in generalis going easy on criminals. And as Bessner kept bringing up economic factors, Maher dismissively said that the United States has already thrown vast sums of money into the war on poverty.

All of this made me wonder if Maher gets his news from an alternate dimension.

Its absurd to act as if the reason violent crime is so much worse in the United States than in comparably developed nations is that we simply arent throwing the book at criminals with enough force.

I agreelike everyone else does!that violent crime is morally wrong. And Im under no illusions that all crime (or even all violent crime) is caused by exclusively economic factors. Plenty of rich people engage in domestic violence, for example.

But its absurd to act as if the reason violent crime is so much worse in the United States than in comparably developed nations is that we simply arent throwing the book at criminals with enough force. We already have one of the very highest incarceration rates of any society in history. We certainly have a vastly higher incarceration rate, and a harsher system of policing and incarceration across the board, than many European nations that dont come anywhere close to having comparable rates of violent rime.

Focusing on Chicago in particular, Johnson didnt exactly ride into powerin an election, by the way, where he won the majority of the vote in the neighborhoods where street crime is the most seriouson a platform of legalizing murder. He wants to hire 200 more detectives. And the allegedly soft-on-crime Johnson isnt even Mayor yet. Brandon Johnson being too nuanced about the causes of crime is pretty clearly not Chicagos problem.

The evidence is pretty overwhelming that throwing money at the problem in the sense of distributing material resources more equitably throughout the population does dramatically alleviate the crime problem. Even modest increases in the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit have been shown to reduce recidivism, and theres evidence that increased access to healthcare lowers the crime ratenot exactly shocking given the role of drug abuse and mental health issues in many crimes.

Its true LBJ talked about a war on poverty well over 50 years ago and that some of the programs he created survived in the long term, but the idea that the US has been waging such a war since then is a bad joke.

Beyond that, common sense should tell Maher that its not a coincidence that the number of peopleof any racial or cultural backgroundwho grow up in affluent suburbs and join gangs hovers right around zero.

Its true that LBJ talked about a war on poverty well over 50 years ago and that some of the programs he created survived in the long term, but the idea that the US has been relentlessly waging such a war since then is a bad joke. What other President has even used that phrase? Around thirty years ago, Bill Clinton was saying the oppositethat the era of big government is over. And he followed through with draconian welfare reform that severely rolled back financial assistance to the poor.

That reform was never reversed, and the only major move in the opposite direction since thenBarack Obamas Affordable Care Act, which expanded access to healthcaremerely tinkered with Americas system of mostly private, for-profit healthcare. Even at its height, Americas welfare state was always a pale and stunted thing by global standardsand the absence of powerful labor unions and socialist political parties present in many other advanced nations has meant that theres been nothing to check skyrocketing economic inequality.

Theres a reason why a countries like Norway and Sweden can have both a far more humane and rehabilitation-based criminal justice system than the United States and a tiny fraction of our murder rate. As a glance at the bloody history of these nations will confirm, its not because their cultures are innately more peaceful.

The truth is that the only solution to this problem is precisely to throw money at it by creating a more materially equal society where citizens have their needs met and have a sense of hope about the future.

If you want to hear old jokes about Sarah Palin reheated and served up as jokes about Marjorie Taylor Greene, watch Bill Maher.

I used to be a regular viewer of Real Time and Mahers previous show Politically Incorrect. Fridays show was the perhaps the clearest demonstration Ive seen of the severe limits of Mahers progressivismat least on domestic policy issues.

Maher was popular with liberals during the 2000s when he gave voice to widespread anxieties about the Bush administration and the religious right. His relationship to that base has changed over the decades and these days some of his stances on the pandemic and the culture war have led many progressives to dislike him.

But the truth is that, as Ive written before, his politics havent changed in any significant way. Like other rich California liberals, hes always liked weed, supported gay rights (though he has been widely criticized for his transphobic rants), and thought conservative politicians were idiots. But that doesnt mean hes ever been a leftist in any deeper sense. If you want to hear old jokes about Sarah Palin reheated and served up as jokes about Marjorie Taylor Greene, watch Bill Maher. If you want to hear well-thought-out analysis of whats wrong with our society, thenat least on nights when Daniel Bessner isnt on Bills panelyoure better off changing the channel.

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Bill Maher Is Clueless About Chicago, Guns, and Poverty - The Daily Beast