Susan Sarandon is a good actress, I like her acting, her ability to pretend she is what she isn't But, with what she said to Chris Hayes, I have to conclude that she is a complete political idiot and crackpot.
The actress and activist has been a powerful surrogate for Sanders on the campaign trail over the past few months, and during an interview with MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes Monday night, she said she doesn’t know if she can bring herself to vote for Clinton if it comes down to it.
“I think, in certain quarters, there’s growing concern that the folks that are into Bernie Sanders have come to despise Hillary Clinton or reject Hillary Clinton and that should she be the nominee, which is as yet undetermined, they will walk away,” Hayes said.
“That’s a legitimate concern,” Sarandon replied. “Because they’re very passionate and principled.”
“But isn’t that crazy?” the host asked. “If you believe in what he believes in?”
“Yeah but she doesn’t,” Sarandon shot back. “She accepted money for all of those people. She doesn’t even want to fight for a $15 minimum wage. So these are people that have not come out before. So why would we think they’re going to come out now for her, you know?”
I will point out that, looking around at the estimated net worth of Sarandon as fifty-million dollars and her husband as sixty-million dollars, it makes you wonder exactly how much they would have their personal life-style impacted by a Trump presidency. I don't think either of them would be seriously impacted by the end of Obamacare.
What came next is why I say she's exposed herself as an idiot.
“I think Bernie would probably encourage people, because he doesn’t have any ego in this thing,” Sarandon told him. “But I think a lot of people are, ‘Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to [vote for Clinton].’”
“How about you personally?” Hayes asked.
“I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens,” Sarandon said.
That bit of honesty prompted Hayes to stop in his tracks. “Really?” he asked incredulously.
“Really,” Sarandon said, adding that “some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.” Asked if she thinks that’s “dangerous,” she replied, “It’s dangerous to think that we can continue the way we are with the militarized police force, with privatized prisons, with the death penalty, with the low minimum wage, threats to women’s rights and think you can’t do something huge to turn that around.”
Ah, yes, that entirely imagined, heroic, theatrical thing, "the revolution" the pipe dream of play leftists since the French Philosophes dreamed up the one they eventually mounted. What a wonderful thing it was, with a death tole in the millions and the period of violent political instability beginning with the military dictatorship of Napoleon, AFTER THE REIGN OF TERROR. Not to mention just about every single other change of government by revolution in the history of revolutions, which generally bring at least as bad if not worse government, after massive bloodshed. Revolutions usually end up in a desperate move to end the carnage, it's generally the strong men who are turned to to do that.
Somehow, I think if her dreamed of revolution came, Sarandon and family would high-tail it out of a country in which it is the fascists who are armed to the friggin' teeth and beyond with high power weapons and with their hands on the controls of the media. That is if they didn't get gunned down as the free, unregulated press, Rwanda style, was used to tell the fascist militias where people could be found. That, dear Susan Sarandon, is what a revolution under the ambient conditions in the United States is more likely to be like than you and some others triumphantly singing the Marseillaise like they did in Casablanca.
I think she's been watching way too many movies.
Bernie Sanders, if you want your reputation to survive this election season you'd better do something about such support for you, right now.
Interestingly, Amanda Marcotte at Salon quotes a Dave Weigel tweet: Hillary has garnered about 9 million votes so far, Trump about 7.8 million. I've heard Sanders is behind Clinton by about 2.5 million votes, so that puts him at about 6.5 million, presumably (getting vote counts is damned hard; all I can find are percentages and delegate counts, without really digging around).
ReplyDeleteBut Trump and Sanders are winning and changing the game. Not quite sure why that is, or how many Sanders supporters are really going to take their ball and go home if he doesn't win. Then again, Sanders supporters despised the "super delegates" as undemocratic, until Sanders thought he could flip them to support him and give him the nomination.
Which, unless he can win 57% of every primary left (including NY and CA, where it ain't likely to happen; but missing just one of those goals is fatal to his chances), Sanders can't win except by putting the super thumb on the scales.
This is how Congress works, too, when it works; which is why nobody likes it, either. Democracy is messy and you don't always get what you want. But the solution is not a national temper tantrum which will ruin the lives of millions for generations to come (if Trump starts making Supreme Court appointments, or hell, running American foreign policy) in the hopes the whole country will learn to think like you do.
That's the most childish attitude of all.
I've come to the conclusion that the reason that the left doesn't win is because a heck of a lot of would-be leftists are childish, immature and not nearly as smart as they like to tell each other they are. That might work for the right, which doesn't really have self-government by an informed people, equality and justice, it doesn't work for the left, at all.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe how stupid the babble on the comment threads is. And I remember 2008 at Duncan's .